The Erdogan-Macron tussle

Former US President Barack Obama entrusted Recep Tayyip Erdogan with leading what they termed “the New Middle East,” funded by the “petty” state of Qatar.

However, this project did not only face complete failure, but it also went further to spread hatred, violence, and destruction.

Obama, along with his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, believed that Erdogan, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Qatar represent “moderate Islam.”

The previous US administration, however, made an error in judging the situation, resulting in Erdogan’s blatant transgressions that he committed everywhere and in his becoming a concern for all of Europe and particularly for France.

Following Erdogan’s bellicose rhetoric and using the cover of Islamist ideology in his politics, European states, spearheaded by the French, started to sense the dangers of political Islam, upon which Erdogan bases all of his political moves.

With the aim of curtailing the power and influence of politicized so-called Muslims and preserving what he described as “the secular values of France,” President Macron made firm decisions to confront political Islam.

These decisions, in all objectivity, were arbitrary and incompatible with freedom itself and its values, especially with the French statement that proclaims the French state has no religion and it treats all religions on an equal footing.

Read more: France recalls envoy to Turkey after Erdogan questions Macron’s mental health

The consequences of the violent political Islam rhetoric, however, forced the French president to sacrifice most of the cultural tolerance that the French Revolution was famed for. He was forced to take this path because to tolerate terrorism is to forfeit freedom.

The modern experiences of Erdogan and Macron will surely have a fundamental effect on the Western world in its entirety, including the US, but I will say once again, as I always do, that the problem does not lie in Islam as a religion; it lies in how politicized individuals use it as a partisan instrument to achieve political goals.

This, it seems, is what the theorists of the US democratic party clearly failed to realize as they deluded themselves to believing that the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood can present a civil and modern model for Islam. Things have become quite clear now and I am fully confident that many Europeans will begrudgingly follow in the footsteps of the French as the matter has become one that threatens their national security.

If we are to consider that the European and US political left is, in essence and intents, a protest against capitalism, then politicized Islamization has assumed this mantle since the downfall of the left with the fall of the Soviet Union. This, in my opinion, is the reason why the remaining European and US leftists took the side of the so-called Muslims, even though the differences in essence and objectives are quite vast between the left on the one hand and Islam, whether as a religion or even an ideology, on the other.

However, the US and most European countries are seeing a resurgence in right-wing populism, which does not hide its enmity towards Muslim immigrants and considers cultural integration a prerequisite to even accept them as immigrants. Thus, the West is forced to make procedural decisions to rein in the growing popularity of the far right and subdue their quest to accede to power.

Otherwise, the old fascist regimes that greatly tormented Europe will rise again.

Currently, poll numbers suggest that Erdogan will lose the next election in 2023. As he falls from power, Europe and the US will not allow the politicized so-called Muslims in Turkey to seize it once again, particularly that the Turkish investments, and ultimately, the Turkish economy, is under the control of Europe and the US, whether through funding or marketing Turkish products.

Europe and the US were the ones who initially built the Turkish economy, and they will be the ones who will wreck it, and they will not allow Erdogan’s party or any other that shares its philosophy to return.

The only thing that is left for me to say is this: the joy and jubilation of so-called Muslims over the downfall of Trump and the triumph of Biden is only temporary, and the coming days shall prove me right.

This article was originally published in, and translated from, Saudi newspaper outlet al-Jazirah.

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