Commentary: Why is Turkey so interested in Afghanistan?

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Why is Turkey so interested in Afghanistan?
- Afghanistan is called “the Graveyard of Nations”. After Russia, the US, too, failed to tame this wild country.
- Taliban’s victory is not a local event, its shocks will be felt in the entire Moslem world.
- Taliban is a medieval supposedly Sunni institution, which has no respect for life, law, women, or welfare of its citizens.
- Turkey has been heavily involved in Afghanistan through NATO missions.
- Recently, Ankara gave up on a futile quest to guard Kabul Airport, as the Taliban refused to concede to the mission.
- However, President Erdogan’s strange interest in playing a role in Afghanistan’s fate continues despite massive objections across the political spectrum.
- Turkey and Afghanistan have neither geographic nor historic ties.
- Erdogan’s primary purpose is to become the interlocutor between Taliban and Western states to make money and to avert US sanctions.
- The second objective is to bolster his self-declared credentials as the self-declared Leader of the Sunni Moslem World.
- Cozy relations with Taliban pose two threats: More migration and re-awakening of Sunni jihadist movements in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.