Europe's next door threat

The caricature of a megalomaniac politician

Victor Angelo

 

My text of last week on Islamist radicalism provoked several reactions. The Portuguese friends, who have always lived in Portugal, although with many tourist trips in the curriculum, were surprised by my description of the intolerance in certain schools and in some segments of French society. This is a situation that does not occur in Portugal. Here nobody intimidates anyone by mentioning Infante D. Henrique, Mouzinho de Albuquerque or the atheist José Saramago. Friends living in the Europe of immigration - in Belgium, for example - have recognised in my chronicle situations that are familiar to them. The rejection of values that we consider fundamental and life in social silos are commonplace. They added that it takes courage to talk about these things, in a balanced way and without falling into primary and racist recrimination. I have also received messages from former co-workers, who live out their Muslim faith in many parts of the world. For them, the problem lies in the mockery, the caricatures, their interpretation as an instrument of the Europeans' onslaught against Islam.

I remembered then that at the ceremony to honour Professor Samuel Paty, President Emmanuel Macron said that France would not give up the cartoons. I understand that position. What others see as an unforgivable offence is for us a simple expression of freedom. Religion is a subject like any other. In Europe, the collapse of the idea of blasphemy began in 1789 with the French Revolution.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan clung to Macron's statement about the drawings to treat his French counterpart as mentally ill. He said it repeatedly, so that there would be no doubt about the insult. For Erdogan, the drawing of a bottom end in the air is more shocking than the inhumane persecution of millions of Muslims by the Xi Jinping regime. He does not get nervous, he says nothing about it.

We live in unique times, with one head of state harassing another, from an allied country. Erdogan's hostility towards Macron is nothing new. It began right after the French president's term began in 2017. There are several points of friction between them, starting with the French opposition to Turkey's accession to the EU and continuing in Libya, Syria, in support of Greek sovereignty in the Mediterranean Sea and more and more. There is also enormous tension within NATO, where France accuses Turkey of holding back the organisation's strategy when it comes to regions in which Ankara is directly involved.

On top of all this, I can guess that Erdogan wants to break the alliance that exists between Paris and Berlin. He is investing against France knowing that Germany, where more than four million people with Turkish roots live, does not have much room for manoeuvre to take a stand in solidarity with France. By attacking this pillar of the EU and maintaining the recurrent threat of opening the gates to a new wave of migration to Europe, similar to that which occurred in 2015, Erdogan's Turkey constitutes the most important risk to the survival of the European project.

At the December European Council it is absolutely necessary that the leaders of the member states take a tough stance against the Turkish president. In international politics, there are only two possible positions before a bully: give in and end up paying a high price, or else confront him with all the necessary diplomatic arsenal.

Salman Rushdie warns us that "fundamentalism is not about religion, but about power". Erdogan sees himself as the leader of Sunni Muslims and the guardian of the faithful in the face of the so-called European attacks. He combines megalomania with fanaticism. In collusion with the radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood and with the financial support of Qatar, Erdogan has established in several European countries a series of associations which, under the guise of religion, culture and humanitarian action, promote totalitarian interpretations of the Koran and its image as a defender of the faith.

One of the tasks of the European security services is to monitor these associations and their most influential members. It is, however, an almost impossible mission. Monitoring every potentially violent extremist, to be done properly, requires around twenty officers, twenty-four hours a day. The real answer must therefore be political and shared by all European countries. 

(Machine translation of my opinion column of today, published in the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias, Lisbon)

 

 

Qatar should be told to keep away from ISIS

The role and the goals of Qatar in Middle East and also in Africa need to be carefully scrutinised. The Qatari authorities were very much behind the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. They invested billions to support the government of former president Mohamed Morsi. They have been very much behind Hamas in Gaza. And now there are questions being raised about their alleged assistance to the terrorist group ISIS.

In many ways, one has to be clear. Qatar should be challenged. And it is also important to underline that any regime that supports ISIS is an accomplice to a criminal organisation of dark-age fanatics. ISIS has no place in the modern world. And no civilised state should think that funding ISIS will serve its own national interests.

I am for a tough and clear diplomacy in this type of situations. 

Egypt´s distress

Egypt´s current crisis raises many questions. Three years ago, the democratic transition for a post-Mubarak era had generated great enthusiasm. Then, after a brief and not always wise passage of the Muslim Brotherhood through power, the military took over. The coup d´état passed unnoticed in the Western capitals, a true miracle, like when one manages to walk in between the drops of the pouring rain. Now, hundreds of people are being sentenced to death, then in many cases their sentences commuted to life in prison, most of them just for the crime of being in the streets during mass demonstrations against the military authorities. It is a mockery of justice in a country that deserves more than this absurd – an unacceptable – way of dealing with discontent.

Below the surface we have a country that is unable to take care of itself. The population growth has been too rapid, a true explosion, and there is no economy to match it. Jobs are just not there. And the traditional solution – to migrate to richer countries in the Middle East – is less and less viable. People are too unskilled to be able to move out of their poor environment. They are trapped. That´s the worst thing that can happen to a poor person.

It is, in many ways, a wake-up call of situations to come in similar countries, in places with the same type of demographic and economic challenges. It should make one think deeply. But before that, it calls for a louder voice that is able to say that something is terribly wrong in the banks of the Nile River. It is time for the international friends of Egypt to step in. 

Egypt: unacceptable court proceedings

Let me be clear. Kangaroo courts and irrational judgments like the ones now taking place in Egypt are simply unacceptable. The way hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers and activists have been sentenced – most of them to death – has to be denounced as totally inappropriate in any country today. It is just absurdly infamous and nothing can justify that type of processes. Each trial is a violation of the most basic human rights

I realise the Egyptian society is now deeply divided. But it cannot be guided by blind hate. It has, on the contrary, to find ways to bring people together. There is no way one segment of society is going to be able to annihilate the opposing segment. They have to compromise and live together.

I am very surprised by the Western leaders´ silence. I cannot understand why the EU and the US are not loud and clear about these medieval approach to governance in Egypt. 

Egypt and Turkey

During his time in office, Morsi developed a close relationship with Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey. This political alliance has certainly raised many eyebrows within the leadership of the Egyptian Armed Forces. They were very much aware of the treatment reserved by Erdogan and his party to the Turkish generals and admirals and they could foresee the same kind of fate befalling on them, sooner or later. For many undecided top officers this growing proximity between Cairo and the party in power in Ankara became reason enough to convince them that inaction was no option. It would be rather a fatal mistake. 

Egypt's future can only be built on compromise

Following the dramatic situation that has developed in Egypt, the EU and the US are struggling to issue “politically correct” statements. If you read what the European capitals have published about the events or listen to President Obama’s commentary, you realise that everyone wants to condemn the violence and, at the same time, avoid any words that might undermine the authority of the Egyptian military. This is an impossible exercise of balancing.

In the meantime, it is also impossible to be optimistic about Egypt’s foreseeable future.  Violence on both sides has gone too far and that makes the adoption of sensible positions much more difficult. Both camps seem to bet on confrontation and force, in a country that is only viable if based on compromise. And that, for me, is the key message the world should pass on to Cairo.