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2.2 Turkey closes border with Iran after coronavirus spreads in neighbouring country
2.3 Erdogan says “Turkey’s Libya and Syria policies neither adventurous nor discretionary”
All international arrival flights from Iran to Turkey were also halted as of 20:00 local time on February 23, Health Minister Fahrettion Koca said.
Turkey’s Libya and Syria policies are neither adventurous nor discretionary choices, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a rally on February 22.
Erdogan is currently chasing up a meeting with Putin but Putin is stalling.
The president has been increasingly subjected to the questions, despite his full control on mainstream local and global media: “What business does Turkey have in Syria and Libya?” or “Why do Turkish soldiers die in Syria and Libya?”.
Erdogan tries to address the snowballing questions by saying: “Whoever says, ‘What business does Turkey have in Syria?’ is either unaware or intentionally an enemy of this people.”
“God willing, the mound of martyrs will not remain empty,” Erdogan also says. Erdogan’s mental health, meanwhile, is deteriorating at an escalating pace.
He said on February 25 during a press briefing that he was “aware of Russia's strong assistance to the regime forces in Syria”.
Russia has never hidden its support to the Assad regime.
He also called TV channel Fox Turkey to be “a newspaper first” and to “be a serious media member” after Fox TV reporter Baris Kaya had asked Erdogan during the same press briefing: “The opposition criticised the fact that you used the word ‘several’ [regarding Turkish martyrs in Libya]. What’s your response to these criticisms?”
Meanwhile, suicides continue apace in Turkey, while the main refrain is: “my kids are hungry”.
On February 13, a man shouted while Erdogan was addressing the ruling AKP’s parliamentary group meeting: “Dear Mr. President, I got laid off from my job for participating in July 15 [2016’s coup attempt]. My kids are hungry. Help me!”
The protester was detained on February 14.
“French sociologist Durkheim says, ‘If suicides in a society show a sharp increase in a very short period of time, their reasons are not personal but social.’ You [gov’t] are not giving an ear to us, but listen to Emile Durkheim,” Temel Karamollaoglu, head of Islamist Felicity Party, Erdogan’s former party before he “changed his shirt” to become pro-Western in 2002, said on February 19.
7 TURKEY Country Report March 2020 www.intellinews.com
