Prime Minister Erdogan's uh-oh

ISTANBUL, (Oct. 19, 2012) -- Recep Tayyip Erdogan (don't even try to pronounce it) is the brilliant and charismatic prime minister of modern Turkey.

Mr. Erdogan has been on a roll ever since he became active in politics.

Gaining "lift," as we glider pilots say, from the Muslim demographic bloom and activism, Mr. Erdogan successfully reversed the decades-old secular victory of former Turkish strong man Abdul Ataturk who had successfully decapitated the world-wide Islamic Caliphate based in Turkey which then supervised millions of the faithful.

That would be comparable to the Italian government killing the Roman-Catholic pope and burning down the Vatican.

But that was only after army general Ataturk had defeated the combined invading forces of France, England and the ANZAC nations of New Zealand and Australia at Gallipoli, thereby maintaining Turkish control of the Dardanelles waterway.

Ataturk stopped Islam from imposing Sharia on the nation so as to modernize Turkey in the western style.

His constitution institutionalized the courts and the military as guardians of Turkey's secular democracy.

But Muslim fertility and zeal eventually swamped Ataturk's institutional bulwarks, resulting in the election of Islamist Erdogan.

Mr. Erdogan immediately decapitated the military, bringing them to heel and is now ransacking the courts.

He shafted long-time ally Israel by harboring then launching a propaganda "flotilla" goading Israel into acting in self defense.

Pursuing an ancient Islamist tactic, he then bawled to high heaven when the Israelis, after extreme provocation, had to kill a few of the Islamist thugs to protect their citizens and their law-of-the-sea rights.

Erdogan also rushed to Egypt during its recent revolution to play good-guy mediator, but stumbled when had to cover his backside at home by advising Egyptian Islamists that the immediate implementation of Sharia was not a great idea.

Suddenly he was not quite so welcome.

The stewing revolution in Syria adjacent to Turkey's southern perimeter has become a real "uh-oh!" moment for Mr. Erdogan, curbing Turkey's recent go-it-alone hubris.

Turkey could not ignore the issue because it's commercially open border became a convenient escape for more than 100,000 Syrians seeking to avoid the fatal fate of 30,000 of their countrymen to date.

And who is to say getting a free vacation in Turkey is not a better life than working for a living in barren Syria?

Turkey has threatened to close the border to further emigration, unless they received promised help from the United Nations (which only means us, folks).

But that's just the beginning of the prime minister's problems.

Islamist Erdogan's wish that Syria's secular Baathist Party leader Bashar Assad disappear soon is not likely to be fulfilled.

Assad is supported by Shia Iran and Russia, two formidable allies in the United Nations and on the ground.

The forces trying to remove Assad are a polyglot drawn from throughout the Islamist hate crescent who disagree among themselves on major issues.

Worse for Turkey, Assad's buddies are supporting the PPK -- the terrorist arm of the Kurdish people -- in their bid to carve a homeland out of the old Ottoman Empire ever since they were frozen out in the aftermath of World War II.

Including the murder of three Turkish soldiers just last week, along with the kidnapping of several school teachers, the PPK has murdered more than 33,000 people during their independence campaign, no small threat to the safety of every day Turks.

All that is costing a resurgent Turkey millions of its lira.

More bad news: For hundreds of years the Turks have traded throughout the Middle East.

Absent truck routes through Syria, bilateral trade is cut off idling and impoverishing thousands throughout their southern provinces.

Surveys show that Erdogan's missteps are wildly unpopular presenting outraged Attaturk loyalists with their first opportunity to slow Prime Minister Erdogan's heretofore runaway Islamist parade.

Stirling, a former U.S. Army officer, has been elected to the San Diego City Council, state Assembly and state Senate. He also served as a municipal and superior court judge in San Diego. Send comments to larry.stirling@sddt.com. Comments may be published as Letters to the Editor.