Erdogan's (Mis)judgement

TLDR: Erdogan barely sees ISIL as a threat since he finds it an effective counter against Kurdish nationalism. At the same time, he cracks down on trivial stuff like social media, having banned Twitter and Youtube multiple times (I am able to recall; immediately after the Istanbul protests and the Ankara blasts) and sometimes, even Facebook. Everything went out of hand when he called for the prosecution of a German poet Jan Boehmermann when he read out a poem criticising Erdogan. 

Hence, the focus in Erdogan's total lack of judgements regarding the threats to the country; going soft on ISIL despite the L expanding to Levant which includes Turkey's own Hatay province. 

With that said, I have great respect for Turkey and their secular values but not their current president.


'Art is a blast!' - Deidara (Naruto)

Not the best quote to start a series of new posts but it was apposite to the current series. Since my artistic skills aren't up to the mark, I also have to give commentary on the same and here you go! Whether art is a blast or not is not what I want to talk about but then, I decided to talk about art about blasts.

Despite living in a country so far away from Turkey, I can't help but notice the antics of their current president and former prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While I always admired Turkey for being a model state built by Kemal Ataturk for the rest of the countries in the neighbourhood (being a secular democracy), in came Erdogan with a landslide victory for his Justice Party (AKP) in 2003 and has held the top office since then and step by step, undoing the work of his predecessors by becoming intolerant to dissent (which was seen during the recent sacking of Prime Minister Davutoglu), sucking up to extremists among other things; a state that had once been a model state for its eastern neighbours is now moving towards the models adopted by their eastern neighbours, thanks to the man at the helm. 

This cartoon primarily tries to focus on his judgemental capabilities, considering the mess he is creating in the Syrian Civil War, at present, reports have often suggested that Erdogan doesn't consider ISIL as their primary threat and in fact, largely ignore their expansion seeing them as an effective force to combat the Kurdish militia in Syria; owing to the fear of a possible pan-Kurdish movement with the success of the Peshmerga in Iraq and the political success of Selahattin Demirtas' HDP in the recent elections. 

Anyway, I fail to understand why Turkey goes soft on ISIL; despite their expansionist goals throughout Levant and by that, it means Turkey's own Hatay province is very much included under Levant and still sees Kurdish militia as a bigger threat than ISIL; despite all the recent attacks in Ankara and Istanbul; what was once an exotic tourist destination, people are now afraid of a potential attack. 

The first part of the cartoon's entire focus is on Turkey's soft corner towards ISIL and the latter is on Erdogan's misplaced priorities and his extreme sensitivity towards any dissent is sometimes bordering on being hilarious. For instance, he has banned Twitter multiple times, once during the Istanbul protests and then again, after the Ankara blasts, this time, even Facebook and Youtube (and I hear Youtube has faced a ban multiple times); totally unbecoming of a free democracy. 

The next instance where he took it a little too far was when he demanded the arrest of a German poet; Jan Boehmermann, for merely reading out a poem on TV criticising Erdogan; where the latter even ended up finding some obscure 19th century German law that deemed mocking leaders of other sovereign states a criminal offence and Germany ended up sucking to Erdogan's stupid demand since EU needed his help in handling the refugee crisis and agreed for his prosecution. 

It is sad to see Turkey in this shape, and Erdogan is turning more and more autocratic, trying to consolidate more power into his hands by transforming the country into a presidential republic to end up being president for life, similar to the models of the other Turkic nations (Azerbaijan - Ilham Aliyev, Kazakhstan - Nursultan Nazarbayeev, Uzbekistan - Islam Karimov) and I hope, before things turn too bad, Turkey manages to come out of this menace caused by the current president. 

With all this said, I wish to clarify that I have great respect for Turkey but not for their current President. 

Have a nice day,
Andy