He knows that the way to gain traction with the West’s pusillanimous contemporary leaders is to play the victim, and so he is earnestly claiming victimhood status not just for the Palestinian Arabs, but for all Muslims.
By Robert Spencer, Frontpage Magazine
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn’t much like the United States or Europe, and passionately hates Israel, and so it’s not particularly surprising when he looks forward with happy anticipation to the collapse of Western civilization.
What is a trifle surprising is that despite Erdogan’s ever-lengthening record of bellicosity toward and contempt for the West, as well as his re-Islamization of Turkey, the Turkish Republic remains in NATO and continues to be regarded in Washington as a reliable ally.
Given the unreality and refusal to face facts that characterizes official Washington, however, even that is worth only the brief raising of one eyebrow. Erdogan has made quite clear which side he is on. The “experts” in Washington are willfully blind.
Türkiye Today reported Tuesday that Erdogan stepped out in Ankara to speak at the 7th Religious Council, and took the opportunity to deliver to the world his view of “the current state of Islamic civilization.”
No doubt to the delight of the attendees, Erdogan was optimistic about the looming final victory of Islam over its enemy for fourteen centuries, the West:
“The West’s progress,” said the Turkish president, “built on blood, tears, massacres, and exploitation, has temporarily overtaken the human-centered civilization of the East. A day will come when this era of progress, which excludes the sacred and humanity, will close. As Western civilization collapses with a great clamor, our human-centered and divinely inspired civilization will rise again, stronger than ever.”
Note the projection. Erdogan says that Western civilization was “built on blood, tears, massacres, and exploitation,” but as The History of Jihad illustrates in abundance, that is actually true of Islamic civilization, which he terms “human-centered and divinely inspired.”
In fact, for centuries, Europeans lived in constant fear of jihad warriors who had distinguished themselves for nothing more than their bloodlust. The existential threat that they posed to Europe was so well known that it was taken for granted everywhere.
Only in the last century or so has the West collectively lost its historical memory, and decided not only to embrace, but to stake its future upon the unexamined and demonstrably false dogma that Islam is a religion of peace that is entirely compatible with Western secular societies.
Erdogan, by contrast, is well aware of the history of Islam and the West, and back in 2018, predicted a renewed conflict between the two.
When the Austrian government closed some Turkish mosques in what it said was a crackdown on “political Islam,” Erdogan declared: “These measures taken by the Austrian prime minister are, I fear, leading the world toward a war between the cross and the crescent.”
Erdogan said he had “fear” that such a conflict would come about, but make no mistake: he is itching for such a war. He is the only one talking about it.
Certainly, the desiccated leftist internationalists who lead Western Europe are horrified at such a prospect, and have already proven that they find no measure of appeasement and accommodation too low to stoop in order to head it off.
But Erdogan is unlikely to be satisfied with anything but full surrender. After all, in the case he was complaining about in 2018, Austria had shut down only seven mosques.
There are many more in Austria. It shut them down for preaching political Islam, i.e., the idea that Sharia is the only legitimate form of government for Austria and the world.
That was enough for Erdogan to threaten jihad. So he was essentially saying that Austria, and Europe in general, must accept slow Islamization or fast Islamization.
Either Europe allowed imams to preach Sharia and Islamic supremacism, leading to the slow Islamization of the continent, or it wouldface a jihad war aiming at conquering and Islamizing the continent.
The choice remains: surrender or be forcibly subjugated. In his speech in Ankara on Tuesday, he also said:
“There is a clear, systematic, and more organized assault against the values that define us and our essence. The perpetrators of massacres in Palestine, Gaza, and other Islamic lands, who seek to exterminate Muslims, are evident. While covert and insidious enemies employ every means, the war in recent times is increasingly waged through social media.”
He knows that the way to gain traction with the West’s pusillanimous contemporary leaders is to play the victim, and so he is earnestly claiming victimhood status not just for the Palestinian Arabs, but for all Muslims.
After striking this most fetching of poses, he will likely encounter no difficulty in getting Western European leaders to do his bidding.
Those who see the situation more clearly, however, know that Erdogan’s belligerent words about the West’s innocent collapse should be taken with the utmost seriousness, and result in a long-overdue realignment of our global alliances.
Will that be on the agenda for the incoming administration? We can hope.