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Aug. 14, 2018 - Steve Pieczenik

04:58

OPUS 69 Nepotism

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	Hi, this is Dr. Steve Pachanek and this is Steve Talks.
	Pechenek.
	Today I'd like to talk about Turkey.
	Turkey and Erdogan has a long history with the United States.
	A few days ago, Trump had ordered sanctions against Turkey and because Erdogan refuses to release one of our ministers, a man by the name of Brunson, whom he's held for well over a year and a half.
	The reason for that is not clear, although Erdogan claims that he's a spy.
	I doubt it.
	I don't really think he's a spy.
	And the reality is that the Israelis released the Hamas operative on behalf of the United States so that Turkey could release the priests.
	However, Erdogan has his own history.
	For 30 years, I've monitored him.
	I remembered him when he was the mayor of Istanbul.
	He was good and then he began to become very, very religious and very authoritarian.
	In fact, he was so authoritarian that there was a coup in 2016, hundreds of people were killed, thousands were dismissed, 100,000 people were dismissed from the administration and Erdogan continued.
	He became so isolated and so totalitarian that now he's placed his own son-in-law as the minister of finance, which really means that Turkey, which was once a prosperous nation, is going downhill very quickly in terms of the economics, in terms of the gross national product, is going downhill very quickly in terms of the economics, in terms of the gross national product, It's getting into an economic bankruptcy situation.
	However, we can't be totally sympathetic to Turkey.
	Those of you who are Christians should remember very clearly that in 1914 to 1970, Turkey was able to slaughter over 1.3 million Armenian Christians, which they led to Aleppo and slaughtered them on the way out there.
	If you do not know anything about this Turkish genocide or we call the Holocaust of the Armenians you should see the movie The Promise which is absolutely right on nose and exactly demonstrates how brutal the Turks were.
	A few years later, Turkey, under the auspices of Ataturk, who was a secular man who came out of the southern part of Turkey and demanded that Turkey no longer become a military and no longer become Muslim, he ordered in 1922 the decimation and the killing he ordered in 1922 the decimation and the killing of a half a million Greek and Armenian Christians in the city of Smyrna or Ismir, as we know now.
	That was 1922.
	So throughout the history of Turkey for the past decades, Turkey's never admitted to its past.
	Turkey has never apologized to the Armenians.
	Turkey has never apologized to the Christians.
	And although Turkey wanted to enter the EU, it really didn't do anything to ameliorate its political suppression of the people who were against Erdogan.
	Erdogan has become a totalitarian leader.
	He is a dictator.
	In my opinion, something has to happen.
	That which should happen is something that we would call a military coup.
	And the reason for that is that the military within Turkey has always been powerful.
	It's probably the eighth largest military in the world.
	It's behind China, Russia, the United States...
	It is formidable and in reality it appears that Erdogan has co-opted the military and put those who were in the 2016 coup in prison along with hundreds and hundreds of journalists who've criticized Erdogan.
	It's now time for Erdogan and his nepotism to leave Turkey.
	How that happens and who will do that will be up to the Turks.
	I as an observer and someone who's lived in Turkey, in and out, in Bodrum for over 30 to 40 years, can only counsel the following.
	Those who commit those crimes must pay the penalty of those crimes.
	In the words of William Soroyan, the famous American-Armenian writer, he said, Although the Turks killed millions of our people, Armenians, we will always retain our culture and we will always remember the past.
	In those words, I bid you good night and good luck.
	Hi, this is Dr.

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