© AP Photo/ Lefteris Pitarakis, File
Ankara is waging war on two fronts, being involved in the "cold war"-style confrontation with Moscow on the international level and waging "hot war" against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on its own territory, journalist Kadri Gursel wrote for Al-Monitor.
According to the author, Turkish actions may lead to a situation when PKK would receive more support from the outside, particularly, from Russia. The union of two of Turkey's opponents would be a logical outcome, which will, however, pose a serious security challenge to Ankara.
"Turkey has refused to change its Syria policy, while at the same time piling pressure on the PKK by escalating the war in the Kurdish-majority southeast. The more the pressure grows, the higher the possibility of the PKK gravitating toward Russia," the author wrote.
Thus, the end of the "cold war" with Russia is a key point for the internal stability of Turkey, but the normalization of relations between Moscow and Ankara is almost unreal, the journalist argued. In this case, the Turkish President would have to make his apologies to Russia and compensate the damage of the attack on Russia's Su-24 fighter jet, conditions without which the reconciliation between the two countries would be impossible.
"Agreeing to these demands would amount to a humiliating defeat for Erdogan, given that Ankara has said that the jet was downed for violating Turkish airspace and that it will never apologize for that," Gursel wrote.
Relations between the two countries deteriorated after a Russian Su-24 aircraft was brought down by an air-to-air missile fired from a Turkish F-16 fighter on November 24 over Syria. Ankara claimed that the Russian aircraft violated Turkish airspace, but Russian and Syrian defense officials said that the Su-24 was illegally downed over Syria.
According to the columnist, the state of the "cold war" enables Russia to exert economic and political pressure on Ankara. Therefore, it remains unclear how long Erdogan will be able to remain in a state of "cold" confrontation with Russia and "hot" war against the Kurds, while preventing the unification of the two opponents into a joint anti-Turkish bloc, the journalist concluded.
Erdogan is a madman, who is so arrogant he does not see or does not care about the consequences of pursuing his megalomania. Stupidity and arrogance are a dangerous combination.
Scenario: A Russian warship tries to transit the Bosphorus, which is an international waterway, and is fired upon by Turkish land batteries in Istanbul. Erdogan is pleased, and rapes one of his mistresses to celebrate his tirumph. The warship shoots back, killing hundreds of civilians. Erdogan deploys his aircraft to sink the ship. Russia shoots down the Turkish planes, and destroys the remainder of the Turkish Air Force on the ground. In the exchange, German, French, Canadian, and US planes are destroyed on the ground. The US deploys its local aircraft carrier to destroy all Russian planes and facilities in Syria. Russia sinks the US aircraft carrier and several of its attendant ships with cruise missiles. NATO mobilizes in Europe, and crosses the borders of the Baltic states and Poland, or attacks the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Russia bombs the NATO troops and armored columns invading its territory. The US responds by firing its nuclear missiles from Europe into Russia. Russia fires nuclear missiles on the capitals of all NATO states. The USA fires its strategic ICBMs against Russia. Russia responds in kind, releasing an all-out barrage of ICBMs, but beginning with stratospheric massive bombs, which fry every electrical circuit in the USA and Europe. The emergency cooling generators and pumps on all 300 nuclear power stations in the USA and Europe and Russia fail, and all of them begin to explode and melt down. Vast amounts of radioactivity, equivalent to 10 million to 30 million nuclear bombs, are released from the exploding power stations - 300 Chernobyls or Fukushimas all happening at once. The planet becomes uninhabitable, and all mammalian, bird and fish life on the planet dies. The forests of Earth are filled with giant insects, and nothing else lives. 50 million years hence, intelligent insects rule Planet Earth.
Let us hope those insects are more intelligent than Recep Tayyip Erdogan.