The Turkish leadership continues to demand that Washington designate the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as terrorists, but the YPG and the Syrian Arab Army are the two only ground forces fighting Daesh in Syria, US author and researcher Michael Collins notes in his article for OpEdNews.com.
"Even so, the Turkish government insists that the US is either for Turkey by labeling the YPG as terrorists or against Turkey by supporting YPG's efforts against ISIS [Daesh]. Why is the current Turkish government obsessed with the YPG? There are several reasons, none of them related to terrorism and all of them about the survival of the amazingly corrupt and repellant Erdogan, his family, and cronies in the AKP party," Collins underscores.
Indeed, the Turkish president and his associates have been caught engaged in a number of controversial actions, including ordering the government to take over private corporations, media outlets in particular, that opposed the Erdogan regime; enabling the illegal oil trade with Daesh terrorists; ordering weapon smuggling to Syrian rebels; cracking down on judges and etc.
These actions and many others have been documented and are well known in Turkey.
"Should any government other than one controlled by Erdogan come to power, then Erdogan, his family members, and his cronies will go to trial and likely be sentenced to serious jail time," Collins stresses.
And still there is someone who scares Erdogan even more. His name is Barack Obama.
"Erdogan… works for Obama… [and] only Obama can fire him. Turkey is part of NATO, which is up to its neck in supporting Islamic extremists fighting to topple the government of Syria. More specifically, Erdogan has been a willing servant of the White House through Turkey's key role in training, supplying, and transferring foreign fighters into Syria and supporting homegrown rebels," the US researcher elaborates.
However, when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that "Assad must go," the Turkish leader immediately changed his stance and ganged up with the Saudis against the Syrian President.
Given the fact that the "Assad must go policy" has ultimately failed, it is time to retreat. But since the West took part in stirring Syria up, the Western political establishment is especially interested in retreating quietly so that its glaring misdeeds have never come to light.
"By failing to cooperate and making a spectacle of defying Obama, Turkey raises the risk of a more detailed examination of this entire sordid affair — the real cause of the loss of 250,000 lives in Syria; the real cause of the refugee crisis (there was none prior to the attack on Syria); the strong support, direct or indirect, by all parties of jihadist extremists who gloried in the killing of Christians, Druze, and other minorities in Syria," Collins notes.
In this context there is the possibility that Erdogan would have to bear the burden of responsibility and that means his days as President of Turkey will soon be over, the researcher stresses.
Interestingly enough, the similar stance has been recently shared by US journalist Mike Whitney and American researcher and risk strategic consultant F. William Engdahl.
Turkey's assertive foreign policies may seriously erode Erdogan's grip on power, Whitney wrote in his article for Counterpunch.org, adding that the US could exploit it to its advantage.
"The ultimate objective would be to foment sufficient social unrest to incite a color-coded revolution that would dispose of the troublemaking Erdogan in a Washington-orchestrated coup, much like the one the CIA executed in Kiev," the US journalist stressed.
Given all of that, is it time to say good-bye to Recep Erdogan?
