ArmInfo. Russian political scientist, leading expert on the Middle East, Yevgeny Satanovsky, commented on the scandal around ten ambassadors to Turkey.
So, responding to the scandal that broke out due to the threat of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to expel ambassadors of 10 countries who appealed to the Turkish authorities with a joint demand to release from custody a public figure, human rights activist and philanthropist Osman Kavala, Satanovsky expressed his conviction that this is a demonstrative imitation of aggression, but without self-harm and other irreversible consequences.
" What is the "threat" from an authoritative "brother" like? It is like when the offender "bullies" for the sake of appearance, it is outwardly scary, but without harm and other irreversible consequences, after which, having received the desired rollback and assurances that he is the main one on the territory "protected" by him, he graciously agrees to drive off to the starting positions, sometimes with compensation for the moral damage he has declared, sometimes without, but always with noise, revealingly menacing and with appropriate comments from his gofers and outside observers about how cool he is. "said the political scientist.
Erdogan immediately decided to drive a dozen ambassadors of Western countries out of the country for a letter calling for the release of a local human rights activist. Satanovsky drew attention to the fact that then the Turkish leader graciously allowed them to stay after the same ambassadors unanimously confirmed that they did not intend to interfere in any internal affairs of Turkey and were committed to the relevant article of the Vienna Convention. "And in general, do in your country, dear sultan, with whom you want what you want - it's not our business to teach you. Ambassadors, by the way, were serious: from the USA, Canada and Western Europe to New Zealand, which, of course , located far from everyone and dangling in the ocean on the edge of geography, but the player is quite serious by world standards. The human rights activist for whom the ambassadors "harnessed" was, by the way, a real one. And the topics for which he was de facto detained - reconciliation with the Greeks and Armenians, the end of the oppression of the Kurds and everything else in the same spirit, painful for Erdogan, are very, very worthy. Yes, and the devil knows what charges were pressed against him, the situation we had in the Great Terror of the late 30s. So what? The ambassadors easily turned their backs to him. They did it as soon as they were roared at , "the Russian expert noted. At the same time, he is convinced that in the current situation, Russia needs to follow Erdogan's example, and not stand on ceremony with the West, diplomatically, subtly and civilized responding to all their attacks on Moscow.
"As a result, realizing that the domestic leadership, in response to the most rude wrong movements and the most impudent interference in the internal affairs of Russia, does not react and nothing should be expected from it in the style of an authoritarian, wildly irascible and an absolutely unpredictable Turkish president, our "sympathizers" continue to plast us year after year, crush and extinguish us on and on", - said Satanovsky, expressing the conviction that Erdogan's method of action today is more effective and in these realities" at least they are afraid. " Recall that an acute diplomatic crisis arose on October 23, after the embassies of the United States, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Finland, the Netherlands and New Zealand appealed to the Turkish authorities with a joint demand to release from custody a public figure, human rights defender and philanthropist Osman Kavala.
However, this statement angered Erdogan, who on October 23, speaking to his supporters, promised to immediately announce ten ambassadors persona non grata and give the Minister of the Interior the appropriate order. After that, the embassies of the United States and other countries in Ankara issued statements in which they commit to comply with Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which instructs ambassadors not to interfere in the internal affairs of the country in which they work. After that, the scandal began to subside. Note that Kavala has been in prison for 4 years without a sentence for a far-fetched charge of allegedly participating in protests against repressions that followed the attempted military coup in 2016. Kavala himself denies that he acted illegally, and critics of Erdogan argue that his arrest is a vivid example of a large-scale struggle of the authorities with dissidents. Earlier, the Council of Europe issued a final warning to Turkey demanding to comply with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights and release Kavala from custody pending trial.