Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lost his bid to become
Turkey’s supreme leader in last month’s elections. So he’s taken the
country to war to increase his popularity and improve his chances of
victory in snap elections in November.
Turkish bombers continued to pound Kurdish positions in Northern Iraq
early Thursday after killing an estimated 100 Kurds a day earlier.
Erdogan broke off peace talks with the Kurdish militias and launched
this latest assault after failing to win enough seats in Parliament to
change the constitution. The ambitious Erdogan needed 330 deputies to
make sweeping changes to the constitution that would give the president
unlimited executive power making Erdogan de facto emperor of Turkey. His
plan was frustrated by the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP)
that won an unprecedented 13 percent of the vote. The HDP is determined
to prevent Erdogan from realizing his dream of becoming Turkey’s
imperial sultan . The current war against the Kurds in Syria and Iraq is
designed to whip up nationalist sentiment in order to put Erdogan “over
the top” in elections that could come as early as this Fall.
-- Mike Whitney, "Power-Mad Erdogan Launches War in Attempt to Become Turkey’s Supreme Leader" (CounterPunch).