Erdogan losing his marbles: "Why I care about Syria so much? Simple. We are the remnants of the Ottomans, the descendants of the Seljuks, & the descendants of the Ottomans"

"... It may be natural for the Arabs to act in a sectarian manner but Turkey is a secular country at its foundations. The former head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deniz Baykal says that secularism should be applied not only to the Turkish interior but also to the country’s foreign policy.All Turkish analysts, even those that are close to the AKP, agree that Turkey has pursued a sectarian foreign policy and that the further Turkey moves from Europe, the closer it gets to the Muslim and Middle Eastern swamp, which is filled with religious and ethnic sensitivities and quarrels......
The true reformist face of Turkey under the AKP was uncovered after a short period: more Islamism at the expense of secularism, more ethnic solidarity at the expense of coexistence with the Kurds, and more religious solidarity at the expense of cohesion with the Alawis.
After the October 2011 Van earthquake, many young Kurds were forced to emigrate westward. They went to the town of Emet in Kutahya province to work in construction. But they have been subjected to harassment in the streets and at construction sites. So they were forced to leave. Ali Toboz said in the newspaper Radikal that the ethnic logic triumphed and that “the Kurds left so the situation improved.”
The approach of AKP Islamists toward the Kurdish ethnic problem was like that of previous governments. With Erdogan’s government, the Kurdish issue has become a phobia. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is busy studying the geographic distribution of sects and ethnicities in Syria. Naturally, he has put even more effort in studying Turkey’s sectarian and ethnic map, as have all Turkish leaders since 1923.
There was an incident last week in the town of Surgu, Malatya. It was Ramadan and the town’s masrahati [the one who signals the time to eat during Ramadan] stood in front of an Alawi-Kurdish house and beat the drum signaling the time for Suhoor [morning meal during Ramadan] and called out for the people to “get up for Suhoor.” The people in the house got up and told the masrahati to stop beating the drum because they do not fast. And the problems started. The next day, about 60 young people gathered in front of the Alawi-Kurdish house and started stoning it while shouting “death to the Alawis, death of the Kurds” and “there is no place for you here. Leave or we will kill you.” The incident repeated itself the next day.
The official reaction was that it was an isolated incident, not deserving of attention. But in reality that’s not true. There has been many such incidents in front of Alawi homes whereby threats are issued that the Alawis must fast or they will be killed.
In the August 1 edition of Milliyet newspaper, Mehves Evin wrote that the attackers were incited by the authorities’ Sunni policies and that the incident was not investigated, which encourages the repeat of such sectarian incidents.....(Continue, here)"