Turkey was a malevolent occupier of Lebanon and other countries in the region for 402 years (1516 to 1918). It was one of the most brutal Muslim occupations the world had seen. In fact, Erdogan has been promoting a defunct "Ottoman" Turkey by undermining Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular legacy and encouraging the re-islamization of Turkey. He might be dreaming of becoming the new Caliph!
One of his latest regressive actions was to re-convert in 2020 the Hagia Sophia museum back into a mosque. For several centuries prior to the 1453 Ottoman Turkish seizure of the Christian Eastern Roman (Byzantine) capital Constantinople (a name now distorted into Istanbul), Hagia Sophia was a cathedral that was built in 537 AD and served as the center of Christianity in the east until it fell to the barbarian Muslim hordes in 1453. In his widsom, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum for all faiths in 1935. But the Islamist Erdogan reverted it back to a mosque in 2020.
And now, as the Reuters article below reports, Erdogan is offering his "support" to Lebanon facing an imminent Jewish terrorist attack in the south by the Zionist hordes whose fanatic Jewish ideology is only equal to Erdogan's fanatic Muslim ideology.
In what way, pray tell, will Erdogan express that support on the ground? Will he send troops and weapons to the other fanatic Muslim hordes of Hezbollah for more Lebanese bloodshed? Or to the Lebanese army? We, here in Lebanon, have had plenty of verbal expressions of support over many decades. Yet we keep sinking. What we need is for the West to cease its hypocrisy, stop claiming it wants a de-escalation, and threaten war criminal Netanyahu with serious consequences if he invades Lebanon for the 4th or 5th time (we lost count).
At the same time, the UN Security Council needs to dispatch an international expeditonary force (like the one it sent to liberate Christian Catholic East Timor from Muslim Indonesia or liberate Muslim Bosnia from Christian Serbia) to the south of Lebanon and empower the legitimate armed forces of the Lebanese government to re-assert its sovereignty over every inch along its border with both Israel and Syria. You see, Israel is not the only mass murderer in the region; Syria is too and is far wrose.
Why doesn't the West send massive military support to the Lebanese army and the United Nations force (UNIFIL) in the south so they themsleves defeat Iran's Hezbollah and settle border issues with Israel. Alas, the West fled before Hezbollah's terror in the 1980s, remained silent for decades over Hezbollah's buildup of its arsenal (1990s and 2000s), and continues playing coy with the Damascus butcher whose regime has been in place since 1970, violating every human rights law, invading Lebanon and mass murdering its people, then mass murdering its own Syrian people. For decades, the filthy US State Department spoke of Assad (father then son) as "cunning" and "keeps his word" while the same US State Dept placed his regime on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. For decades, the brutal Syrian occupation (1975-2005) of Lebanon was according to State Dept criminals a "factor of stability".
What is so sacred about the Syrian regime that has bombed western embassies and peacekeeping forces, slaughtered and kidnapped and jailed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and Lebanon? What is so sacred about the Syrian regime that is the lifeline of Hezbollah between Iran and Lebanon? Why can't the Assad regime be toppled by an assassination like the one the CIA did against Pinochet of Chili, or against Mosadeg of Iran? The longevity of the Syrian Assad regime is, in the least, suspicious after most Arab dictators have been toppled. Wouldn't toppling the Assad regime deal a blow to the other butcher in Moscow?
The answer: In 1974, following the October 1973 war between Syria and Israel, war criminal Henry Kissinger made a deal with the Assad regime: Abandon the Golan to Israel and we will let you rule Lebanon. And so it was. Not even a year later, Israel annexed the Golan Heights (Syria pretended to be upset!), then Syria invaded Lebanon and turned it into hell on earth. Yes, Assad kept his word to Kissinger and the agreement has remained in place.
Readers must understand: The ONLY objective of all US policy in the Middle East is the welfare of Israel. Everything else is for sale, including so-called "western values", and once prosperous and liberal Lebanon and its Catholic Christian community (the Protestant-Jewish US has always hated Lebanon's Catholics). By turning Lebanon into a cesspool of violence where all conflicts in the region were contained, the US provided the Syrian regime with deniability (it's not us, say the Syrian criminals, it's these unruly Lebanese and these other non-state groups) and Israel with the "self-defense" pretext to continue wreaking havoc in the south. It is as though the US and the West deliberately want to sacrifice Lebanon by eliminating as a country, break it into pieces to facilitate the settling of the 1 million Palestinian refugees (which would relieve Jewish Israel of its obligations to the Right of Return of those Sunni refugees back to Palestine), and the settling of the 2.5 million Sunni Syrian refugees (which would increase Assad's minority Alawite regime's demographic advantage by relieving it of the burden of having to take them back).
The plan, as it were, seeks to create an Alawite country along the Syrian coastline north of Lebanon (where the Assad clan rules) and a Jewish country along the Palestinian coastline south of Lebanon. In between, what was a prosperous multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious Lebanon must be destroyed to legitimize a Jewish-only Israel and an Alawite-only Syria. The other fragments of Syria could be recovered by Turkey (northwest), the nascent Kurdistan (northeast), and perhaps Iraq and Jordan (in the east and southeast).
And ,as we are on the verge of yet another Israeli invasion and barbarian destruction of Lebanon, we have the Ottoman imbecile in Istanbul offering his support. Mr. Erdogan: Show us your support in deeds and actions; we don't need words. Perhaps, a withdrawal of your occupation army from Cyprus would help re-unify the island. But you like Hezbollah because it is threatening Greek Cyprus of consequences if it supports Israel. Start there to show us your goodwill and intentions.
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Erdogan says Turkey stands with Lebanon as tensions rise with Israel
Reuters
Updated Wed, June 26, 2024
Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan
ANKARA (Reuters) -President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey stood in solidarity with Lebanon amid growing tensions with Israel on Wednesday and called on regional countries to also support Beirut.
Cross-border strains between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah have been escalating in recent weeks, stoking fears of an all-out Israel-Hezbollah war. Shelling across Israel's northern border has led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from areas on both sides of the frontier.
In a speech to his AK Party lawmakers in parliament, Erdogan said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to spread the Gaza war to the region.
"It seems that Israel has now turned its eyes on Lebanon after destroying and burning Gaza. We see Western countries giving Israel support behind the scenes," Erdogan said.
"Netanyahu's plans to spread the war to the region will lead to a big catastrophe," he said, adding that the Western support for Israel was "pitiful".
"Turkey stands with the brotherly people and state of Lebanon. I call on other countries in the region to stand in solidarity with Lebanon," he said.
Erdogan's office said late on Wednesday that the president spoke by phone with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and repeated the message that Turkey stands by Lebanon "against Israel's aggressive policies".
"President Erdogan said in the call that Israeli aggression must be stopped as soon as possible," the statement said.
Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the Turkish government saw a risk of the conflict spreading while commenting on the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
When asked about Hezbollah's threat to Cyprus, the EU member state in closest proximity to Lebanon, Fidan called on Cyprus to "stay away" from the conflict.
Turkey had intelligence reports that showed Cyprus had become a base for "certain countries'" military and reconnaissance flights over Gaza, Fidan said in an interview with private Haberturk television.
Cyprus has said it is "in no way involved" in the conflict. It has lobbied its EU partners to offer Lebanon financial assistance, and recently set up a maritime corridor to dispatch humanitarian aid to Gaza.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu, Huseyin Hayatsever and Daren Butler; Editing by Alex Richardson and Alexander Smith)
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