The theory on the subject makes it clear that Islamism is bound to turn Turkey into a belligerent state. This theory avers that Islamism normalises the state of war, making it permanent feature.

A popular saying in Turkey suggests that we should get used to living with earthquakes. In political terms, this means getting used to war.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a recent speech, before his meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin last Thursday, that he wished to fight the Syrian government more openly. In that speech he challenged Putin to step out of the fray in Syria’s Idlib province and allow Turkey and Syria to fight it out one on one, thus laying bare the Turkish decision makers’ appetite for war.

Over the last three years, Turkey had focused on Russia in its policy, becoming a persistent source of pain for the NATO bloc. This made none happier than Putin.

But in the last few weeks, Turkey has come to the point where its Syrian proxies are targeting Russians and battling  militias from Iran and from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in Idlib.

If this amounts to more than lashing out in retribution for the killing of its soldiers, then Ankara has performed a volte-face and is now letting its NATO allies know that it is ready to inflict pain on Russia and its allies.

The important part here is that neither Russia nor Iran ever expected Turkey to come completely, willingly and permanently to their ranks. The relations between Turkey and these two countries is superficial and based mainly on economic and political pragmatism.

But, even worse for Turkey, Ankara has failed to fully convince the West with its latest moves. Turkish foreign policy has followed a series of zigzags for nearly six years, and the Western bloc is naturally suspicious of a policy that does not remain consistent from one day to the next.

At this point Turkey is nothing more than a buffer country for the West.

If Turkey willingly plays a spoiling role for Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in Syria, of course it will receive encouragement from some Westerners.

The real problem here is that Turkey has failed to realise that its attempts to play the two sides off against each other are not free of political costs. Turkey’s pointless zigzags have not come without a price, and the costs to the country’s economy and society have been mounting.

A critical point here is the politicisation of the military. Of course, the armed forces must be accountable to the civil administration. But that should not mean that civilians dictate the army’s tactics.

It is Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, formerly chief of general staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, who has de facto command of the Turkish army – not as the leader who sets its policy, but effectively as its commander. In other words, it is Akar, technically a civilian leader, who is heading the Turkish army’s operation in Syria.

The government has tried to establish a new regime through the concept of a struggle with the Gülen religious movement, which it accuses of orchestrating  the July 15, 2016 coup attempt. The war in Syria will serve a similar purpose.

I do not believe that the like of the militarist, nationalist wave that is swelling in Turkey today was seen even in the days of Turkey’s war for Independence. It is vital to see that this wave has created a new society.

What is stranger is that individuals from every faction in Turkey appear to have adhered to Erdoğan’s new militarist-Islamist-Turkist wave: some from religious circles who have grown angry with the president still subscribe to his religious views, while there are secularists who appreciate his anti-migrant policies.

In short, society has happily welcomed this new wave.

There were two great parameters holding Turkey accountable to reason.  One of them, foreign policy, has collapsed. The other is the economy. But in the face of Erdoğan’s great populist wave, we should not place too much faith in economic reality to keep the ship on course.

Clearly, Erdoğan has charted a new destination for Turkey, and there is nothing for us to do but wait and see where his course leads us.

Nearly lost in this week’s chaos along Turkey’s Greek border was the way European officials sided strongly with Greece in its efforts to keep migrants from reaching Europe with the use of tear gas, live fire and aggressive Coast Guard vessels.

European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday expressed support for Greek actions, describing Greece as Europe’s shield. The next day, the European Union laid out 700 million euros to strengthen Greece’s borders and keep out refugees, while offering just 60 million euros in humanitarian aid for the 2 million displaced people in Idlib.

Most observers put this prioritisation of security down to widespread fears that another refugee wave washing over Europe would give far-right political parties another boost. In Italy, Germany, France, The Netherlands and other countries these parties have surged in recent years largely thanks to their anti-Muslim stance and gained greater support after about 1.5 million predominantly Muslim migrants arrived in 2015 and 2016.

In 2018, anti-Muslim incidents increased by 52 percent in France and 74 percent in Austria. A 2018 study by a Leipzig research centre on extremism found a sharp rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in Germany, helping fuel a surge for the anti-immigrant, far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Among Germany’s 4.7 million Muslims, around 3 million are of Turkish origin, more than in any country outside Turkey.

“There is obviously a really growing tide of Islamophobia in Europe,” Ayhan Kaya, politics professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, told Ahval in a podcast. “And now it’s becoming even bigger.”

Anti-Muslim sentiment emerged in the West during the 1970s oil embargo, then increased after the 9/11 attacks and received a major boost with the 2015 refugee crisis, which coincided with a slew of deadly Islamist bomb attacks across Europe and the emergence of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Anti-Muslim organisations like Stop Islamisation of Denmark and the English Defence League soon popped up to boost the efforts of far-right parties.

“Their ideas have been incorporated into – and in some instances fed by – the machinery of the modern state, which surveils and supervises Muslims, casting them as threats to the life of the nation,” Narzanin Massoumi, a sociologist and co-editor of the book “What is Islamophobia?”, wrote in the New York Times this week.

In Kaya’s 2019 book, “Populism and Heritage in Europe”, far-right supporters in several European countries expressed fears of the infiltration of Islam and described Muslim migrants as extremists.

“Portrayals in the media and by far-right parties as terrorists and criminals, and as taking their jobs, have shaped their views,” he said. “The framing is the decisive element here.”

This perspective has also been driven by considerable antagonism. On one side, far-right parties, aided by questionable media coverage, portray migrants as Muslim invaders intent on taking European jobs and plotting terrorist attacks.

On the other, leaders like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan depict European officials as racist and prejudiced against Muslims in particular, while pro-government news outlets pump out anti-Western conspiracy theories.

“Erdoğan at one point called Europeans ‘Nazi remnants,’” Lehigh University professor Henri Barkey told Ahval in a podcast, adding that this only created more tension and ill will. “Again, the Europeans, or the West in general, is put as the enemy. If you really think that they’re the enemy, then pull out, find yourself new allies.”

Erdoğan is not the only leader to engage in hostile rhetoric. In 2018, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer suggested that Islam did not belong in Germany. And last month French President Emanuel Macron declared that France does not want Muslim men who “won’t shake the hands of women” or Muslim women who “won’t go to a male doctor,” which some observers saw as Islamophobic, rather than an example of French secularism.

Just as Erdoğan feels he needs to stand up for his people, European supporters of far-right groups believe they need to do the same. As detailed in his book, Kaya found that what drives far-right voters is socio-economic marginalisation and humiliation and a subsequent quest for dignity – largely the same things that tend to drive Muslim migrants toward radicalisation.

“If these things were happening back in the 1960s, these two groups would collaborate together in an alliance,” said Kaya. “These are actually two groups negatively impacted by the same detrimental effects of globalisation … Some are using Islam as a form of radicalism. Some are using nationalism as a form of radicalism. But the common denominator here is that they are not happy with the political structure.”

In years past, the main terrorist concern in the West was Muslims. Today it may well be radicals from the far-right. A November report from the Global Terrorism Index found that right-wing terrorism in the West had more than tripled in the last five years and that in 2018 far-right attacks accounted for more than 17 percent of such incidents, while Islamist groups accounted for less than 7 percent.

When we think of terrorism today we may be more likely to think of far-right attacks like the car ploughing through protesters in Charlottesville, the stabbing and anti-Muslim violence in Chemnitz, Germany, or the Christchurch mosque attacks last year. Erdoğan showed horrifying video footage of that attack at election rallies and argued that it had been organised by the West, which he said had given the shooter his manifesto.

The most recent major attack in Europe came last month in Hanau, Germany, where nine people were killed at two shisha bars, including at least four people of Turkish-Kurdish origin. According to his online profile, suspected shooter Tobias Rathjen was a racist neo-Nazi who sought to rid the world of Muslims. This echoed the view of Norwegian attacker Anders Breivik, who killed 77 mostly young people in 2011 and has said his assault was meant to save Europe from becoming “Eurabia”.

Yet the Hanau attack, Germany’s deadliest incident in years, seems to have spurred a shift in tone. Both Germany and Turkey have been relatively muted in their response. Erdoğan said Turkey was keeping a close eye on developments in Germany, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel blamed the poison of racist hate for many crimes in Germany.

“This is the first time we see in Germany that racism has really become an issue to be discussed in public in politics at the highest level,” said Kaya, noting President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s acknowledgement of German Islamophobia at the Hanau victims’ memorial on Wednesday.

The day before, the German and Turkish interior ministers issued a joint statement affirming their willingness to cooperate on efforts to curb hatred. “Peaceful co-existence requires mutual awareness and appreciation,’’ the statement said. “We are calling for the fight against right-wing extremism and xenophobia to be pursued with determination.”

Turkey’s leader has in recent days suggested he might allow the 2 million displaced people in Syria’s Idlib province to enter Europe, which could unleash another spiral of radicalisation. Kaya called for a move away from such threats, as well as the use of Islamophobia or Islamism as a tool to rally one’s community.

“We need civic approaches,” he said. “We need to really be critical against all kinds of civilizational, religious, culturalist rhetoric. We need a civil rhetoric immediately.”

The EU has a responsibility to urgently address the migrant crisis on the Greek islands and the problems facing refugees in Turkey by revising the bloc’s 2016 agreement with Ankara, wrote René Wildangel, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

While the agreement fulfilled the EU’s key goal of decreasing migration from Turkey to Greece, Wildangel wrote, the closure of access to other EU states and the Balkans, essentially left Greece alone with continuous arrivals on its islands.

According to the 2016 deal, the EU promised the allocation of €3 billion in aid to Turkey to help migrants. The deal also included the end of visa restrictions applied to Turkish citizens when travelling to Europe as of June 2016, but the visa restrictions still remain. Furthermore, both parties agreed to “re-energise” Turkey’s EU bid.

Turkey is home to some 3.6 million Syrian refugees and the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened last month to send millions of refugees to Europe citing the EU’s failure to honour parts of the deal. Thousands of migrants have amassed at neighbouring Greece’s eastern border, where clashes have erupted between Greek police and migrants, since.

In the face of threats by Ankara, the EU must end the unsustainable situation on the islands and not deal with the current crisis by military means, Wildangel said.

The European Commission and member states have initially and wrongfully focused on reinforcing Greek border protection, as well as the capacity of the Turkish navy, he added.

Looking at the Greek islands, where “42,000 people are stuck in “hotspots” that the authorities originally created to identify and register new arrivals before relocating them to other EU member states,” Wildangel wrote, the bloc must move to immediately resettle the most vulnerable.

In doing so, he said, the sides should abandon the deal’s malfunctioning logic of deportation and resettlement.

“Secondly, the EU needs to acknowledge that the arrangement with Turkey is not working as envisioned in 2016 and needs to be revised,’’ he wrote.

Turkey has been an official EU candidate country since 1999 and has maintained a customs union deal with the bloc since January 1996. Accession negotiations formally began in October 2005, however have stalled in the last few years due to what is being called Turkey’s failure to comply with required criteria pertaining to the EU candidacy.

Since Turkey’s accession talks have become a very distant prospect, the EU-Turkey deal should now “exclusively focus on support for refugees and their protection in Turkey,’’ Wildangel added.

The EU “facility” for refugees in Turkey, its financial package, is the only part of the deal that has worked: the EU had disbursed almost half of the €6 billion in financial support it pledged to Turkey for the facility. Much of the other €3 billion is already earmarked for specific projects. These funds are intended to support the most vulnerable refugees in Turkey, as well as host communities.

The EU should massively expand the EU “facility” for refugees in Turkey as part of its financial package, the analyst said.