A Yale alumni has warned that Turks who believe Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is creating "Turkish greatness" should actually prepare themselves for a potential partition of their country because an independent Kurdistan could emerge with Greek support.
Turkey has "collective paranoia and [...] xenophobia" because of European efforts a hundred years ago to divide Anatolia from complete Turkish rule, explained Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
In an article on The Center for the National Interest, Rubin explained that although the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its offshoots seek autonomy rather than independence, Erdoğan’s "penchant for instigating fights with neighbors and regional states may soon make Turkey’s fears a self-fulfilling prophecy."
After highlighting that "there is overwhelming evidence that Turkish government employees, the Turkish intelligence service, and members of Erdoğan’s own family supported, supplied, or did business with ISIS," Rubin explained that Turkey invaded Syria to create "a zone for anti-Kurdish ethnic cleansing."
Turkey has issues with its neighbors, especially when we consider its military interventions in Syria, Libya and Iraq, its direct war threats against Greece and Cyprus, as well as Ankara's bombastic language against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
Rubin says that with Saudi Arabia and Egypt opposing Turkey, "add Greece into the mix, and Kurdish insurgents in Turkey may soon have at their disposal the type of weaponry and funding about which in the past they could only dream."
However, the American scholar would leave a chilling warning that Turkey's aggressive actions could actual lead to its "ultimate partition" and the establishment of an independent Kurdistan in eastern Turkey.
"Turkish nationalists might react with umbrage and bluster, but they should also be realistic: Erdoğan is erratic and increasingly reckless. To pick one fight is bad; to pick simultaneous ones is idiotic: Once other countries even covertly begin supporting the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey, there will be no turning back. Any Turk who buys into Erdoğan’s bombast and regional aggression is not enabling Turkish greatness as Erdoğan’s enablers may claim, but rather its ultimate partition," Rubin concluded.
