Turkey and Europe: Human Trafficking on a Scale Not Seen Since the Atlantic Slave Trade

Turkey and Europe: Human Trafficking on a Scale Not Seen Since the Atlantic Slave Trade

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“Turkey has cashed in on the people it has helped make homeless.”

Europe, which ravaged the world for 500 hundred years, exterminating hundreds of millions in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific – Europe, which owes the rest of humanity a debt of blood and treasure that it can never repay, last week announced that its victims should give up all hope of sanctuary from the wars, enforced poverty, civil chaos, and environmental devastation that Europeans have inflicted on the darker and non-Christian peoples of the planet. European Council president Donald Tusk warned millions of refugees from Asia and Africa, “Do not come to Europe... It is all for nothing.” He was putting the last bricks in a wall that is far larger, and vastly more unjust, than anything ever erected in Berlin.

And this week Turkey – whose Ottoman empire was consumed by Europe, and has ever since begged to be accepted as a member of the European tribe – sealed a deal that essentially sells the lives of millions of refugees in exchange for semi-European status and billions of dollars. The Turks accepted $3.8 billion to keep the nearly 3 million refugees that have gathered on its soil from crossing over into Europe, a vastly richer place, but one that claims it cannot absorb any more Africans and Arabs and Kurds and Afghans and others that are non-white and/or non-Christian.

Turkey Still Striving to be Recognized as White

The great bulk of Turkey’s refugees are victims of Turkey’s role in the war against Syria, in alliance with Europe and the United States and the royal oil aristocrats of the Persian Gulf. In effect, Turkey has cashed in on the people it has helped make homeless, and established a human trafficking enterprise on a scale not seen since the Atlantic slave trade. This ghastly crime against humanity is further compounded through blackmail among the thieves and plunderers, as Turkey springs its vast protections racket trap – agreeing to protect Europe from further incursions from the formerly colonized peoples whose labor and lands have fattened Europe and its white settler states for half a millennium.

There is a further condition to Turkey’s cooperation. The regime in Ankara wants Turks – all 75 million of them – to be allowed to enter Europe without visa restrictions. Ankara also demands reconsideration of Turkey’s request to join the European Union. Nearly a century after the French and British divided the Ottoman Turk empire among themselves, Turkey is still striving to be recognized, in European terms, as white. Certainly, Turkey is playing by all the European rules: as a member of NATO, it violates international law and wages aggressive war with impunity; it trafficks in the flesh of its neighbors, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Africans, Afghans – anyone who can be bought, sold or bartered; and yet Turkey holds itself up as a model of civilization. However, the Europeans will never accept Turkey into the fold, because it is Muslim and not-quite-white, and so Turkey will have to prowl and growl on the periphery – a wannabe European.

Or, have a revolution, and come to its senses.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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