Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, takes to the world stage
He is posing as the voice of Muslims everywhere and of the global south
PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN likes to cut to the chase. Others may think the multilateral dispute over territorial waters, continental shelves and hydrocarbons in the eastern Mediterranean, which has brought Turkey close to war with Greece, is complicated. For Turkey’s leader, however, it is simply an “example of modern colonialism” by European countries, as he put it in a speech on September 1st. “The era of those who for centuries have left no region unexploited from Africa to South America, no community unmassacred and no human being unoppressed, is coming to an end,” he added.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Erdogan’s world”
From the September 12th 2020 edition
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