Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was seen fainting during morning prayers in Istanbul on Sunday morning.
He emerged later stating that he had made a full recovery.
Erdogan explained the situation in the following way,
“I experience blood pressure instability depending on my sugar level. Thank God for the quick recovery. I am in a good condition now”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has issued a strong rebuke of the Saudi authored ultimatum which Riyadh has attempted to force on Qatar as a prerequisite for normalising relations. Doha has rejected the ultimatum while Saudi’s ally the UAE has suggested that a break in relations between Saudi, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt on the one hand and Qatar on the other could last for the foreseeable future.
READ MORE: COLD WAR IN THE DESERT: How the Qatar crisis is becoming a stalemate
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made his most unambiguous statement to date on how far Turkey would go in opposing the creation of a Kurdish state on Syrian territory.
Erdogan then issued a thinly veiled warning at the United States which has strongly allied with Turkey’s Kurdish enemies in Syria.
He said,
“In case of even the slightest threat against our country, we will do what’s necessary without consulting anyone”.
Erdogan also stated,
Free Syrian Army fighters in Saqba, a suburb of Damascus (Photo: Freedom House/CC-BY-2.0)
Between the Syrian victory in the Battle of Aleppo in December of 2016 and the signing of the Astana Memorandum on the creation of de-escalation zones in Syria in May of 2017, Turkey was one of the biggest obstacles to peace in and freedom for Syria.
The Battle of Aleppo was in many ways the Stalingrad moment in the Syrian war on al-Qaeda/al-Nusrea. It was a point of no return in respect of al-Qaeda/al-Nusrea’s long term desire to conquer and subjugate important population centres in western Syria.
Feeling somewhat buoyant after his substantial gamble backing Qatar in the dispute in the Gulf and realising that many other local and regional powers have done the same, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken a bold step and stated that Saudi Arabia and the United States should join the Astana Peace Process.
This can be interpreted in several ways.
1. Watering Down The Existing Astana Memorandum
Reports have surfaced claiming that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called for the Saudi led boycott of Qatar to be extended to Turkey. The remarks allegedly came during Sisi’s meeting last week with King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa of Bahrain, a state which many consider to be a prototypical puppet regime of Saudi Arabia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has issued his most provocative remarks to date on the Qatar crisis gripping the Gulf and the wider region.
With Turkish troops en route to Qatar, Erdogan stated,
“A very grave mistake is being made in Qatar, isolating a nation in all areas is inhumane and against Islamic values. It’s as if a death penalty decision has been taken for Qatar”.
A week into the crisis Saudi Arabia instigated when it broke diplomatic relations with Qatar and imposed a land and air blockade of the tiny Gulf state, it is becoming clear that it is failing to bring Qatar to heel.
Over the last 24 hours, Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have given statements indicating their positions on Qatar, positions which each seem more concerned with defining their own status as world leaders than about the actual situation in the Gulf.
Erdogan’s statements are generally more straightforward than those coming from Donald Trump. Erdgoan clearly sees the crisis in the Gulf as a way to finally achieve one of his long term goals in re-establishing neo-Ottoman Turkish influence over the Arab world.
