US worry about Turkish PM’s dependability: WikiLeaks

LONDON– American diplomats distrust Erdogan and his unrealistic views on the world, wrote Der Spiegel. He gets his information almost exclusively from newspapers with links to the Islamists, and allegedly has little time for the analyses of his ministries, the diplomats believe.

The prime minister, one of the United States’ most important NATO partners, has surrounded himself with “an iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors,” writes a diplomat. Despite his bragging, he is afraid of losing power, according to the dispatches viewed by Der Spiegel. One source is quoted as telling the Americans: “Tayyip believes in God but doesn’t trust Him”.

Erdogan’s advisors, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, are portrayed as having little understanding of politics beyond Turkey. A high-ranking government adviser, quoted by US diplomats, describes Davutoglu as “exceptionally dangerous” and warns that he would use his Islamist influence on Erdogan.

A cable signed by the US ambassador in January 2010 says the foreign minister wants to reassert on the Balkans the influence the Ottoman empire used to exert on the region. But the foreign minister overestimates himself and Turkey, wrote the US diplomats. Turkey, sums up a cable translated into German by the magazine, “has the ambitions of Rolls Royce but the means of Rover”.
29 November 2010

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Posted on November 29, 2010 by CEM RYAN

The prime minister of Turkey has made a policy, indeed a habit, indeed a rather nasty, sneaky habit, of listening to the private conversations of Turkish citizens. Accordingly, he has destroyed many reputations and killed many careers, all on the basis of circumstantial and ill-gotten evidence. He has done this under the guise of protecting the nation from terrorism. To that end, hundreds of those opposed to his regime have been jailed. Many have become seriously ill from their confinement, some have died. And many more live in fear wondering about just who is the terrorist.

Now it is the prime minister’s turn. Wikileaks has lent more smoke to the fire of what has been well and widely known about the Turkish prime minister. Few aside from his most ardent supporters would quibble with the documentary descriptions of him as willful, arrogant, and harsh. And the dimensions of his newly gained wealth, and that of his loyal followers, and their children is of no surprise to anyone marginally alert and living in today’s Turkey.

One trademark of loud-mouthed bullies is that when they are confronted, physically or otherwise, they shut up. Tonight, in the face of a tidal wave of information indicating how corrupt and morally bankrupt he and his minions may be, the prime minister shut up. But his eager nation awaits and deserves a well-considered response. Perhaps when he returns from Libya after receiving the Distinguished Statesman Award from that distinguished statesman and humanitarian Moammar Gadhafi, a fellow leakee? Perhaps then the Turkish prime minister will bless the Turkish nation with his usual eloquence? Like that master of revenge, the Count of Monte Christo, who summed up all human knowledge in three words, we “wait and hope.”

Cem Ryan
Istanbul
29 November 2010