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The Middle East 'mastermind' who worries Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his team apparently see the Middle East not as chaos populated by many independent actors, but as a chessboard whose men are controlled by an unseen power.
Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan talks to the media in Istanbul February 3, 2014. Dozens of their colleagues are in prison or on trial, thousands of faceless opponents hound them on Twitter, and phone calls from government officials warn them over their coverage - all hazards of the trade for Turkey's journalists. Government critics who refuse to be muzzled can find themselves sacked. Others avoid trouble, such as the broadcaster which screened a documentary on penguins last June while police sprayed
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Turkey’s political leaders have the habit of taking journalists into their jets and giving them interviews in the air. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tends to invite only journalists who support him. During his official trip to Latvia and Estonia Oct. 22-24, he once again had an entourage of sympathetic journalists who took down his important and interesting comments. While addressing the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, in particular the conflict between the Islamic State (IS) and the Kurds of Kobani, Erdogan said that there was a “trap” for Turkey, and no ordinary one.

“We have to think well on this: Probably there is a different logic that set up this trap, this scheme. In other words, I don’t think that the mindset of the PYD [Democratic Union Party, the dominant Kurdish group in Kobani] is that formidable. Probably there is a mastermind. You have to figure that out.”

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