RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - Christmas in Berlin

Dec. 24, 2016 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer

47:21

Christmas in Berlin

Germany’s Manuel Ochsenreiter joins Richard to discuss the geopolitical background and implication of the Hugo-Boss-clad assassin in Turkey and the ISIS attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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	Manuel Oxenreiter, welcome back.
	It's been too long since you've been on the podcast.
	How are you?
	I'm very fine.
	Thank you so much.
	Good.
	Well, were you in Berlin during the recent attack?
	Yes, I was.
	And, well, it was quite interesting that eventually happened what every normal person Right.
	It's predictable.
	The how and the when is unpredictable, but the what is predictable.
	And that is that someone who apparently, again, I think the manhunt for him is still ongoing as we record this.
	The man they are searching for is from Tunisia, I believe, and he did come to Germany during the summer of 2015.
	So this is a consequence of the refugee crisis and Germany's taking sovereign responsibility, in Angela Merkel's words, for the refugees.
	Yes, it is.
	But this whole case became now quite chaotic.
	Well, because first of all, they arrested a Pakistani guy who came also as a refugee who crossed the German border in December last year, 31st of December 2015 at Passau.
	This is the Austrian-German border.
	There he was registered.
	And he was interrogated by the police for several hours or the whole night.
	And it was said that he was quite known by the police.
	Of course, a very questionable status like for, I would think, the most so-called refugees who are in reality illegal migrants coming.
	I don't also know if he really was fleeing from a war or he was really fleeing from violence.
	I mean, the whole case is very questionable.
	Then they had to release him because it was said that he had, first of all, a sort of alibi and they didn't find any traces of...
	And now they are looking for this Tunisian guy, what is quite interesting because it was said that they found his ID, his refugee ID, in the cabin of the truck.
	So, of course, this reminds us also a little bit with 9-11.
	But still, just to end this.
	So now he's on the run and the police is somehow looking for him.
	And we all ask ourselves, why were they not looking for the person where they found coincidentally an ID in the cabin of the truck before?
	And this is now just the latest news.
	And I hope you are sitting because otherwise you will fall because of laughing.
	The police said they couldn't start the search in that way they should because there were orthographic mistakes in the papers for the search.
	So that is the situation.
	One might say this is bureaucracy on the tip or it is something else.
	I don't know.
	This is totally chaotic.
	And we are all ardently now waiting until they found the guy they are putting now.
	Money on his head, 100,000 euros for whoever delivers the decisive information to catch him.
	So you see, we live in a CSI movie right now, or in a crime movie.
	Everything is a little bit thriller.
	We hear sometimes helicopters over our heads.
	We have politicians who say that we shouldn't fear, and we have journalists who say that the biggest...
	The danger of this terrorist attack is, of course, not terrorism, but it is the rise of the far right.
	So we live in, as I said, in a crime thriller or in a comedy or in both of them.
	I don't know.
	We will see how it goes on.
	Yeah, it's a little bit of all of these things.
	And there might be a little bit of a conspiracy theory thrown in, a conspiracy thriller.
	I don't want to sound like I have.
	a tinfoil cap, but I agree some of these finding of IDs everywhere also strikes me as a little strange, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, so just leave it at that.
	Yes.
	I don't want...
	I didn't want now to say it's true or it's not true, but it's just very puzzled again.
	And, you know, when you hear one answer of our authorities, in reality they open the box of many, many more questions.
	And, of course, it is strange, it is not excluded that someone leaves his ID at the crime scene.
	We have idiots everywhere, and maybe every culture and every people and every religion has its idiots.
	Who knows better than we do in our countries?
	But, of course, it rises many, many questions, and I don't want to be now a coffee cup reader, but for me, the whole thing...
	The whole thing sounds a little bit like when they find him, there will be a shooting and the guy will be dead or he will commit suicide.
	Something strange might happen.
	Hopefully I'm wrong and hopefully we will witness then a real trial.
	But just saying, I have sometimes, and this is maybe now a little bit tinfoil like what I say, but when we see...
	How our state is dealing with terrorism within the last years?
	And I'm not speaking about Islamist terrorism.
	I'm also speaking about the NSU case.
	I think you heard in the US as well, this is the so-called neo-Nazi terrorist group, which was arrested some years ago, and the trial is still going on.
	There are so many things unclear, and this is not conspiracy theory.
	You know, they see that on the mobile phone there was called many, many times an intel officer, for example.
	And this is all evidence.
	There is no tinfoil conspiracy theory behind it.
	I think in many, many cases our state officials don't have a big interest in a very clear investigation, which makes the results public.
	Yes, and that is true about if the alleged perpetrator of this terrible crime is just shot at the scene trying to escape or commit suicide, then that does give some closure, as people like to say, to the case, but it also means that further investigations wouldn't take place, like who was the person exactly, whom was he in contact with, and so on.
	I want to just give one sentence before it really sounds like tinfoil.
	I mean, what could be one interest?
	Yes, yes, it's important.
	What could be one interest?
	You know, what would happen?
	Imagine if it would come out as we had it in Europe in many cases of terrorism also, or especially when it came to Islamist terrorism, when it comes out that this person...
	Was maybe in touch with our Intel or with another European Intel or with your glorious US-American Intel as an informant that when it comes out that that person was cooperating or maybe our Intel thought he was cooperating with them for a long time.
	This is, by the way, something what we had...
	As well in the London metro attack, what we had in Madrid at the terror attack.
	So, at least here we know also already that the guy was known by the police.
	And when I see what crimes are connected with these people, also, by the way, with the Pakistani guy they were having first.
	I ask myself, why are these people still in my country?
	You know, one should ask, how can it be that this person is there?
	And they do, as these are all just minor criminal cases and so on, but then all of a sudden they speak about harassment, they speak...
	Well, about a real criminal career.
	So the question is very legit to ask, why are these people in this country, why they were not deported already many months ago, why were they not accepted at the registration?
	These are all legit questions connected to these cases.
	Oh, let me just say two more things before we move on from these questions, because I do want to talk more about the symbolism of the act.
	I want to talk a little about Turkey, but just two things real quick.
	First off, this person in the reports that I've read has weapons training.
	Which he received from ISIS.
	So it would be interesting to learn if he received that training from U.S. officials or U.S.-funded people in the Syrian conflict and other conflicts in the Middle East.
	That's an interesting question.
	The other thing from a report that I read is that he was actually denied asylum, but he was allowed to remain on some...
	This is what I'm speaking about.
	Exactly that.
	Exactly.
	How can that be?
	Right.
	So again, I think, what did Angela Merkel say in her statement?
	We know how painful this would be if we discover that he was seeking asylum and how painful it would be to all those good asylum seekers who are trying to be Germans or something like that.
	It's very similar to in the United States.
	There was a general named George Casey who after one of these, it was the Fort Hood shooting where A Muslim man who was actually employed by the U.S. Army shot dozens of people.
	This was back in 2009, I believe.
	It was a terrible incident.
	And General Casey said, well, if diversity is the casualty of the shooting, that would be much worse than the mass murder that just took place.
	Oh, he should work for the German government.
	He's perfect.
	So, apparently, losing our faith in diversity is worse than mass murder.
	And this, Richard, may never happen to you and me.
	So, good that we speak now about that.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Well, let's back up a little bit.
	And I think it's worth talking about the symbolism of this act.
	And I'll just mention one thing.
	I don't believe I've ever been to a Berlin...
	Christmas market.
	But I actually have been to the Munich market and the Vienna market many times.
	I wonder if Germany will allow me into the country at this point.
	So maybe I'll only have my memories.
	But they're really beautiful things.
	A lot of people like to talk about secular Europe and Christian America.
	That was a meme throughout the Bush era.
	I almost thought that that was reversed a little bit.
	And I know that there are many more atheist or non-affiliated people in Europe than there are in the United States.
	Nevertheless, when I was in...
	In Germany and in Europe during Christmas time, there was something particularly special about it.
	The Christmas market really is a symbol of community and the season, both Christian and pagan, you could say.
	And it was really an amazing thing.
	And so these acts are symbolic.
	They aren't just targeted assassinations or so on.
	Obviously, the World Trade Center was symbolic.
	I would say the Cologne rape scandal, I doubt that that was planned.
	I think that that was just idiots being idiots and abusing women on New Year's Eve.
	But there was something symbolic.
	It took place literally in the show.
	But Richard, our mainstream media informed us that Vladimir Putin plotted all that.
	We know much better.
	I just assume he was the one raping this woman.
	He was the one who cloned himself and put a wig on and did it himself.
	I'm convinced, yes.
	He and Bashar al-Assad, these two.
	They were the guys.
	No, I mean, seriously, this was after Cologne, really, in mainstream media.
	You could read that.
	This is why I said in the beginning, and again, you don't know where you live.
	You live in a thriller.
	You live in a movie comedy or in a very sarcastic, Franz Kafka-esque...
	Tragedy.
	This is really, I mean, but it's reality around us.
	It's also reality around us how politicians are reacting on that.
	And when it comes to the symbolism, of course, the Christmas market, even in Berlin, it is still called Christmas market.
	Although we have, ironically, in many German communities to debate if it should be renamed in the winter market.
	Not to bother those who are not Christians.
	And by the way, this has to be said in this context.
	Those ideas never come from the Muslim community.
	The Muslim community, if you go to Berlin and you look where the Muslim community is living, especially in Kreuzberg, I would say these guys even love somehow this whole Christmas.
	It's a very small, radical minority of them who are somehow totally against it.
	But the real problem are our own liberals.
	These are the people who are attacking all these traditions.
	So they say we cannot call it Christmas market, not to hurt the feelings of those who are not Christians among us and so on.
	These people are the real problem.
	But that was now just...
	A little side comedy of the main comedy and when it comes to the Christmas markets in Berlin...
	They are – I think you would be disappointed if you compare a Christmas market in Berlin with a Christmas market in Munich or in Vienna because it is a very secular thing.
	But still, it is, of course, a community thing.
	People go there with their families after work or with their colleagues.
	They love to drink.
	Then a Glühwein, which is, I think, in English a malt wine.
	Hot spice wine, yeah.
	Yes, exactly.
	I'm not wrong.
	So it has – Of course, this community spirit.
	You can even eat your döner at the Christmas market in Berlin because it is also sold there.
	So the religious aspect is, in my opinion, very, very small.
	There are some smaller Christmas markets which are organized, for example, by the Catholic Church or the Protestant Church, which have, of course...
	But this Christmas market at the Breitscheidplatz, where the terrorist attack happened, is maybe not the master religious aspect.
	But, of course, it has the community aspect, and it is one of the events where people love to go, where they go, where they spend time, and where they feel secure.
	Until now, the biggest...
	The danger of these markets were most probably the pickpockets coming from the Balkans.
	So these were maybe the guys you were watching out, but not so much terrorism.
	Although everyone had already somehow a bad feeling about what will come upon us after the so-called refugee crisis started and after ISIS said very clearly that they will send terrorists disguised.
	As refugees to Germany and to whole Europe.
	And since we know, and I mean, I'm a journalist and we have our own sources in diverse refugee camps in Germany, that there are very open celebrations for terrorist groups as ISIS and Shabbat al-Nusra, and that there are singing chants of beheading Christians, and all these things are happening under the ice.
	Of our government and I would also say under the eyes of our mainstream media.
	But of course it is a little bit shameful and you don't report about it and you don't criticize it because diversity could be the biggest victim of that.
	So also here diversity is more important than safety.
	So the symbolism is very clearly against that people feel safe in public squares.
	I think that is the main important aspect.
	The religious aspect is maybe not as big as it might seem outside, but maybe the terrorist had this religious aspect in his mind when he did that.
	That is the thing I think it's very likely, because the Christmas market is still a Christmas market.
	And of course, it might be in his religious ideology a thing which is totally halal and where it is totally justified to bring a truck there and to kill dozens of people if he is successful.
	Right.
	I mean, it's a cultural clash, no matter how you think about it.
	And even if it were totally unconscious, the fact is that a Christmas market is a symbol of Europe.
	It is interesting how we've come this far.
	I mean, I can certainly remember the George W. Bush era where you had insurgents and terrorism and so on, and that could be seen as, and I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this, I do think there's a kernel of truth to this, but this could be seen as a response to the American empire as blowback.
	So-called, where they're attacking the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
	American soldiers are being maimed and killed in the Middle East by insurgents who are mad at them for perhaps justifiable reasons.
	But this is something different, what we see here.
	I mean, Germany is not directly related to any of these conflicts.
	Kind of on the outskirts of, say, the Iraq War, the Syrian conflict, or all these kinds of things.
	Germany bent over backwards to welcome...
	I mean, they went well beyond the call of duty and accepting these people.
	And yet, there still is this inevitable clash.
	And also, Germans did it in a different way than, say, Americans or even the French, who have these kind of proposition nation citizenship ideals, civilizational ideals.
	The German situation is very different because German consciousness after 1945 does seem to be this negative consciousness based on guilt.
	In a way, we can never purge the guilt of Hitler.
	It's a sad thing.
	But even Germany are being attacked in this way.
	What would you say?
	About the psyche of an average German, is there a sense that there's nothing you can do, that there really are these fault lines and divisions between peoples and cultures, and that it doesn't matter if you let them in and sing songs about diversity and hold everyone's hand and welcome them at the airports.
	At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
	Do you think this realization is hitting some of these people?
	I mean, I think it is a little bit more complex.
	And I know that this is a very famous liberal phrase when it comes to these topics, but I say it now anyway.
	So it is a little bit more complex.
	So first of all, I don't believe that for the violent terrorists...
	For the rapists, for the criminals coming to us, it plays a big role if Germany as a state or as military power is active in their home regions, is active as an American ally or whatever.
	I think for these people that doesn't play a role.
	They would do it anyway because they hate us.
	That is the point.
	And they hate us if we are there or if we are not there.
	So that is not the point.
	The point is something else.
	The point is, why are these people here?
	And now, this is where I think it becomes a little bit more complex.
	Germany, indeed, is a country which tried for many, many decades, especially after World War II, to stay out of conflicts.
	And we were in an almost luxury position, East and West Germany in this time, because...
	We had both our hegemons.
	So we West Germans had the United States.
	The East Germans, they had the Soviet Union.
	And we knew that all the big trouble in the world was somehow negotiated between these two.
	And we were playing somehow the role of a little bit the financers of the conflicts.
	But that's it.
	Nobody wanted to see Germans on any battlefield anymore.
	The most horrible thing.
	And especially the Germans didn't want to see German soldiers somewhere on battlefields.
	But since our reunification, things changed a bit.
	And what is clear, what is very, very clear, is that the war in Iraq...
	The war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq was without German participation, at least with German military participation, but the war in Iraq was, of course, also with German military participation.
	But these wars wouldn't have been possible if Germany wouldn't host...
	We have the United States' biggest aircraft carrier.
	We have the United States' biggest military hospital.
	So we are somehow the most important island for the United States and Europe from where they can conduct.
	They're geopolitical actions or adventures or how we want to say it.
	So these are all things I say now.
	These are all things maybe the guy who was steering his truck into the people at the Christmas market in Berlin doesn't even know.
	Maybe he doesn't even know how to read and to write.
	I don't know.
	So this is why I say this doesn't have an influence.
	When it comes now to Syria and we have to see the refugee crisis, and we were writing this since many, many, many years, that we said this could open the bottle, the Syria crisis.
	And if Germany allows, if Germany allows that terrorists are taking over...
	That country, the terrorists, also what we had in Libya.
	If Germany is not resisting, not just because of a humanitarian reason and not just because of save the people in Libya or save the people in Syria, no, but because of save the people in Europe and save Germany and act in German interest.
	If Germany is not doing this...
	We will be the first ones who will be hit by the consequences.
	And we wrote very, very early, one of the consequences will be a refugee wave, a migration wave, which would be bigger, faster, and have a much bigger impact on us than all what we saw in the decades before.
	We will all laugh.
	About these migration movements coming from Turkey, coming from Balkans, coming from other countries.
	If we compare it, what will happen if Syria is destabilized?
	And exactly that.
	And now in addition, this is my last sentence.
	German politics, German media, and a lot of German NGOs were actively and are actively supporting terrorism in Syria with money.
	Syrian, sorry, Islamist organizations can act.
	Very openly in Germany and collect money for direct support for terrorists.
	So all this is happening under our eyes.
	And the same politicians.
	And we have at the tip Angela Merkel.
	And just remember how Merkel reacted on the liberation of Aleppo by the Syrian army, where she said, this is a big tragedy.
	The humanitarian catastrophe and so on.
	So she was simply parroting what our liberal mainstream media was saying about Aleppo, where indeed terrorists were killed and the city was liberated from terrorists by the Syrian army, by a legal army.
	The Syrian army did nothing else what the Bundeswehr, what our army wouldn't do if a city in Germany would be occupied by terrorists.
	They would liberate it.
	So, Angela Merkel is the one who was actively supporting terrorism in Syria and who was turning, by support of this terrorism, ordinary Syrian citizens into refugees.
	So it is also German taxpayers' money.
	By the way, it goes really down.
	It is totally contradicting.
	It was German taxpayers' money, for example, which was donated or which was invested in a renewal of the Aleppo water system in the old city just two or three years before the war.
	came upon Syria.
	And then we financed those who were destroying the old city.
	So German money was fighting German money.
	German taxpayers'money was fighting German taxpayers'money.
	So So, what I want to say, on the one side, we have the politicians actively supporting terrorism in other countries.
	Now we speak about Syria.
	And these are the same politicians, not just the same type of politicians, but the same individuals who are responsible for opening our borders for the migrant wave.
	So we can really concentrate on some individuals who are active on both ends, at the alpha and at the omega of this huge geopolitical crisis which hits on the one side civilians in Syria and which hits now, and that is the geopolitical logic of all that, which hits now civilians in Europe.
	And that is the big point of this.
	So Germany was doing, or the German government was doing a lot of mistakes, first by supporting terrorism, by enabling the refugee wave coming to us, and then by opening the borders as well.
	So these are the same people.
	And that is indeed a context.
	And I'm not sure if maybe a German government, I speak about spine under in the Obama...
	The times which are now thankfully over, but they would have simply said, no, we don't allow that.
	We don't want you to use your military assets in Germany for bringing chaos to North Africa and to Syria.
	Look for another country.
	Maybe Poland will do that or so.
	Polish government is always happy to host.
	More and more occupation troops, but we don't want that.
	And so they were not doing this.
	And this is indeed why I see a context.
	But again, this context is seen by me, and it's seen, I think, also by a lot of Germans and also by a lot of international observers, but for sure not by those who are killing people now in Europe.
	But these people wouldn't be here.
	You know, this is the simple logics.
	These people wouldn't be here if we wouldn't have done the mistakes.
	They would be somewhere in Pakistan, Afghanistan, in Tunisia or wherever.
	They wouldn't be in Europe.
	And that is the simple logic and the simple truth.
	Right, it's the Alpha and Omega.
	It's well said.
	Are there any politicians who would, I mean, someone from, say, the AFD, the Alternativa for Deutschland?
	Whether they're willing to say something like that, because it seems like that would basically be saying, Yankee, go home.
	You can go take on adventures.
	We can't really stop you from doing that, but we're not going to help you, and we're not going to be used as the aircraft carrier in Europe for you to launch these adventures.
	Is there anyone willing to say that?
	Well, yes, we have some politicians of the AFD who see this context and who mention this context.
	And this is, again, a problem, and I think you saw it as well in the American presidential campaign, that if you are populist, then you have to speak in the most easy...
	context for the people.
	So what we are speaking here right now about, and as easy it might sound for our listeners, is already a complex context.
	It is much more easy to say, build a wall or build a fence.
	Then to say it's not enough to build a fence because more and more people will run against the fence and in a certain moment they will climb over the fence.
	No, you have also to act there where the people are coming from.
	I know this again sounds like a super liberal statement, but I mean it of course in a very different way than the liberals say it.
	What I mean is, and we have politicians, for example, like our member of the European Parliament, Markus Pretzel, who said very clearly, Clearly, we have immediately to lift the sanctions against Syria.
	We have immediately to lift the embargoes against Syria.
	And we have immediately to stop supporting any terrorism there, because that is what makes also ordinary people leave.
	After five years of war, if your children are not any more able...
	To go to their university to make their diploma or to write their thesis, that some parents are so desperate that they say, okay, we sent them now to Europe.
	There are so many people going there.
	Now we try also that we get them somehow here.
	It's an almost human and logical thing, and that has to be stopped.
	I think that much, when it comes to Syria, that most of the people coming here are not...
	Directly running away from violence and war.
	They are running away from the five-year experience of a horrible inflation, of losing all what you had, of losing all perspective for your family, for your children.
	And that is then more easy to sell your house and to pay a human trafficker and to say, well, let's look if he finds his luck.
	But that is not caused directly by the war.
	That is directly caused again, especially by the European Union, not so much by the U.S. Because it was the trade with the European Union what was very important for Syria.
	I give you just one example to understand this.
	One of the first embargoes the European Union did against Syria was the oil embargo.
	That means we didn't buy oil anymore from Syria.
	What was state income?
	State income means they don't just pay the army.
	They also pay the public health sector.
	They pay policemen.
	They pay teachers.
	And Syria has a very big public sector.
	So it was...
	Introduced to bring chaos to the country and to cut income from the state.
	And when you see Syria didn't have so much oil exports, and when I talk to my Syrian friends, they say, thank God we didn't have, because otherwise we would have a military intervention on the ground, with boots on the ground already.
	But alone, Germany and Italy were buying two-thirds of the oil from Syria, or of the resources from Syria.
	And they stopped in 2012, if I'm not wrong, with doing that.
	And that is what brings to Syria the real crisis, not so much...
	I mean, Aleppo is a case which is very radical, but if you go, for example, to the coastline, Latakia, Tartus, these are very intact cities, and even Damascus is a functioning city.
	But the people are without perspective, and this...
	Lack of perspective is caused mainly by sanctions and embargoes.
	You're, of course, buying oil from Saudi Arabia, the civilized European state of Saudi Arabia.
	Because they are dedicated fighters for human rights and gay marriage.
	Why shouldn't we do that?
	Of course.
	Of course.
	And it's much better than buying it from Vladimir Putin, you know, the fascist.
	It's better to get from the Saudi king, yes?
	Of course, this is all logics here, and this again shows that we live in a comedy and not so much in realpolitik.
	Let's shift...
	Over to Ankara and Turkey.
	It was remarkable that these two events happened on the same day.
	Just as we were approaching solstice, we had these two major geopolitical events.
	They were also very different, whereas the Berlin event did strike me as a typical terror spectacular event, similar to Nice and similar to Paris and other things like that.
	The event in Ankara struck me as almost like something out of a James Bond movie or a John le Carré movie or book.
	It's obviously much more targeted.
	It was a single assassination.
	It seemed to be really this complex web of forces.
	This person who was part of the state.
	He was a young man who was a police officer.
	He was well dressed.
	I said this jokingly on Twitter, but I think it's actually important.
	He looks like he was wearing Hugo Boss or something.
	He was this stylish...
	He was better dressed than you and I will ever be.
	Well, speak for yourself, Manuel.
	I'll move on from that comment.
	Come on, you have to admit it.
	And that's what I was getting at in that kind of espionage movie aspect to it.
	It's this very complex...
	This is something that I have been learning about in the last few hours.
	An Islamicist group that has actually been condemned by the state, but which has some...
	And then obviously there's all of these layers of geopolitics where you're engaging in a targeted assassination of a diplomat in an art gallery, but it also seems to be directly addressed at...
	At Russia's support of Assad and Syria, where he's saying, you know, we die in Aleppo, you die here.
	It seemed to try to be breaking, obviously, a murder of a diplomat.
	That's a shocking insult.
	It seemed to be an attempt to break apart Russia and Turkey.
	So again, it's just there's so many layers to this story.
	What are your thoughts on this?
	I'm not sure I quite know what to make of it yet.
	Well, first of all, although it was everywhere in the social networks and on Twitter, but I don't believe at all that that was something comparable to Sarajevo 1914 or so.
	You know, they were immediately bringing these examples.
	So I don't think this was the overture of a World War III.
	Yes, I think I tweeted that as well.
	Really?
	Yes, don't worry.
	You can criticize me.
	So you don't have just a very handsome suit, but you Twittered that also.
	Okay.
	Well, I mean, look, the comparisons are...
	I don't go for Hugo Boss.
	A little too...
	Yeah, a little too Berlin for me.
	I like more tweed and stuff like that.
	But putting that aside, it did seem to be one of these small events, like an assassination, that has geopolitical implications.
	To make you now my friend again, we know that the assassinator of Sarajevo was in contact or maybe even controlled by the Royal British Secret Service.
	That is what we know today.
	So, of course, I'm convinced that what happened in Ankara was not the lonesome, the lonely decision of this bodyguard guy all of a sudden to shoot the Russian ambassador in his back.
	Of course, this has a deeper sense, but, and this should we always take into account, I mean, I have to admit that I am not a specialist on Turkey.
	I don't understand Turkey to the death, but what I know and what I see is that in Turkey, it's very close to be a sort of total state, to say it like this, and that in a total state are rivalries of different groups, and they might agree when it comes to their nationalism or chauvinism, they might agree.
	But not, for example, when it comes with who they will realize it.
	And of course, the move, for many people, surprising move of Turkey towards Russia might have made upset those circles which were, let me say, had more assets in the Turkish-American alliance.
	I personally think That Erdogan is playing a game, and I think that also the Russians know that.
	And for Erdogan, it is very easy.
	It means the more often he meets with Putin and talks to him, the more he can raise his price for the West.
	But on the other side, Turkey is completely dependent from Western money.
	They have a very, very huge army.
	I think they have one of the hugest armies in the region.
	They definitely need the support coming from US, but also from Europe.
	And I deeply doubt that Russia is even willing to give a substitute for that support.
	But it's still a kind of game.
	But also this game is sabotaged by some circles.
	It's very, very...
	I mean, we saw this within the last months where many surprising things between Turkey and Russia were happening, despite the fact that they might still fight when it comes to Syria on different front lines, by the way, where Turkey is still supporting terrorists and Russia is still supporting the Syrian government, the legal Syrian government.
	But, of course, I mean, this...
	Could be interpreted as an attempt to disturb or to sabotage this alliance, but on the other side also a very clumsy attempt because I think, again, you don't have to be a dedicated coffee cup reader to foresee that Erdogan would immediately condemn this action and say, oh, these were the Gulenists or whoever.
	But as I said, I think that in Turkey we have these different circles and groups which are fighting for influence, but under the common framework of Turkish nationalism and chauvinism.
	Interesting.
	So I think what I'm hearing from you is you don't quite know how this is.
	No one knows how this is going to play out.
	Look, look, I mean, just when it comes to the Gülenists, I mean, that is, I think, you know, it's a little bit like with the Yezid, if you remember in the Iraq war.
	So last year, all of a sudden, all the media world was speaking about the Yazidi, this small Kurdish tribe or how we should call it.
	But nobody knew it before, but that was a sort of PR thing.
	So the Yazidi are under threat of the IS and Yazidi women are kidnapped and made prostitutes or sex slaves by the IS.
	So that was all of a sudden a big thing, despite of the fact that these things were happening in Syria since 2011.
	There it was not a big thing.
	So when it comes...
	I think that almost no one knew what Gülenists are and who Gülen is.
	And just those who were maybe a little bit more deeper in Turkish culture or Turkish political landscape, they knew that Erdogan and Gülen were once very close allies, that Gülen was a sort of teacher for Erdogan.
	Then they had some type of difficulties and Gülen is now living in the U.S. So, they were not always the big enemies, and I think that is also very, maybe a pattern when it comes to Turkey, the switch from you are my best friend to you are the deadliest enemy I could ever have.
	But we should never forget that it can switch again, again to the back.
	So now the Gülinists are, of course, the bad guys.
	And of course, they are in US and the CIA is helping them.
	But CIA is also helping the Turkish government, by the way.
	So it's not so.
	But it is just I think we shouldn't step into the trap to believe too much the PR about these things.
	I think there is the possibility that Gülen might be the big friend of Erdogan maybe already next year.
	No one knows.
	No one knows how quick these things go.
	And Erdogan might deliver in some months again a speech where he calls Putin a cockroach.
	This can happen.
	I mean, look at how Erdogan is speaking about Angela Merkel.
	Sometimes so, then she's a good friend, then she is a terror threat for Turkey.
	I mean, What I say, Erdogan is a leader who acts like a gang leader in Berlin-Kreuzberg, like a Turkish gang leader.
	And he has the manners of this gang leader.
	He has the style of this gang leader.
	We know that Erdogan has connections also from his youth to the organized crime in his own country.
	And now he's leading a people.
	of one of the biggest peoples in the region and he's still acting like this and I think that all the neighbors know this very well.
	Also Moscow knows this very well.
	The problem is simply that Angela Merkel...
	Doesn't seem to know that so well.
	So she always feels like, I think, like a street worker in Berlin.
	She approaches him, you know, and yes, and look, we like you, and here you get a cake from us, and you had a hard childhood.
	But, you know, at the end, the street workers can do in Berlin whatever they want.
	The guy leaves the office of the street worker and then he rips off the next guy on the street with his wallet.
	So I think this is how we should see Erdogan in this context.
	So when it comes to Gülen, Gülen is maybe the same type like Erdogan, but we have in Germany a figure of speech that is Pack schlägt sich, Pack verträgt sich.
	PEC is fighting each other, but PEC is also loving each other.
	That can change very quickly, and this we shouldn't forget when it comes to all these different groups when it comes to Turkey.
	Yes.
	Yeah, and I certainly, we hope that this won't turn into a Sarajevo incident where Putin overreacts or retaliates.
	I agree.
	I don't think he will do that, but we shall see.
	I have been left with an image in my mind of Angela Merkel as a Berlin prostitute, but not a very attractive image.
	A very cheap one.
	I think she would have to be.
	Yes.
	The market would decide that.
	Yes.
	The invisible hand of the market.
	Yes.
	Manuel, thank you for this, and let's do it again.
	This is very informative, and we live in interesting times, to say the least.
	Yes.
	Thank you very much, and I look forward to the next time.

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