In his analysis, US analyst Michael Rubin compares the Turkish president to Saddam Hussein, noting that he competes with the world’s most corrupt leaders.
On the Turkish elections and the attitude of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan if he is re-elected, Michael Rubin, an analyst for the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), refers in his extensive analysis entitled “the worst is yet to come for Turkey “.
Michael Rubin, in his analysis on 19fortyfive.com, estimates that Recep Tayyip Erdogan will win the second round of the elections and manage to stay in power for 25 years. In fact, he points out that analysts who see the second round on the positive side “forget Iran, where repeated elections are common even if they are not a model of democracy.”
In his analysis, Rubin compares the Turkish president to Saddam Hussein, points out that he competes with the world’s most corrupt leaders and warns Europe and the US not to repeat the mistake they made in Iraq a second time, considering that from now Erdogan will start to be more aggressive in practice and the only thing that is not known is his goal.
For months, the State Department has advised both the White House and Congress to go easy on Turkey. What is the logic behind this advice? Turkey is facing an election, and any form of coercion or punitive reaction could work in Erdogan’s favor before the first round of elections.
Now, faced with a second with a predetermined outcome, it is time to readjust that tactic to reality: the United States and Europe will have a hard road ahead.
As the American analyst reports, “Erdogan is not only the most corrupt leader in Turkey, but he competes with Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Ali Khamenei, Massoud Barzani and Ilham Aliyev as the most corrupt man in the world.” He started out as a street vendor. He ran his initial mayoral campaigns on cleanliness and left that office with 13 corruption cases hanging over his head.”
“Erdogan could become the world’s first trillionaire”
In fact, Rubin mentions in his article on 19fortyfive.com that the US embassy documents leaked by Wikileaks refer to eight bank accounts that Erdogan has in his name in Switzerland.
“Parliamentary immunity bought him time and control of the judiciary offered him permanent impunity. It is possible that with his new sense of impunity, the famous Black Sea hydrocarbon finds and natural gas looted from Cypriot waters, Erdogan will become the world’s first trillionaire, ”adds the analyst.
However, as Rubin points out, “the problem is not Erdogan’s corruption, but the terrible situation Turkey finds itself in. He “flattened” Türkiye’s once-promising economy. Inflation is out of control and Turkey’s currency is about to lose all its value. Nothing in Erdogan’s record suggests a man capable of acknowledging, much less correcting, his “mistakes.”
In fact, Rubin makes a comparison with the attitude that the US and Europe had towards Saddam Hussein and warns them not to repeat the same mistakes in the case of Erdogan.
“As war and adventurism drove Iraq into enormous debt, Saddam Hussein looked to his neighbor, wealthy Kuwait, for bailout. In retrospect, American and European diplomats who rejected Saddam’s rhetoric and denied Kuwait’s legitimacy or the sanctity of its borders as typical Arab “crowns” turned out to be foolish,” the analyst continues, adding that as Erdogan meditates on the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic, his actions will become more extreme.
The only question is what Türkiye’s goal will be.
“The question now for both the United States of America and Europe is whether they will make the same mistake twice: Erdogan is openly questioning the legitimacy of the Treaty of Lausanne. As the Turkish Republic approaches its 100th anniversary, not just its rhetoric , but also their actions will become more extreme. The Turks have been fed a constant stream of nationalism, if not fascism and racial superiority. The Turkish media “bubble” is just as extreme as the Russian one. The Turkish people are prepared for both aggression as for distraction. The only question is whether Turkey’s target will be Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Iraq or Armenia,” explains Michael Rubin.
“Erdogan despises the United States, and this attitude is expected to worsen,” adds the analyst and refers to the opinion of Professor Henry Barclay, who noted that: “Erdogan’s favorite newspaper had a headline: The polls will have an answer for Biden. “
“Begging would be a bad strategy, empowering Erdogan more. It is time for the White House and State Department to prepare for Erdogan’s fabricated crisis. He is likely to take Americans hostage to humiliate America in front of his voters and obtain concessions, as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are doing,” added the analyst.
“For most of the last two decades, analysts have tried to capture the proportions. Are the state’s bilateral ties as bad as in the Iraq War or the Cyprus crisis?” Rubin asks himself and concludes that: “The simple fact is that there is no longer a proportion of how bad the ties are, but of how bad can be to be done”.