Recep Tayip Erdogan and Barack Hussein Obama . . . whatever . . . BFF’s that are hard to tell apart
The most brilliant, informed and erudite of the political right among us are also, perhaps out of prudence or necessity, the most cautious.
Leaders on the left have a virtual monopoly on carelessness and deceit. They are among the least prudent and almost never well-intentioned. They abhor genuine transparency, but to those who listen with care and insight, they seem never to be reticent about their true motives, perhaps because they know the media will cover for them.
We are seeing these characteristics play out this week against the backdrop of the Turkish crisis.
Barack Obama and John Kerry could not speak out quickly enough upon learning of the attempted coup which sought to remove Recep Tayip Erdogan from the head of the Turkish government.
Faster than you can say “the cops acted stupidly”, Obama was out announcing his support for Erdogan and urging the Turkish people to turn out in opposition to the coup.
Many observers, not only on the right but foreign affairs experts and political analysts across the spectrum were somewhat surprised, or appeared to be, at how quickly the Obama administration chose sides in the fast-moving development.
Although a member of NATO, under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has been a somewhat uncertain ally in the Syrian conflict and has been a problematic partner in terms of ISIS and Kurdish issues. They were quite unhelpful at times in the US coalition effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More importantly Erdogan has been moving his country toward an Islamist nation and his rule is becoming increasingly authoritarian and repressive. Many foreign affairs analysts in the US and among its allies have observed the Turkish leader as he has shut down unfriendly media, seeks to rewrite the Turkish constitution to give him total power, and they have concluded that a coup is definitely underway in Turkey, but it is led by Erdogan himself.
So, why would Obama and his latest excuse for a Secretary of State rush to support the would be dictator.
That answer is obvious to everyone paying attention to the past almost 8 year reign of Barack Obama:
In nearly every important way Recep Tayip Erdogan and Barack Hussein Obama are two of a kind.
Each admires certain things in the other. Each no doubt analyzes how the other accomplishes objectives which seem impossible in his respective country’s governmental structure, and both share very similar goals.
As we’ve opined in the past, despots and dictators around the world currently and in recent history must have envied Obama’s near total capture of the dominant press.
Past and present dictators have realized their first priority as they seek to take total power in their nation is to take over the means of communication to their respective populaces. Almost without exception this means taking over or shutting down opposing news media sources and forcefully directing the output of friendly media.
For Obama, this first priority was fulfilled even before he came into office. With the exception of a few conservative newspapers and talk radio, and a more objective FOX News (at the time), Obama enjoyed full support and cover from the US media for virtually his entire agenda.
Obama has no doubt studied the actions and strategies of other authoritarians and would be dictators, and has even at this point adopted some or many of them.
Certainly a tactic “successfully” employed by tyrants seeking to come to power, is to foment widespread discontent, usually among segments of the population in the lower to lower middle class. Racial and ethnic minorities and the young are almost always popular tools for them. Sometimes some of these target demographics are used as “allies” to advance a civil unrest objective. Other times a minority segment is set up by the “organizer” to be the target of the wrath of another minority segment.
Obama, as we see it, has worked to implement such strategies, drawing on his background as a “community organizer”. And he has “succeeded” impressively, dividing this nation’s people against each other across virtually every possible fault line: religious, ethnic, economic, racial, gender, sexuality, you name it. Divided as “victims” or “oppressors”.
He has his own corps (“corpse” in the Obama vernacular) of incited and inciters, created and fostered by false victimization or exaggerated “grievance”.
Another early and major necessity which all “successful” tyrants must address if they are to, not seize power, but to retain it, is to secure a firm grip on his/her nation’s military. Whether it is dictators of the past or the Kim Yong Un’s or the Hugo Chavez’s, the Castro’s, or the Erdogan’s, it always requires the purging of the strongest, most experienced, most patriotic of the military’s leadership. Those whose devotion to duty in defense of their country pose the greatest threat to a would be dictator who seeks to “transform” his nation.
On this score, Obama and Erdogan must pat each other on the back for their respective successes.
Whenever a dictator has pretty much seized the highest office, whether by “democratic elections” or some other means, he must move to gain control of all the levers of power. Different conditions in different nations dictate how this is best accomplished. Countries without strong traditions of shared power or strong institutions, and well-defined governing principles are more vulnerable to heavy-handed overturning of any rule of law, usually marked by massive, not well-hidden corruption. Others find aggressive ways to compromise or subvert the judiciary. Whatever the preliminaries, the dictator will ultimately rewrite the nation’s constitution, giving him/her total power and control.
Turkey, under Erdogan, is well along on its “transformation” from Attaturk’s secular form of government to an Islamic state.
No wonder Obama evinces so much admiration for Erdogan.He has overcome a strong, prosperous secular tradition in Turkey, has virtually completed his takeover of the judiciary, the military, the press, and engendered a religious fervor among the largest segments of his country’s population.
But Erdogan must be impressed with President Obama as well. The American president is very well along toward accomplishing what many third worlders and historically chaotic nations’ leaders thought impossible not too many generations ago. If Obama has not yet rewritten our Constitution, he is well on the way to undermining or invalidating major parts of it…with the help of the Judiciary (SCOTUS) and a feckless opposition political party (the evisceration of the Senate’s ultimate role in approving international treaties…the Corker Amendment, the “climate Change ‘non-binding’ Agreement”, his ‘executive orders’, etc).
With the help of a “progressive” educational system, a compliant press and a political party which has completed an evolution to a socialist/marxist model, opposed by an incredibly weak and unserious opposition party, Obama, in just 7 years has achieved the status of a “defacto dictator”.
While Obama may or may not leave “official” office next year, he has put in place a judiciary that will uphold the actions of his rule for generations. He has decimated the greatest military organization in all of history, putting in place in every key position, the weakest, most politically subservient group of leaders, many of whom seem to share his utter contempt for virtually every principle, tradition, and value of America.
He has done it with the aid and comfort of the day’s major business, academic, entertainment, and press leaders.
So who, really, is surprised at the enthusiasm with which President Obama supported Mr. Erdogan?
Obama’s most cynical reason for doing so was his patently ridiculous “support for “democratically elected” governments!
Where was his respect for Israel’s. Saddam Hussein was “democratically” elected. So was Hugo Chavez’s. Adolf Hitler was elected democratically.
It is along the lines of Mr. Obama’s much avowed respect for the “sovereignty” of other nations (Iran’s most notably when he would not support the “Green Revolution”). Like the UK’s? Again, Israel’s? Libya’s? Egypt’s?
That’s another common characteristic dictators and would be dictators share: their words mean nothing and however outrageous the inconsistencies between what they say and what they do may be, the “hope” of the repressed masses, “springs eternally”!:
Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Alexander Pope, “Essay on Man”
DLH
