On our way to documenting Turkey’s arrest [6] of two generals and a colonel who dared to stop a weapons-laden MIT truck in route to Syria, we said that “if there’s a silver lining to last Tuesday’s downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane by two Turkish F-16s it’s that the world is now starting to scrutinize President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”
Indeed, in the wake of the plane “incident”, Russia embarked on an epic PR campaign to expose the Erdogan government’s complicity in Islamic State’s illegal crude trade and to generally wake the world up to the fact that if ever there were a state sponsor of terror, it’s Turkey.
While it’s probably too much to ask for the general public to delve deeply into the history of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia on the way to drawing a connection between Riyadh and the ideology espoused by the various Sunni extremist groups operating in the Mid-East and generally recognized as “terrorists” by the Western media, watching clips of Russian warplanes vaporizing oil tanker trucks requires little in the way of intellectual investment. That’s perhaps why The Kremlin’s PR blitz has done such an admirable job of alerting the world to Turkey’s role in sponsoring terror.
In fact, word has even reached nearly 35,000 members of the generally clueless American public as evidenced by a White House petition [7] to have Erdogan’s Turkey recognized as a state sponsor of terror.
"Following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet striking the Islamic State (IS), it is undeniable that Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports jihad terrorism in Syria," the petition says. "IS exports oil via Turkey and terrorists of IS, al-Qaeda, and other jihad groups transit the border."
While it looks as though the plea will fall far short of the 100,000 signatures it needs, it appears the people are waking up - if only gradually.
