Erdoğan's Jihad on "Infidel Europe"
by Burak Bekdil • November 7, 2020 at 5:00 am
Middle Eastern politics is always a trap for radical ideologues. In Erdoğan's mindset the "infidel West" is militarily helping Armenia (the evil) and Turkey is militarily helping Azerbaijan (the righteous).
Although Ankara and Baku categorically deny accusations, press reports and independent human rights observers have confirmed the arrival of hundreds of jihadists in Azerbaijan to fight Armenia.
After the Turkish military's direct armed engagement on Iraqi and Syrian territories, proxy wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, military tensions on the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, Erdoğan's new jihadist adventurism has found a new theater of war in the Caucasus. What's next?
The jihad against Europe by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is probably based on both ideology and opportunism. Fierce anti-Western rhetoric is an ideological sine qua non for Turkish political Islam; it is also a secure vote-catcher targeting conservative and nationalist masses.
Erdoğan's jihadism is not seasonal or a newfound system of political ideas. It is also not a reflection of peaceful sufism. Erdoğan comes from the ranks of Turkey's militant political Islamism that emerged in late 1960s under the leadership of the ideologue, Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey's first Islamist prime minister and Erdoğan's mentor. In Erbakan's rhetoric universal politics is simply about a struggle between the righteous (Islam) and a coalition of Zionists and racist imperialists -- all else is just details. In his thinking, the Zionists support Turkey's membership in the European Union in order to "get Turkish Muslims to melt in a pot of Christianity."
