Sultan’s fall: Erdogan panting behind oil to restore economy (Part 7)

Mahmoud al-Batakoushi

In the previous issues of the series “Sultan’s fall”, we discussed how the policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have led to the collapse of the country’s economy and Ankara’s approaching the brink of bankruptcy. In this part, we reveal the Turkish regime’s attempts to restore its collapsed economy by controlling the wealth of others. Erdogan’s statements have revealed this on multiple occasions, as he directed an appeal to the active world powers to extract Syrian oil and spend its revenues for the refugees who will be resettled in northern Syria in a speech he delivered during his participation in the Global Refugee Forum at the United Nations office in Geneva, Switzerland.

In this context, he said, “Let’s extract oil together from wells controlled by terrorists in Syria in order to complete projects to build housing units, schools and hospitals in areas liberated from terrorism.”

The Turkish president did not find a solution before him to get out of the economic crises besieging his country except by pirating the wealth of others, whether searching for oil in Syria or gas fields in the Mediterranean through the gate of Libya.

At a time when the Turkish regime claims that it wants to establish a safe zone in northern Syria to return Syrian refugees, Erdogan’s forces have committed executions and confiscation of homes in large areas that they control there, to the extent that Human Rights Watch has criticized the situation there, calling for an investigation into human rights violations and possible war crimes in the area, which extends 30 km deep inside Syrian territory.

This confirms that Erdogan’s statements about a safe zone are lies that he repeats in order to achieve his malicious plans to control Syrian oil and to get rid of his chronic headache of the Kurds by changing the demographics in northern Syria from Aleppo to Hasakah, which was a region subordinate to the Ottoman Empire and lost when it collapsed, so Erdogan seeks to restore it to Turkish control.

The greatest evidence of Turkish greed is that the pipeline transit fees accrue billions of dollars to Turkish coffers annually, making the implementation of the safe zone with the vast majority of Syrian oil resources in Ankara’s interest, which would be a kiss of life for Turkey’s collapsing economy.

Erdogan also exploits the refugee and ISIS card in order to put pressure on Europe and to achieve the largest possible gains, as he concluded a “readmission” agreement with EU leaders, which provided for an end to illegal immigration flows from Turkey to European countries and ensured improved conditions for receiving refugees in Turkey, where there are 3.6 million Syrian refugees, in exchange for support worth $6.7 billion.

Under this agreement, Turkey obtained gains and aid from European countries, led by England, France and Germany, to revive the exhausted Turkish economy, and $6.2 billion in aid has already poured in from the European Union.

The malicious Turkish plans to obtain Arab wealth also extended to Libya, as Ankara concluded an agreement to demarcate the maritime borders and cooperate in joint defense with the Government of National Accord (GNA) in order to acquire Libyan oil, through which Turkey sought to try to control Libya and benefit from several concessions, from oil to gas, and with reconstruction deals estimated at $18 billion, which were part of a deal between Gaddafi and Erdogan and were one of the main reasons for Turkey’s delay in supporting the Libyan revolution.

For these reasons, Ankara has gambled from the beginning on the survival of Fayez al-Sarraj’s government in order to facilitate the demarcation of maritime borders, expand its exclusive economic zones in Libya, and support its competition to control the sources of energy and means of supply in the eastern Mediterranean. But his family was disappointed that Egypt succeeded in placing the Turkish ambitions at its boundaries with the red line drawn by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Sirte and Jufrah, which led to the return of the Turkish side in Hefei Hanin.

Turkey has also tried piracy in the territorial waters of Greece and Cyprus to extract gas, hoping to improve economic conditions, but the suspicious scheme was disappointed after France stepped in.

Turkey also drools over Somali oil, after it was announced that 30 billion barrels of oil had been found inside the Somali maritime borders overlooking the Gulf of Aden. Erdogan announced Somalia granting to Turkey a concession to explore for oil on the country’s coasts.

Turkish oil and energy company Genel Energy, a subsidiary of the Çukurova Holding, one of the leading Turkish economic groups, is currently undertaking oil exploration in the Somaliland region.

Erdogan’s greed for the wealth of others is not strange to the people of his race, as his Ottoman ancestors preceded mastered the imposition of taxes and royalties on the Libyan people and spreading jihadism during the war with Greece in 1897 under the pretext of saving expenses for the war. The taxes led to the closure of many shops after declaring bankruptcy, and even beggars were not spared from these taxes.