Erdogan triples down on imperial fanaticism

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey spent Friday reminding the world why he is Vladimir Putin's preferred useful idiot. Continuing in that vein on Saturday, Erdogan tripled down on his imperial fanaticism, The Washington Examiner reports.

Speaking at a party rally, Erdogan offered three repudiations of the democratic international order. First, he attacked France over its commitment to defend its democratic values and way of life. Second, Erdogan pledged to keep fueling the bloody war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Third, he promised new assaults on Greek sovereignty.

On the first count, Erdogan offered vicious insults to a nation in mourning. France is grappling with the brutal assassination of a teacher by a jihadist for showing his class Charlie Hebdo's Prophet Muhammad cartoon. Defending the Fifth Republic's secular constitutional foundation, President Emmanuel Macron has introduced reforms to obstruct Islamic extremists from enforcing intellectual and sexual segregation. Rightly also recognizing the societal challenges facing many young French Muslims, Macron's actions are both necessary and overdue. There's a basic truth at stake here: A democratic society must protect both the substance and the physical operation of its sacred constitutional values. That is what France is now doing.

Not in Erdogan's eyes, however. Oh no, predictably offering no words of sympathy for the slain teacher, Erdogan instead argued that "Macron needs treatment on a mental level." He continued, "The projection of caricatures insulting our Prophet onto the facades of buildings in France, the quasi-bulwark of liberty and secularism, is abject vulgarity. This is called not liberty, but blatant Islamophobia." Then, in an apparent threat of Islamist violence against his nominal European allies, Erdogan warned that "with the front it has opened against Muslims, Europe is actually preparing its own end. If the European countries want to preserve their positions in the global system, which is being restructured politically and economically, they must at once tackle the affliction of Islamophobia in their systems. Otherwise, this affliction will bring down the entire Europe from France to Germany from the inside."