“A new psychological war is being waged against us,” Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu made a loud statement, commenting on the situation with a mass warning from European countries to their tourists about the danger of terrorist attacks in Turkey and closing their consulates. His statement is cited by the Turkish newspaper Aydinlik, and in it, a high-ranking Turkish official very unequivocally and harshly declares the “destabilizing” policy of the “collective West”, its cooperation with terrorists, as well as the role of the success of Turkish tourism in all this.
Commenting on the decision of England, France, and Germany, as well as the Netherlands, to close their consulates in Turkey at a meeting at the Turkish Gendarmerie Headquarters in Beştepe, the Turkish Minister of Internal Affairs, according to the publication, voiced another reason for the latest international scandal, not unrelated to tourism. According to him, the “despicable attacks on the Koran in Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands”, after which Western countries made statements about the danger of Turkey to their tourists, strangely happened after Turkey announced a goal for 2023 of 60 million tourists, reporting the achieved result of 51.5 million tourists and 46 billion dollars of income from tourism for 2022.
“A psychological war is being waged against Turkey and Turkish tourism,” the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs stressed. Moreover, Mr. Suleiman Soylu sounded almost like a “spy detective”. According to him, it turned out that “an intelligence officer from another country offered jobs to several people who were believed to be Turkish members of ISIS. “The Republic of Turkey was following this point, and several trips were made with those they proposed to recruit, and then this scout left Turkey. When this spy did not get results, he sold this information to the country that first raised the alarm about possible terrorist attacks,” Soylu said. We will remind you that among the first warnings were published by the USA, Germany, and other European countries.
The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs also stated that additional information may appear in this case at any moment. “Turkey knows for sure who this intelligence officer is. In this case, 15 people were detained and 5 are under arrest. In other words, the ambassadors who issued this warning know that there could be a terrorist attack in Turkey, and they also know that the “relevant person” is in a Turkish prison and they could not release him,” he said. It was after this that the embassies started this operation of psychological warfare, the head of the Turkish Ministry of Internal Affairs announced.
Mr. Soylu’s subsequent statements were equally unequivocal — he verbatim accused the West, and primarily the United States, of “feeding” terrorist organizations that threaten Turkey, from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party to ISIS. “They are not ready to give up their plans to create a terrorist state from Iraq to the south of Turkey. But this requires two conditions. The first is to achieve complete dominance in the region, and the second is to destabilize Turkey, which can prevent the formation of this state,” said the head of the Turkish Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“We know who is behind the attack on Istiklal Street, just as we know who is behind the attack on the police house in Hattay. All this is part of a single plan,” Mr. Soylu also stated, adding a rather loud reference to the fact that it is all “part of a grandiose plan” that the Western countries “couldn’t implement back in 1923.” We will remind you that this is the year of the creation of modern Turkey, that is, the Republic of Turkey, and it was created after the Lausanne Peace Treaty, which Germany and France also signed.
“America and the West do not want Turkey to be free and independent. Do you think we don’t know which one of you is behind the attack on Istiklal Street, which one of you asked – I wonder if he did it with our weapons?”, said the head of the Turkish Ministry of Internal Affairs and added that Turkey “is leading an international operation”. The big question is whether such statements can contribute to the prosperity of tourism.