Some observers expect a military confrontation between Turkey and Greece as a result of the conflict over control of oil and gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean, which was basically a dispute over demarcating the airspace and territorial waters in the Aegean Sea. The conflict has aggravated at present due to these new factors — I mean exploration for oil and gas.

In any case, it will not be the first confrontation of its kind, in the event it occurs, as the history of military confrontations between the two countries over the Aegean Sea is long and extends from the 1974 war until the skirmishes these days over gas exploration and the war of words and hostilities on the Mediterranean Sea waters.

Erdogan is taking advantage of religious sentiments around the world to produce a religious discourse, which he is using to serve his expansionist project and political agendas, such as his expected war with Greece, which he will not hesitate to depict as a holy war between unbeliever and Islam.

His objective is to mobilize and exploit the religious sentiments and feelings of the Islamic street, direct it to serve his political gains and goals, and mobilize Muslim Brotherhood support from all corners of the world. Indeed, in the depths of our societies and nations, especially in the societies of moderate Arab countries, where they too are facing Erdogan's expansionist ambitions and his greed for a role that restores to Turkey its lost hegemony and prestige.

He is striving to achieve these ambitions by exercising political and sectarian immorality and double standards by crying over Jerusalem, reviving intra-trade with Israel; lamenting about the Syrians, bartering with their political demands, and contradicting himself by claiming to be virtuous at a time when prostitution and sex trade are flourishing in Turkey!

Whoever observes the political developments in our Arab region over a period of a decade will read Erdogan’s historical ambitions by opening fronts in Arab countries around us. Turkey is present in Iraq, Syria and Libya and is trying to create a front in Yemen in addition to its military presence in Qatar.

This is actually an imminent danger that coincides with “Turkish soft power” that has seeped into our Arab and Gulf societies, in particular in the past few years, whether through tourism, soap serials, or its commercial exports, and inundating of our markets with Turkish goods.

Today, Erdogan believes that he is carrying out a sacred historic and ideological mission that will create an empire from Turkey to guard the Muslim peoples and countries.

Of course, his dreams will not stop short of leadership over the Arab and Islamic region. This dream is part of a great scheme that he is striving to achieve, using the sentiments of fools, trading with the religious emotions of peoples and taking advantage of the current circumstances to ignite a fierce war whose fuel is appealing to those religious sentiments and turning them into a war that he will claim to be between “infidelity and Islam”, whereas it is mere foolishness, geopolitical conflicts, ambitions towards oil and gas, expansionism, and dreams of hegemony!

— The author can be reached on Twitter: @hailahabdulah20