, Columnist
Why Erdogan Seeks to Provoke European Leaders
The Turkish leader's threats are hollow, but he's playing to a domestic audience.
Seeking maximum powers.
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"Go live in better neighborhoods. Drive the best cars. Live in the best houses," Erdogan told a rally in Eskisehir last week, addressing not his immediate audience but the 4.6 million-strong Turkish diaspora in Western Europe. "Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been providing plenty of fodder lately for that fringe of people who believes Europe is in danger of Islamization. The threat is overblown, but it serves the Turkish president's political agenda to provoke European leaders into paroxysms of outrage.