Isreal National News "Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again trying to stir up tensions in the Middle East in order to advance both his Islamist agenda and his Ottoman imperialistic aspirations.

Isreal National News

"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again trying to stir up tensions in the Middle East in order to advance both his Islamist agenda and his Ottoman imperialistic aspirations.

The hot-headed Turkish leader is milking the Khashoggi scandal in order to shift the focus from the disastrous state of affairs in Turkey, where inflation jumped over 25 percent last week after the Turkish Lira lost more than 40 percent of its value against the dollar, and to camouflage his continuing attempts to take over eastern Syria where the Kurds have established an autonomous region.

Erdogan is using the Khashoggi scandal to establish himself as the leader of the Sunni Muslim countries in the Middle East at the expense of Saudi Arabia - which is the custodian of the Muslim holy places in the world and has changed the Arab approach towards Israel.

Last week Erdogan penned an op-ed for the Washington Post, the employer of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in early October. [...]

Also last week, Erdogan made clear he won’t suffice with the occupation of the former Kurdish canton Afrin in northeast Syria and vowed to launch a new military operation against the Kurdish militia YPG, considered a ‘terror group’ by the Turkish government.

The YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are, together with US Special Forces, control of much of the 911 kilometer long border with Turkey in Syria and Erdogan warned the Kurds to leave the border town of Manbij “as soon as as possible” and accused the U.S. of not implementing an agreement about shared control of the town.

Shortly after Erdogan issued his threat to the Kurds, the Turkish army started shelling YPG positions in the border region - officially to ‘protect’ Arab Sunni refugees who left Tel Abyad near the city of Kobani in eastern Syria.

At the same time, the Turks ordered 700 Syrian Islamist rebels from Aleppo and the Afrin canton to cross the Euphrates River and to start targeting the SDF with newly supplied heavy weapons.

The Turkish operation against the SDF is hampering the effort to clear out the last ISIS hubs in eastern Syria and has already caused the Jihadist movement’s recovery in the area east of the Euphrates River."

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