never been any evidence to suggest that, at the time Erdogan wrote the article, Iraq was a source of anything but its own domestic misery.

Nevertheless, Erdogan saw fit to join in the lie that Iraq was stubborn about providing information about “chemical and biological elements it is known to possess”, using that as a pretext to whip the hounds of war in Turkey. He wrote at length about the amount of effort he put in to try and convince Turkish lawmakers to agree to his plan to allow US ground forces to launch an invasion from Turkish soil into northern Iraq, and for Turkish troops to contribute to the invasion of a fellow Muslim country. Most of his attempts failed to convince Turkish parliamentarians, although Turkish airspace wasAs bad as Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime was, Iraq was at least stable and secure, and violence against the Iraqi people, though appalling, was nowhere near as traumatic or catastrophic as it is today.

Indeed, no one can discount the possibility that an uprising may have occurred against Saddam just as they occurred against many other dictators across the region during the Arab Spring had Iraq not been torn to shreds. Instead, Erdogan has his hands stained in the blood of Iraqis slaughtered senselessly since 2003 alongside the US and its allies, and that is because he supported the invasion and opened up Turkish airspace to be used to reshape modern Iraq by pounding it with bombs.

While Turkey has supported the Syrian people admirably under Erdogan’s leadership,