Turkey is a Rogue State and must be treated as such

Long time readers will no doubt recall I have been consistent for many years in promoting the dangers of our alliances with both KSA and Turkey, the two greatest fomenters of conflict, terrorism and instability in Europe. I have been consistent in advocating the expulsion of Turkey from NATO. Back in July I even congratulated the Telegraph's Con Coughlin for unusually lunching with the right MOD briefer and writing -

When Turkey joined Nato back in 1952, the idea was that it would help to protect Nato’s eastern flank from Moscow’s aggression. Now that is clearly no longer the case, and European leaders should join their American counterparts in facing up to the fact that Turkey under Mr Erdogan is a lost cause. The days when Turkey had a genuine interest in cementing its ties with the West by joining the European Union are long gone. Instead, we have a country that openly associates with those who wish to do us harm.

Consequently, now that Mr Erdogan has demonstrated that he feels more at home in Moscow than he does in Brussels, we should acknowledge where Turkey’s true interests lie, and terminate its NATO membership.

As far back as 2015 I was of the opinion that only internal action by the Turkish people to remove Erdogan could turn things around but was later forced to admit the failure of that course -

Well, the coup was tried - and failed. Tens of thousands of civil servants have been dismissed, hundreds of the most senior military officers imprisoned, and at least a score of them judicially murdered in custody ('fell out of a window' 'had a heart attack' etc). Erdogan appreciated his isolation and moved to make an ally of Russia, with $20bn of arms purchases. It is pertinent that at least some of that money comes from the EU, the billion-Euro bribes for not sending migrants across the Greek border.

Turkey's invasion of northern Syria can hardly come as a surprise to anyone. That a NATO member can undertake such unlawful aggression without the sanction of immediate expulsion is a disgrace. That Turkey can threaten Europe with a tsunami of 3.6m migrants if anyone objects to its unlawful invasion is proof if proof were needed that Turkey is now a rogue state.

Unshaven 
On the subject of baddies, a word of advice to shirt-and-tie characters who are desperate to cultivate a cool image with designer stubble. Like a teenager with a face full of bumfluff trying to grow a moustache, make sure you have enough facial hair before you try - or you just look dirty and unshaven. EU commissioner Johannes Hahn and XR's Rupert Reid please note. 

EU functionary Johannes Hahn and XR man with a suit Rupert Reid

A NATO member can't be besties with Putin

I am a firm believer that NATO and Russia face greater common enemies than eachother, and there will come a time when we must make common cause against common threats. But that time is not yet here, so we are forced into a low-cost reprise of the cold war. Russia's gangster oligarchy has crossed the line with the Salisbury poisonings, and the matter is not yet ended. And as much as I deprecate the arrogant aggression of the EU in attempting to extend the Federasty eastwards, the EU after each provocation running to hide under the skirts of the US, the stupidity of Brussels doesn't lessen Russia's threat.

Two years ago I wrote "Let's admit it - Turkey is an enemy state". 

Already, a score or more of the most senior military officers arrested following the coup attempt have reportedly died in jail in mysterious circumstances. Typhus, no doubt. Or heart attacks. Franco was also very experienced at disappearing thousands of dangerous democrats, people who had won elections and those who stood for the rule of law and democracy. Erdogan's tyranny has been so blatant, so outrageous, that even the purblind fools in Brussels could no longer ignore it; media closed, journalists arrested, courts purged. Erdogan's reaction has been a petulant tantrum; the EU had already stalled on his earlier ultimatum to allow Turks open travel in the Schengen area, now this week they have voted to suspend accession talks.

This is a far more nuanced matter than the bare facts allow. I know, in London, many fine and upright citizens who are first or second generation Turks, from Cyprus or from the mainland. They run the vast majority of our kebab shops and are the backbone of Uber drivers at the basic level, but also contribute greatly to culture, society, arts, business and trade. Turkey becoming an enemy will leave many fine people dreadfully conflicted - though none I know would support Erdogan's repression.

Since then, the Islamification of the Turkish state has continued, Erdogan has given himself sweeping powers and he has increasingly turned to Putin's Russia as an ally. No doubt Erdogan and Putin can chat amicably about their respective gulags, methods of suppressing free speech and so on. This is simply unacceptable behaviour from a NATO member, more egregious than Erdogan's son's deep involvement in the stolen petroleum trade with ISIS, more dangerous than Erdogan's attempted theft of Syrian territory and more treacherous than use of a migrant tsunami to threaten Greece. 

Well, it seems Mr Trump has had enough. America's actions are pretty much destroying the Turkish economy. Erdogan will now no doubt demand more danegeld from the EU or else and seek greater formal ties with Putin. Either way, he confirms Turkey's status as an enemy state that must now be expelled from NATO. I suggest the US moves its nuclear base from Incirlik to either Greece or Cyprus. We can also shut down Western Union and halt billions of Euros leaving Europe. The die is cast.

Final hope for democracy in Turkey

Tomorrow's referendum in Turkey on that country's version of Germany's 1933 Enabling Act is, by all accounts, on a knife-edge. If Erdogan wins, he can exercise unrestrained executive power of a sort unseen since Nazi Germany. If he wins, Turkey also loses any chance of joining the EU, her NATO partner status will be in doubt, the migrant deal risks unravelling in time for the peak Summer travelling season and all hopes of Ataturk's secular Turkey will vanish.

Of course, if he loses, everyone expects him to to the achieve exactly the same ends by unconstitutional means. He's hardly going to put his hands up and go quietly, is he?

Sometimes the BBC's correspondents, isolated from the fake-news hothouses of Salford Keys and Broadcasting House, forget their remit and tell the truth. Mark Lowen's report here is really worth a listen. 

A young lady colleague once returned from a holiday in 'unspoilt' Turkey to report that each day a group of unshaven village grey heads, in threadbare grubby shirts buttoned to the collar and old lounge suit coats from the 1950s, would gather to keep the beach under observation. There was no direct interaction, but the visitors were all too uncomfortable to wear bikinis or to enjoy using the beach. These then are Erdogan's supporters, the illiterate bigoted Islamist peasantry of an 18th century Sultanate. God help us all.

Erdogan's hired street thugs intimidate Europe

I posted recently on Austria and Germany's refusals to allow the nascent fascist dictator Erdogan to campaign in their countries for support for the April referendum for his Turkish equivalent to the Nazi Enabling Law. Voters in Turkey are divided, and the Turkish Diaspora living elsewhere in Europe who can still vote may swing it. Of 4m Turkish-origin residents in Germany, some 1.6m can vote on this issue.

The latest to feel the rent-a-mob fury of the psychopathic Erdogan are the Dutch; they refused to allow Erdogan's foreign minister to land in Rotterdam, to headline a street rally in support of the Enabling Law. In retaliation, Erdogan's thugs are besieging the Netherlands Embassy in Ankara.     

Austria banned a further Turkish senior official from a proposed rally in Hörbranz on Friday on the grounds of risk to public order. 

Europe gives refuge to many tens of thousands of opponents of Erdogan's regime, not terrorists but professionals, intellectuals and former public officials, who otherwise face detention and torture in squalid Turkish jails at the hands of the Erdogan regime. To allow the very thugs who command the waterboarding to campaign openly in the countries of refuge of their victims for even greater totalitarian power is utterly unacceptable and European governments are doing exactly the right thing in repudiating these second-tier thugs.  

I expect Erdogan to throw half a million migrants into Greece in a tantrum of furious petulance. Let's hope Hungary's, Austria's and Slovenia's fences hold.