Roland Lombardi says Erdogan wants to be sultan, but don’t forget he is Brotherhood

Journalist Roland Lombardi, a historian specializing in Middle Eastern affairs, said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to be a sultan, adding that he has warned that the Arab Spring will turn into an Islamist Spring.

Lombardi added in the conference organized by the Center for Middle East Studies in Paris that Erdogan, who sees himself as a new sultan, has a strategy and pragmatism to achieve his ambitions, adding that the Turkish president was able to control his country by neutralizing the army and excluding lawyers, journalists and judges opposed to him.

He emphasized that, at the international level, Erdogan has an ambitious policy and played his hand with European Islam in France and Germany by controlling Islamic centers, associations and mosques in Europe.

However, Lombardi pointed out that it should not be forgotten that Erdogan is from the Brotherhood, which Qatar supports. He added that the Brotherhood had planned to be in power in Egypt, Syria and Tunisia, but those plans were unsuccessful.

He stressed that the Americans and Europeans were giving respite to political Islamism, but Trump arrived and said he would not only fight terrorism, but political Islamism as well.

In the spring of 2019, Erdogan and the Qataris said that the best defense is to be on the attack, especially in Libya, which is a key point in the Turkish and Qatari plan, Lombardi noted.

He explained that the plan places Libya within the authority of the Brotherhood, which spent a lot of money for this.