Is The EU Afraid Of A Little Spring Cleaning In Turkey, Courtesy of Obama And Putin?

In international politics, allies can change. Friends turn to enemies. Assets become liabilities.

An excerpt from, "Obama and Putin Agree That Turkish Dictator Erdogan Must Go; Russian and U.S. Arms Flow to Kurdish PKK; April Civil War in Turkey Looms" By Webster Tarpley, March 19, 2016:

Especially important is the agreement reached by Presidents Obama and Putin about two or three weeks ago that the continued tenure of Turkish President Erdogan is intolerable, and that he should be removed from office before he can start a wider war. Russian and US weapons are currently flowing into Turkey for the purpose of speeding the departure of the dictator. Contacts are also being made with the Turkish political parties, the top generals of the Turkish military, and others to help bring down the dictator. The Turkish nationalists are turning against Erdogan. The PKK will also mobilize. Erdogan’s presidency is illegitimate because his most recent election victory was carried out with massive vote fraud.

Fighting inside Turkey on the level of a civil war is expected to begin during April. The beginning of the end for Erdogan will transform the entire Middle East situation.

Most of the larger cities in Syria will soon be free of terrorist rebels. This is likely to include Aleppo, Palmyra, and Idlib. ISIS/Daesh will only be able to maintain their presence in Raqqa in far northeast Syria, as well as in some parts of Iraq. It is expected that heavy fighting inside Turkey will tend to disrupt the logistics pipeline for the terrorist rebels inside Syria.

This hard line of Moscow and Washington towards Erdogan contrasts most sharply with the policy of the European Union (including Britain and France), which is offering tribute of €3 billion per year to Erdogan over the foreseeable future to get the Turkish president to house more Syrian refugees and to prevent them from crossing into Greece. Naturally, since Erdogan functions as the de facto commander of ISIS/Daesh, he could at any time order the total cessation of combat operations, and remove the main factor which is impelling civilians to flee from the terrorists in the combat zones. But he prefers to cash in, obtaining concessions like visa-free travel for Turks in the EU.

An excerpt from, "Turkey/EU deal: Erdogan has fawning Eurocrats wrapped around his finger" By Bryan MacDonald, RT, March 20, 2016:

In reality, Erdogan has no desire to join the EU. If Ankara did become a full member, it would presumably have to revert to genuine democracy. Doing so would loosen Erdogan’s totalitarian grip on power. Instead, what Erdogan really wants is for Western Europe’s elite to legitimize his regime. His strategy is working.

The same politicians who endlessly rant and rave about 'values' are now bowing to a thug who has reversed the long celebrated reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Make no mistake, Turkey, long an oasis of modernity in a troubled Middle East, is going backwards at an alarming rate.

Erdogan reportedly said on Wednesday, in Ankara, “democracy, freedom and the rule of law… for us, these words have absolutely no value any longer.”

Just imagine if a leader less valuable to current western strategy made such a statement? For example, Vladimir Putin or Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff? There’d be venom spat all over the op-ed pages from The New York Times to Le Monde and Die Welt. But when a NATO member’s president spouts such things, the same newspapers don't even report the comments.

Erdogan didn’t stop there. He also said Turkey will “strike Kurds everywhere.” These are the same Kurds that America (and Russia, too) has partnered with in the war against ISIS. Yet, the US government seems oblivious to Erdogan's words.