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The Turkish Tough Guy And Crimea, Or Much Ado About Nothing / Sputnik International
The Turkish President’s latest comments about Crimea should be seen as nothing more than domestic chest-thumping and not as a revision of relations with Russia.
President Erdogan's recent comments on Crimea caught the attention of several media outlets, including Reuters, which were quick to draw attention to his fiery words. Addressing President Putin's recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish leader said that "It's not the first time Russia used the word genocide on this issue. I'm personally sad that Putin took such a step. What is happening in Ukraine and Crimea is evident. They should firstly explain these before calling it genocide." While on the surface such remarks appear inflammatory and damaging to bilateral relations, they're really nothing more than tough guy bravado aimed at soothing the sensitivities that his domestic audience has over the genocide issue. Western political provocateurs have lately been quick in trying to drive whatever wedge they can between Moscow and Ankara, including over these comments, since they want nothing more than to stave off a potential Turkish pivot to Eurasia, in which pragmatic cooperation with Russia is key.
Let's look at the true state of Tatars in Crimea and analyze Erdogan's comment in that context, before touching upon the Western media's ulterior motives in manipulating their reporting of Russian-Turkish relations and the reason why they're so desperate to torpedo ties between the two.
Tatars and Turks
As anyone familiar with the Western media's information inundation over the past year already knows, the Tatar minority in Crimea has ethnic, religious, and historical roots to Turkey. But, what many Western audiences are not aware of is that the vast majority of this demographic support Crimea's reunification with Russia, largely due not only to the expected increase in economic standards, but also the stimulus in social standards as well. Under Ukraine, the Crimean Tatars were largely neglected and their language and historical culture were abandoned by the state. Under the Russian Federation, however, Crimean Tatars and all aspects associated with them are prized and promoted as an integral part of the Republic's identity and they no longer have to fear institutional neglect from the authorities. While there will always be people unhappy with whatever current situation they are in (and a Western media salivating to spread their story if such individuals reside in Russia), it's telling that there has been none of the identity-based destabilization in Crimea that Western fear mongers and naysayers had gloomily predicted over a year ago.
Turkey understands the betterment of living conditions that Crimean Tatars have experienced since the reunification last year, and it's not willing to fall into the West's information trap and rock the boat of positive relations with Russia over nothing more than CNN-disseminated red herrings. Be that as it may, it understands the sensitivity that the Crimea issue holds for Russia, as well as the geopolitical significance of the issue to the West, and Erdogan isn't afraid to mix the two in garnering attention when he's upset. It's through this context that one must interpret his Crimea comments, since he's evidently upset at President Putin's recognition of the Armenian Genocide (likely taking it as a personal slight owing to his well-known egoism) and he knows that the only way to garner international attention to his complaints is to tie them in with the well-known and easily dismissed Western lies about Crimea. The Turkish President is merely venting his personal frustrations in the narcissistic manner that he's known to partake in, but given that he's proven himself to be more pragmatic than emotional throughout his long political career (which has no end in sight), this should be seen as nothing more than a passing temper tantrum.
Media Manipulation
The West never loses an opportunity in trying to destabilize Russia and its relations with neighboring states, and their manipulation of Erdogan's latest words are no different. It's not that they're changing anything he said, but rather reporting it in a context outside what it's meant to be understood in. Most outlets republished his words alongside ‘background information' about Russia's "annexation" of Crimea and false statements about ethnic tensions in the peninsula. The obvious intent here is to misleadingly make Crimea sound like 1990s Chechnya, complete with the cultural prejudices that a Muslim population is full of bubbling extremist potential just waiting for a ‘justified' reason to surface. Not only that, but the inference is that there's some type of civilizational incompatibility with Crimean Tatars joining the Russian Federation, as though the ‘officially' multicultural and race-blind West is now in favor of ethnic and religious apartheid.
The thing is, the West actually has a track record of supporting such racist policies against its geopolitical foes, as can be seen by its 1999 militant insistence that Albanians live apart from Serbs. At the same time, the West engaged in double standards by supporting multiculturalism outside Serbia's borders when it provided a lever to deepen its influence in the targeted state. This is exactly what transpired in Macedonia after the NATO-supported Ohrid Agreement essentially gave the pro-Western Albanian minority the final say over whether or not many government decisions are ultimately approved, thus representing a demographic-institutional anchor of American influence in the country.
What the Western media wants more than anything is to stir up conflict between Russia on one hand and the Crimean Tatars and/or Turkey on the other, which could then be marketed as an artificial ‘clash of civilizations' between Russia and Muslims. This false narrative would then be used to justify any resumption of Western-supported terrorism in the Northern Caucasus, with the ultimate goal of weakening the Russian Federation in the same style as the Soviet Union was three decades ago in Afghanistan (where the West incidentally also supported terrorism against Moscow's servicemen). The trick being played here is that the West hopes to bait notable commentators or political personalities from either the Russian or Turkish side into publicly and loudly saying something off-the-cuff about Erdogan's statement, with the hopes that this would deal a blow to the bilateral relations between them that threaten Western interests.
Breaking The Pipelines
The reason why the West is so hyped up about spoiling Russian-Turkish relations is because it fears the geopolitical repercussions of the Turkish and Balkan Streams, which essentially empower multipolarity in Southern Europe and increase Turkey's pivot potential. Through its energy cooperation with Moscow, Ankara increases the freedom it has in exercising an independent (read: non-Western-aligned) foreign policy, should it so choose. While the imperial ideology of Neo-Ottomanism makes it likely that Turkey would still continue its War on Syria no matter its geopolitical identification, discarding its pro-Western leanings could make it more pragmatic in the overall scheme of things and possibly even lead to an eventual cessation of its neighborly aggression and a transformation of its regional role. This scenario, as well as the possibility of Turkey's pivot in the first place, is precluded if Russian-Turkish relations are disrupted to the point that the Turkish and Balkan Stream projects are not completed, hence the Western media's urgency in bringing this about through out-of-contextual ‘reporting' and provocative information manipulation.
Read more: The Turkish Tough Guy And Crimea, Or Much Ado About Nothing / Sputnik International
The Turkish President’s latest comments about Crimea should be seen as nothing more than domestic chest-thumping and not as a revision of relations with Russia.
President Erdogan's recent comments on Crimea caught the attention of several media outlets, including Reuters, which were quick to draw attention to his fiery words. Addressing President Putin's recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish leader said that "It's not the first time Russia used the word genocide on this issue. I'm personally sad that Putin took such a step. What is happening in Ukraine and Crimea is evident. They should firstly explain these before calling it genocide." While on the surface such remarks appear inflammatory and damaging to bilateral relations, they're really nothing more than tough guy bravado aimed at soothing the sensitivities that his domestic audience has over the genocide issue. Western political provocateurs have lately been quick in trying to drive whatever wedge they can between Moscow and Ankara, including over these comments, since they want nothing more than to stave off a potential Turkish pivot to Eurasia, in which pragmatic cooperation with Russia is key.
Let's look at the true state of Tatars in Crimea and analyze Erdogan's comment in that context, before touching upon the Western media's ulterior motives in manipulating their reporting of Russian-Turkish relations and the reason why they're so desperate to torpedo ties between the two.
Tatars and Turks
As anyone familiar with the Western media's information inundation over the past year already knows, the Tatar minority in Crimea has ethnic, religious, and historical roots to Turkey. But, what many Western audiences are not aware of is that the vast majority of this demographic support Crimea's reunification with Russia, largely due not only to the expected increase in economic standards, but also the stimulus in social standards as well. Under Ukraine, the Crimean Tatars were largely neglected and their language and historical culture were abandoned by the state. Under the Russian Federation, however, Crimean Tatars and all aspects associated with them are prized and promoted as an integral part of the Republic's identity and they no longer have to fear institutional neglect from the authorities. While there will always be people unhappy with whatever current situation they are in (and a Western media salivating to spread their story if such individuals reside in Russia), it's telling that there has been none of the identity-based destabilization in Crimea that Western fear mongers and naysayers had gloomily predicted over a year ago.
Turkey understands the betterment of living conditions that Crimean Tatars have experienced since the reunification last year, and it's not willing to fall into the West's information trap and rock the boat of positive relations with Russia over nothing more than CNN-disseminated red herrings. Be that as it may, it understands the sensitivity that the Crimea issue holds for Russia, as well as the geopolitical significance of the issue to the West, and Erdogan isn't afraid to mix the two in garnering attention when he's upset. It's through this context that one must interpret his Crimea comments, since he's evidently upset at President Putin's recognition of the Armenian Genocide (likely taking it as a personal slight owing to his well-known egoism) and he knows that the only way to garner international attention to his complaints is to tie them in with the well-known and easily dismissed Western lies about Crimea. The Turkish President is merely venting his personal frustrations in the narcissistic manner that he's known to partake in, but given that he's proven himself to be more pragmatic than emotional throughout his long political career (which has no end in sight), this should be seen as nothing more than a passing temper tantrum.
Media Manipulation
The West never loses an opportunity in trying to destabilize Russia and its relations with neighboring states, and their manipulation of Erdogan's latest words are no different. It's not that they're changing anything he said, but rather reporting it in a context outside what it's meant to be understood in. Most outlets republished his words alongside ‘background information' about Russia's "annexation" of Crimea and false statements about ethnic tensions in the peninsula. The obvious intent here is to misleadingly make Crimea sound like 1990s Chechnya, complete with the cultural prejudices that a Muslim population is full of bubbling extremist potential just waiting for a ‘justified' reason to surface. Not only that, but the inference is that there's some type of civilizational incompatibility with Crimean Tatars joining the Russian Federation, as though the ‘officially' multicultural and race-blind West is now in favor of ethnic and religious apartheid.
The thing is, the West actually has a track record of supporting such racist policies against its geopolitical foes, as can be seen by its 1999 militant insistence that Albanians live apart from Serbs. At the same time, the West engaged in double standards by supporting multiculturalism outside Serbia's borders when it provided a lever to deepen its influence in the targeted state. This is exactly what transpired in Macedonia after the NATO-supported Ohrid Agreement essentially gave the pro-Western Albanian minority the final say over whether or not many government decisions are ultimately approved, thus representing a demographic-institutional anchor of American influence in the country.
What the Western media wants more than anything is to stir up conflict between Russia on one hand and the Crimean Tatars and/or Turkey on the other, which could then be marketed as an artificial ‘clash of civilizations' between Russia and Muslims. This false narrative would then be used to justify any resumption of Western-supported terrorism in the Northern Caucasus, with the ultimate goal of weakening the Russian Federation in the same style as the Soviet Union was three decades ago in Afghanistan (where the West incidentally also supported terrorism against Moscow's servicemen). The trick being played here is that the West hopes to bait notable commentators or political personalities from either the Russian or Turkish side into publicly and loudly saying something off-the-cuff about Erdogan's statement, with the hopes that this would deal a blow to the bilateral relations between them that threaten Western interests.
Breaking The Pipelines
The reason why the West is so hyped up about spoiling Russian-Turkish relations is because it fears the geopolitical repercussions of the Turkish and Balkan Streams, which essentially empower multipolarity in Southern Europe and increase Turkey's pivot potential. Through its energy cooperation with Moscow, Ankara increases the freedom it has in exercising an independent (read: non-Western-aligned) foreign policy, should it so choose. While the imperial ideology of Neo-Ottomanism makes it likely that Turkey would still continue its War on Syria no matter its geopolitical identification, discarding its pro-Western leanings could make it more pragmatic in the overall scheme of things and possibly even lead to an eventual cessation of its neighborly aggression and a transformation of its regional role. This scenario, as well as the possibility of Turkey's pivot in the first place, is precluded if Russian-Turkish relations are disrupted to the point that the Turkish and Balkan Stream projects are not completed, hence the Western media's urgency in bringing this about through out-of-contextual ‘reporting' and provocative information manipulation.
Read more: The Turkish Tough Guy And Crimea, Or Much Ado About Nothing / Sputnik International
