President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ushered in the new year, pledging to employ his country’s military to secure Turkey’s place in a rebalanced new world order.
Mr. Erdogan spelled out his vision when he inserted himself on December 30 into an address by his defense minister, Hulusi Akar, to several hundred masked Turkish and Azeri military officers in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
Speaking on the loudspeaker of Mr. Akar’s handphone that the defense minister held up to the microphone, Mr. Erdogan compared Turkish military interventions, foreign bases and/or participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions in lands of the former Soviet Union, Kosovo, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Qatar to the creation during World War One of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus by Enver Pasha, the Ottoman war minister.
