Michael Rubin: Erdoğan has not only doubled down on denialism, but has bragged about Turkey’s role in the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh
Genocides are not unique. What makes the Armenian Genocide different from most others, however, is that there has been no defeat for the ideology promoting genocide. The Turkish government and much of society rewards denial of the Armenian Genocide. In recent months, Erdoğan has not only doubled down on denialism, but has bragged about Turkey’s role in the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes.
Rubin said the United States and Europe prostrate themselves before Erdoğan due to an exaggerated sense of Turkey’s importance. The State Department refuses to express the simple reality both that Turkey occupies Cyprus and that Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh and that it did not spontaneously “depopulate.”
According to the expert, Turkey is more likely to use its weaponry today against NATO members than in defense of the alliance. Nor does the Incirlik Air Base maintain its Cold War relevance; Souda Bay and Alexandroupoli in Greece and Constanța in Romania make much of Incirlik redundant, nuclear missile storage or not. Turkey’s chief strategic asset to the United States today is the Kürecik radar station upon which the Pentagon relies to determine certain missile trajectories quicker than satellites can. The United States both survived prior to the radar station’s 2012 inauguration, however, and could duplicate its functions from Armenia.
The best way to counter Turkey is to use its own inconsistencies against it.
Erdoğan repeatedly justifies a troop presence in northern Cyprus to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide when, in reality, he is the perpetrator of both, and Cyprus’ own Turks resent the influx of Anatolian settlers to the island. Not only should Western capitals declare the threat of anti-Turkish Muslim ethnic cleansing on Cyprus over and call the Turkish military presence an unjustified occupation, but they should cite Erdoğan’s own belief — that fear of ethnic cleansing and genocide justifies military deployment — to demand that international peacekeepers enter eastern Turkey and portions of Istanbul to protect Armenian and Greek communities and properties.
