Erdogan uses New Zealand attacks to serve his New Othomanism ideology
The members of the international community are locking horns against the background of a massacre in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand.
New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern has decided to send deputy prime minister and foreign minister Winston
Peters to Turkey to officially protest statements by Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, following the massacre. Ardern described the statements as
"humiliating".
The massacre, which took place on
March 15, left 50 mosque-goers dead. It sent shockwaves across the world.
Erdogan sought, meanwhile, to use the tragedy in making political gains.
Political exploitation
The Turkish president wanted to use the event to win the hearts of Turkish voters ahead of the municipal elections which are slated for March 13. He was keen to play a video of the attacks during the election conferences in different places in his country, even as the same video was removed by Youtube several times.
Erdogan launched into a racist diatribe against European countries. He said the attacker was an "enemy of Islam" who hated the Turkish state. He added that those who visited Turkey with the aim of harming its people were returned to their countries in coffins.
Erdogan tried to win support from Turkish voters by reminding them of their country's strength in the past. In doing this, he wanted to deliver the underlying message that he would bring this strength back. The Turkish ruler even cast doubt on the religiosity of the competitors of his party.
He even lashed out at his rivals for not reacting equally powerfully to the massacre.
Opportunism
In acting in such a manner, the Turkish president wanted to appear as if he is a leader of the world's Muslims. Apart from wanting to win support among Turkish voters, Erdogan also wanted to move ahead with his traditional expansionist policy.
Erdogan's opportunistic positions are not new. They are the bases of his reaction to different developments. The Turkish president always formulates his positions in the light of the circumstances surrounding them.
In a new study, the Political Violence website says Erdogan enters conflicts and clashes that cost his country a lot at the political, diplomatic and economic levels.
The website adds in the study, which is titled "Erdogan's opportunistic wars", that the Turkish leader enters these wars with the aim of imposing his fancy power in his presumed Ottoman Sultanate.
The website points out that the Turkish president takes the defense of Muslims and their protection from terrorism as a cover to fulfill his political objectives.
In another study by the Research Gate portal, the Turkish president is described as one of the most controversial figures in modern Turkish political history.
The portal says Erdogan is able to color the secular standards of his state, and weaken the opposition forces that threaten his grip on power, especially the Republican People's Party.
The portal says that Erdogan has succeeded in winning Turkey enemies, not friends, everywhere in the world.
Varied tactics
Turkish affairs specialist Karam Said describes the Turkish president's position on the New Zealand attacks as both "normal" and "Logical".
"The attacker has given Erdogan a wonderful chance to exploit the crisis in a political manner," Said told the Reference.
He said the attacker did this by writing Turkish words on the weapon he used in the attack as well as references to the battles of Vienna and Istanbul.
Said believes that the Turkish regime had sought to employ the New Zealand attacks in a tactical manner to achieve the following goals:
First, respond to the rejection of the European Union of Turkish membership in it, which is an alarming thing to Istanbul. The European Parliament voted this month against Turkey's accession into the EU due to its poor human rights and freedoms record.
Second, find an opportunity to circumvent the relative decline of popular acceptance of his AK Party in the buildup to the municipal elections which provide a great opportunity for Erdogan's regime to control and reconstitute local bodies and then to form a society along the party's lines and ideology.
Third, Erdogan wants to market himself as an extension of the Ottoman Empire by defending Islam and considering himself the guardian of the Islamic faith.
Said noted that Erdogan would fail to achieve the foreign policy goals he wanted to achieve by exploiting the New Zealand attacks. He referred to Erdogan's statements following the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem in 2018. These statements, Said said, brought the Turkish president nothing good.
