 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel and this is History is Here to Help. I'm talking about the Turkey, Azerbaijan, one nation, two states. So actually, this is the first of two shows we're going to do on the Caucasus. The trouble in the Caucasus, may I say, with George Kaysen. And I want to warn you now that George is Armenian, which is going to affect all his comments throughout. Okay, George, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, you want me to start? I start with, what is Turkey and why is Turkey so important in this conversation? Recep Tayyip Erdogan this last week at a rally in Turkey. He got up and he said to his people that Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire and that he wants it to be back under Turkey's hands. Plus, he included Thessalonica, which is in Greece, Macedonia, right? And that these are all part of the Turkish heritage and should be back under the hand of Turkey. So that's what pretty much predicated me to get into this. And he didn't even mention Armenia. It was just Gaza, which if he's going to include Gaza, and he's going to include parts of Syria, which you know, he's taken over, and Northern Iraq that he's got his troops in, that Israel is part of this. So this is this is what predicated this show to do. The illusions of grandeur. And you have to know that Turkey is divided by the Bosphorus and one side is the West side, which is the quality European side, not particularly Muslim. And on the right hand side, that is the East side of the Bosphorus. That's that's the Asian side or the you know, the Middle Eastern side. And that is largely Muslim. And he is Muslim. And the other thing is, I just want to quote one of our guests years ago, probably 10 years ago, an Israeli guy, who said that when you think of the Middle East, you always have to think of Turkey. Turkey is quote the capstone and quote of the Middle East. I don't know if you could say that today, because Turkey, you know, in many ways, it's very European. But in other ways, it's very influential. And so Turkey does have an effect. Turkey is kind of a European enclave in the middle of the Middle East. That's what it is. And maybe because of that West side of the Bosphorus phenomenon, any event, it's an important country. Erdogan is is an autocrat. Erdogan makes makes and dissolves relationships overnight. Erdogan has been friendly and unfriendly with Trump on a regular basis. But where is that all going to go? What other relationships are relevant for Erdogan? I just wanted to say that Treaty of Lausanne, 1923, which was signed by the Ottoman Empire and and the allies, right? It restricted Turkey from various things. Mining for oil in the Baxi limited the borders of Turkey, but they say international law after 100 years, right? It's no longer enforced. So in July of this year, that was 100 years since the Treaty of Lausanne. And once that treaty is no longer in effect, Erdogan, even though you're saying he's a paper tiger, he's got the largest army, I think, or the second largest army military in NATO after the United States. So he's got a lot of power and he's able to throw his weight around, right? So he's, you know, he made some of the things that he says he wants to put them into effect, right? And and he's not like Putin. I mean, he's, Erdogan is in good in power, right? I mean, he was ostensibly reelected, right? Just recently. So what are his relationships? This is what I wanted to get into, too. Let me add one point to what you just said. Yeah, he may not be able to achieve all that he aspires to. But with the army and with his strange kind of diplomacy, he is not being the capstone of the Middle East. He's being a troublemaker in the Middle East. He's a troublemaker. And, you know, it's kind of a statement about the Middle East these days. There's so many hot spots think of Nagorno-Karabakh. You know, it's just a hot spot. We don't realize it until maybe it's even too late when people are killing each other and doing ethnic cleansing and having blitz grieve wars and developing armies that are much too powerful for the geography involved. So the Middle East is really a wreck. And if you thought that Erdogan could be a leader, could be a peacemaker, could be somebody who will have kind of a moral capstone effect on the Middle East, not a chance. It's not a chance. He's just a troublemaker. I'm sorry. Go ahead. As I alluded to, what happened? I know Iran is planning to eliminate Israel, right? For years they talk about it, right? But they say that sometimes the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don't know. And part of Erdogan's plan, and it's pretty obvious to me, right, that he wants to foment problems between the Arabs and Israel, right? Because one of the things that's really critical, with the drilling of oil in the Black Sea that now Turkey's able to do, and with that Baku Sehan pipeline, Michael, please put up that, yeah, that is the oil pipeline that comes from Azerbaijan, from Baku, goes to Sehan, and then from there, boats take that oil to Israel, right? And Azerbaijan supplies, I think, about 60% of the oil that Israel uses right now. And then Israel has high technology, so they supply Azerbaijan with armaments and very good drones. Israel's got high technology. Saudi Arabia is right next to Israel. They may not be contiguous, but you've got Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. So if there is rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which the Biden administration is working on, and even Trump, as much as I don't like that guy, they were working on with his son-in-law on rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. If that can be done, then Israel will be supplied with oil from Saudi Arabia because there'll be allies, right? There'll be rapprochement, right? That will be very detrimental to Turkey because that's a cheaper way, that's an easier way to bring oil to Israel than that long pipeline and then boats and, you know, all of that. So Erdogan is a very wily guy. He knows, as my brother used to say, follow the money. Economically, it's to Turkey's interest to prevent any rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and also the Gulf states. And he's said many times he's against Israel getting to be friendly with the Gulf states. Well, he's against Israel in general. Yes. He's harboring Hamas. He's supporting Hamas. He's doing rhetoric in favor of Hamas. I don't know why Israel would ever trust him or whether we would ever trust him to, you know, be consistent in his foreign policy. He's like a chameleon. Exactly. He's a chameleon. That's the word precisely, Joe. You hit it on the button. But you see, Aliyev has now, he's got lobbyists in Washington that are trying to convince Israel and Jewish organizations to become more friendly with Turkey, you know, because it's so powerful, right? But I mean, it's not in Turkey's interest for peace. And, you know, bottom line is divide and conquer. If you can keep just like, what's his name? Putin. You can keep people fighting between each other, right? Then you can keep the upper hand. The minute they get to be friends, right? You're out of the picture. And Erdogan, he creates this. From my perception, he creates these problems. And then he acts as a peacemaker, right? Peacemaker between. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To enhance his own power. There you go. That's what, I think, enhance his own power. And that's what his long term agenda, right? Even though you say that he doesn't have the power to do it is to be Fatih the Conqueror. I mean, there you have it, I think, George. That's it. These guys, including Putin and the countries in the Caucasus, even including Armenia and Azerbaijan, they have leaders who are in a culture of changing their spots every time you look changing their relationships, you know, looking to create divisions and enhance their own power that way. And the Middle East is rife with that. And the problem is that there really needs to be some kind of overarching, morally consistent power, hopefully like the U.S. On top of all of that, to say now, boys, you know, you really have to behave yourselves. And we are here for consistency. We are here for, you know, moral standards. The problem is we aren't really there enough. We have to step up to that because otherwise, guys like Erdogan and Putin will rule the roost and create these divisions, create these wars and try to enhance their own power and its chaos. Precisely. That's what, I mean, you know, Armenian, this guy, Pashinyan, he was elected democratically and the oligarchs who are very close with Putin, they want to get rid of him. And the same thing in Ukraine, you know, because Zelensky was elected, you know, democratically. So bottom line is, and Trump is close with Putin, as we well know, and he's close with Erdogan. He has all these business interests, hotels and stuff in Turkey. So Trump was also advancing his own personal business interests in these countries by sidling up to these dictators. And, you know, we'll have to see what happens next year. I'm concerned about Trump being president again. So this, you've encapsulated this in a nutshell. Now, I don't think there's anything more to say. Bottom line is, you know, my view is that Erdogan had his hand in this recent massacre in Israel with all these young kids at a music festival, right? Because it's in his interest to create havoc, to create problems between the Arab states. And Erdogan has said many times that he was against Israel making friends with the Gulf states, Qatar and then that's Qatar, Bahrain, you know, all the Abraham Accords. So pushing Abraham Accords is very positive, right, for Israel, because it, I mean, she's always been in it. Also for the United States, it means a liberal world order. It means a rule, a rules based region that's really very positive. What about Turkey and Iran? What's the relationship there? I would say it's undercover, you know. I mean, Haqqan Fidan has long term associations with the top crazies in Iran, right? And he's the new foreign minister. Erdogan is playing a game, as you said, he's a chameleon. He knows how to, brilliant, brilliant strategy. He knows strategy. He's working with Iran because, I mean, I mean, do we really know just our CIA know what Erdogan is doing or is because they have so, the location of Turkey is so central, right, to everything, right, that we just ignore that. But I mean, I mean, just being Armenian, I mean, isn't enough for me to say that if you look under the surface, right, there are connections between and Erdogan is, to him, everything has to do with Tourism, Turkishness, and Islam, Islamist. Because, you know, there was a time somebody in Turkey was saying that so and so is Israeli, right? And they said, no, he's Armenian. And this official said same difference. In other words, if you're not Muslim, except for Kurds, of course, then you don't matter. And an Islamist like Erdogan, what did he, Hagia Sophia, but Ataturk had turned it into a museum. He turned it back into a mosque. His two things are Islamism, world Islamism, and becoming the caliphate, because he wants to go all the way to work China with all the Turkish countries and all the Muslim countries, formerly under the caliphate. That's what he's doing. So if you understand where he's coming from, right? And then he plays with Iran. Well, is he entertaining Iran along with the leaders of Hamas along with Putin? I have a recollection that he gets those three together in Ankara and they talk strategy together. That strategy is really terribly negative and certainly in favor of Hamas. Precisely. That's what I've been trying to say. I mean, I try to remove myself from the Armenian this many times to try to figure what's going on, not as an Armenian, but as a historical person. And you've hit it on the button, Jay. There is collusion now between Iran's crazies, Erdogan's people, and Hamas. Iran's been planning this thing against Israel for a long time. But the timing, July 2023, end of the Treaty of Lausanne, all the removal of all the restrictions, the oil drilling in the Black Sea, the limits of Turkey's borders. I mean, Erdogan keeps talking about the islands in the Mediterranean, the Greek islands. He wants those back. He wants Thessalonica back. He wants Macedonia back. And sometimes rhetoric. Putin for years was talking about getting back to the Soviet Union. And then he invaded Crimea. He invaded Ukraine. And that war is ongoing. I really don't understand. No matter how much we give to Ukraine, I don't think they're going to be able to get Putin out of there. I mean, the land he's got already, right? And even Kissinger, I mean, I'm not a Republican, but Kissinger said it's going to be impossible to get Russia out of those eastern Ukraine, right? So try to make a settlement. Try to settle this so that it doesn't get any worse. But how much, I mean, we can supply Ukraine unless we go in ourselves. You're getting off the track. I'm getting off the track. Thank you. So bottom line, get me back on track, Jake. What do you think of the collusion between, as you alluded to, Erdogan, Hamas, and Iran? I mean, give us your percent. What I want to throw into the pot here is the fact that the Ukraine campaign has cost a lot for Russia. You know, they've lost 50,000 troops already been killed. They've lost virtually thousands of tanks. Somehow they're paying Iran for the drones. Iran has advanced drones and using that. But at the end of the day, I think they're limping along and they're into a war of attrition. So you have to see that as affecting their extraterritorial aspirations. And while he can go and try to make peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, it's only talk. The EU also tried to make peace between the two. And apparently that was also only talk. So that what we have here is a hotspot created in substantial part by Erdogan between two neighboring Caucasus countries, which is very violent, which is very brutal and inhumane, and the UN doesn't say boo about it. The United States does not have 100,000 people showing up in Washington protesting what's going on in the Caucasus. Not even one person is protesting the inhumanity there. People are starving, have been starving in Nagorno-Karabakh. I mean, literally starving. They've been cut off of food, medicine, and left to starve in this area of a, well, a couple of hundred thousand people. And they're being starved into a takeover by Azerbaijan. So Armenians, 1915 same thing, starving Armenians. So in the past, in the days of the USSR, Putin or his predecessor would have been able to put a cap on that, would have been able to say, no, boys, you can't fight. You're both Soviet satellite countries, all of you. And this is the way it worked in the day of the satellite countries. And so now when Russia is no longer the USSR, when it doesn't, these countries are not satellite countries. They are arguably independent, sovereign countries. But for cultural reasons, and who knows what reasons, maybe economic reasons, maybe just old fashioned hate reasons, they fight with each other and they murder each other and they engage in the most horrible brutality. And Russia is not in a position to control or diminish that or maintain any kind of peace and tranquility in those satellite, former satellite countries. And I think that's really part of it. So you have to see this as a failure of Russia to do anything meaningful in places where violence will always pop up. And then you see everyone and he doesn't care about them. He's happy enough to see them go violent on each other. He's happy enough to see them get involved in wars as long as it suits him. He's not a moral leader will never ever, for a moment in his life, be a moral leader. Turkey as a capstone of the Middle East is a failure, because he is playing these chameleon games all the time. And the reason he can do that is because Putin and Russia have failed. And because Putin is admired in this Iran, I mean in this Ukraine situation, and he's focused on Ukraine and his power, some of his soldiers dead, all his armaments have been destroyed. He's still hung up on pushing into Ukraine. And the West wants to get him out of there. But as you said, Putin is distracted. His power is diminished. And each of these powers, as much as they talk to each other, they want to be on top of the book. Iran wants to be powerful. Erdogan wants to be powerful. Putin wants, you go back, these were the three empires that the Persian, Iran, Russia, and Ottoman, those are the three major, had taken over a good part of that world and Balkans as well, Middle East and Balkans and Caucasus. So you've hit it on the button, Jay. And how does Donald Trump play into all this? His buddies, I mean, he doesn't see enough friends with Iran, but he's friends with Turkey, Erdogan, and Putin. And Saudi. Yeah. Now, the Saudis are key. This is why I'm saying that rapprochement that Chancellor Trump's son-in-law worked on, right? And I don't like Trump, but that was Abraham McCord's is very positive. And Biden administration wants to expand this, right? But that would be so great for Israel and for United States if Saudi Arabia and Israel get to be friends. And then that oil will flow just a few miles over that ocean, I think. You know, the borders are very close. Well, you know what comes out of this discussion seems to me, and we're only touching on it. We'll be back for more about these changing loyalties, about these changing diplomatic manipulations and strategies, is that the Middle East is really in a state of chaos. You know, years ago Obama wanted to do the big pivot, and he sort of, he said, let's pivot to Asia. But in doing that, he pivoted away from the Middle East. And so now we find that we cannot turn our backs on the Middle East because of all these people arguing with each other and having wars and using proxies and agents of the countries. And, you know, it just, it dawns on me, and maybe I don't have support for this, but it dawns on me that the whole affair with Israel, the one democracy in the area, okay, is that it is at the wrong end of a war that's generated by other countries and other interests for their own purposes. And they use the Palestinian issue and they use the anti-Semitism issue when it's really a matter of oil and power and trying to get proxies do what they can't do themselves. And that includes Erwan, it includes Iran, and, you know, Hezbollah and Hamas are only tools. They're being used, they're being played by these other more powerful countries who have their own strange and aggressive agendas. And they always have and they always will do that. And I think poor Israel at the wrong end of these kinds of machinations we've been talking about. Cicely. And Armenia is also a democracy under Pashinian, you know? But I mean, bottom line is you hit it on the button, Jay. It's all has to do with oil and money. That's what it's all about. And as I alluded to those pipelines, we should push as the United States to get Israel and Saudi Arabia to become friends. Unfortunately, with this with this thing and this massacre and what's going on in Gaza, that put a damper on that. But that's where we should push peace. We should, despite the other players who don't really want peace, we should push for peace, as we've been trying to do, but we have not been successful. So I'll leave it at that, Jay, but you know, you pretty much encapsulated, you know. Well, let's talk about our next discussion here. Our next discussion, which I find fascinating is the interaction, maybe that's to light a word, between Armenia, which you care about a lot, and Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Pyret. Yeah. Those places are really interesting, because aside from, you know, the territorial disputes and the brutality between, especially, Azerbaijan and Nagorno, but also including Armenia that have been going on a long time. And there's no sign that anybody's going to be happy. As a matter of fact, I think the people in Nagorno have largely emigrated to Armenia, and the people in Armenia are not in good shape, either. They like to leave, too. The whole area is going to turn out to be a desert. And what is troubling about it is that that has secondary effect. It has secondary effect on that area in the Caucasus, on southern Russia. It has secondary effect on the Middle East. So we can turn our back on that. We should be paying more attention to it now than less. And we read in the paper, you know, what is Nagorno, what is that? Who cares? But it's not that we can say who cares. We can't say that, because oil is involved, because all these geopolitical agencies are involved, and we have to look at it, we have to participate. And when I say have to, I mean, the United States as a beacon of democracy and of the rules-based world really has to pay attention and be involved. That's why it's so ridiculous that we can't get it together and provide funding for Israel. The one democracy in the Middle East and Ukraine, the one democracy, well, the important democracy on Russia's West border. I don't understand why our Congress doesn't understand what you and I are talking about. They should watch these shows. But anyway, our next show is going to deal with Armenia. I know it's close to your heart. And we're going to find out what has happened, what is happening, what is likely to happen, and how that's going to affect all the outlying areas, right? Yeah, and Armenians and Azeris were very close in the Soviet Union. They lived next to each other in peace. It was only after the Soviet Union broke up that they started being at each other's throats. Lots of intermarriages between Armenians and even though there were two different religious backgrounds. I mean, that's that we'll get into that the next show. Okay. Yeah. Thank you today. It's important to recover this, George. Thank you for raising the issue. Thank you for having us look at these things because it's part of it's part of being globally conscious. Thank you, Shay. Yeah. Hello, hi, George. Hello, hi for now. Yeah, till next show.