A conversation about Turkey and the possibility of sanction imposition against Ankara is about to take place within the EU Summit, on December 10^th-11^th.

By Savvas Kalenteridis

A conversation about Turkey and the possibility of sanction imposition against Ankara is about to take place within the EU Summit, on December 10^th-11^th.

Our focus on matters that immediately concern us, along with our failure to extend the agenda towards topics that concern the vast majority of the E.U, constitutes a misconception on behalf of Cyprus and Greece.

All these constant requests for support, with regards to the issues affecting us, along with failure to set an agenda for matters involving the other parties, undermine our position.

There is a plethora of topics, other than our national issues, that could be proposed to be discussed within the summit.

In depth:

1. Cooperation between Turkey and Islamic terrorist groups.

Turkey has transformed this kind of cooperation into a form of “art”.

To begin with, Ankara has been cooperating with ISIS terrorists, while the leaders of the group used Turkey as their headquarters. They have conducted business with Erdogan’s family, as they smuggled oil from the Syrian oil wells. Russia has already provided proof on the matter, via the United Nations.

Additionally, Turkey trains and supplies Islamic terrorist groups and then positions them against the Kurds of Syria, committing that way, ethnic cleansing and genocide through the displacement and demographic tampering of the Kurdish people, in places such as Afrin, Al Bab, Girê Spî‎, and Serekaniye, all of them located in Northern Syria.

Moreover, they train, arm and cooperate with Islamic terrorist groups in the region of Idlib, location in which Ankara controls groups that openly affiliate with those terrorists. In fact, Al Nusra’s(Al-Qaeda’s subsidiary) barracks are located only within miles from the Turkish border, in the Idlib province.

Further, Turkey supplies and provides transportation for Islamic terrorist groups in Libya. These groups are being utilized in order to establish an Ankara-controlled Islamic regime in the region. This matter is crucial for the European Union due to the results it might have with regards to the creation of an uncontrolled point of entrance for illegal immigration. After all Turkey perceives the refugee flows as a means of controlling the European Union and achieving the alteration and ethnic cleansing of Christian population in the continent.

Furthermore, Turkey trains, supplies and transports Islamic terrorist groups to Azerbaijan, in order for them to participate in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, followed by relocating Muslim populations in the region and therefore proceed with Ankara’s distinctive pattern that pursues demographic alterations and ethnic cleansing.

2. Organized human trafficking

Turkey’s active involvement in human trafficking is well known, with FRONTEX being completely aware of the situation. The majority of the people that are being trafficked towards Cyprus and Greece are Muslim and their relocation is part of Turkey’s wider strategy of utilizing these populations in favour of the ongoing demographic “surgery”, a plan that targets the whole continent and is not limited to Greece, proven by the fact that the majority of those illegal immigrants aspires to move to European countries other than Greece, in order to benefit from the states’ welfare policies while expanding Islam.

The Greek government has the means to build up a case, supported by shocking evidence and documents that prove the Turkish involvement and the cooperation of Turkish agencies with traffickers.

3. Turkish paramilitary group activity, within E.U. countries

Greece is in possession of proof regarding activity of such groups within EU states, including criminal organizations that are involved with drugs trafficking and terrorist acts against Kurds, Alevis and dissidents of Erdogan’s regime.

This is a topic on which Greece could easily find interlocutors inside the Union, since the recent outburst of Islamic terrorist incidents in European countries, especially since Ankara hastened to justify these terrorist actions.

4. Human rights violations

Since Turkey is an EU-candidate state, Ankara is obliged to align with Copenhagen’s Declaration of Human Rights, as well as with other EU human rights norms.

The fact that the EU turns a blind eye towards Turkey’s human rights violations is incomprehensible. An example is the obscene amount of arrests, with journalists, lawyers, doctors and ordinary citizens among the accused, simply due to their dissidence against Erdogan’s regime.

There needs to be a case against those violations in collaboration with the EU states, during the Summit, with detailed files and proof included.

5. Political genocide against the Kurds

Last but not least, the prosecution against Kurds. The uniqueness and the paradox of this case is that we have a country (Turkey) that demands political equality for the minority of 180 thousand people in a country where they constitute 18% of its population (Cyprus), but at the same time denies fundamental human and political rights for the 20 million Kurds living in Turkey.

Turkey demands political equality and total control of the state by the minority of Turkish-Cypriots but at the same time forbids Kurds to be educated in their own native language. The difference between the two cases is that the Kurdish people have been living in the region for thousands of years, while Turkey has intruded in Cypriot ground.

In 1999, while Turkey got their hands on Öcalan, in Nairobi, Ankara promised the US administration that Kurds will be allowed to have political expression and activity. Recent years seem somewhat different, proven by the prosecution and imprisonment of elected officials (in some cases elected with a percentage of 70-80%) and high rank members of the “Party of People’s Democracy “(HDP). These officials that have been expressing the voice of the long-suffering Kurdish people have been replaced by governmental “advisors”, while thousands of lower rank political officers have also been arrested by the regime.

In conclusion, our diplomats need to understand that the problem called “Erdogan’s Expansive Islamic Turkey” is not a Greek issue, but a European one. This approach is required to be the foundation of our preparation, with respect to the EU Summit, as we have repeatedly witnessed that if we don’t position our issues in a way that they are illustrated as EU problems, we won’t be able to succeed.

After all, how can anybody show understanding to our problems, if we do not act accordingly?

In order to achieve our goals, we have to work hard.

Note: The tragedy of the ethnic cleansing against the Kurds has to stop. Just because the Kurds don’t have a state of their own, in order to protest for the slaughters and human rights violations, it doesn’t mean we’re going to let the Turks do as they please. The U.S, Russia and the EU need to take over their responsibilities and stop cheating 40 million people.

This article is published in the following newspapers and sites:

www.dimokratianews,gr, www.pontos-news.gr, www.infognomonpolitics.gr, www.kurdishvoice.gr

Savvas Kalenderidis is a strategic analyst, writer and columnist.