Jerusalem —Yesterday, Katherine Connell covered in
this space the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackpot
statements blaming Israel and the French Jewish philosopher
Bernard-Henri Lévy for the military coup in Egypt.
The
decline of Erdogan’s brand of political Islamism mixed with electoral
democracy is hardly surprising. He showed pure contempt for democratic
protests in Turkey, terming the demonstrators’ demands for less Islamism
a result of an external “Interest-rate lobby” — a classic anti-Jewish trope.
The anti-Erdogan protests prompted The Economist to headline its June story on Erdogan: “Democrat or Sultan?”
However,
his hardcore anti-democratic credentials were largely ignored by the
Obama administration and the EU before the June protests. According to a report issued
last year by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Erdogan’s government
“imprisoned more journalists than China and Iran combined.” Turkey is
the world champion in gutting press freedoms.
Erdogan’s
pathological obsession with Jews and Israel has marked nearly half of
his term in office since 2003. A telling recent example from February:
He called Zionism — the founding political philosophy of the Jewish
state — “a crime against humanity.”
A
prime minister animated by anti-Semitic thinking and statements, to put
it mildly, does not lend himself to a democratic governing structure.
Over at the Wall Street Journal’s Middle East Real Time Blog,
the authors write that Erdogan has earned a growing pariah status
because he “ has struck an increasingly anti-U.S., anti-Western,
anti-Semitic and, since Tuesday, also an anti-Arab tone.”
The Jerusalem Post’s veteran reporter Herb Keinon wrote on
Tuesday, “Even Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News seems to be tiring somewhat
of Erdogan’s anti-Israel rants and conspiracy theories. The lead to an
article on Erdogan’s comments Tuesday that appeared on the paper’s
website began with the words, ‘Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went
back on the warpath August 20, accusing one of Ankara’s most prominent
bogeymen, Israel, of complicity in overthrowing Egyptian president
Mohamed Morsi.”’
Erdogan’s
model of political Islam is stumbling on both legs. A significant
segment of the Turkish population rejects his authoritarianism. His
foreign policy of “zero problems with neighbors” has turned out to be a largely hollow goal.
His
enthusiastic support for both the radical Islamic terrorist group Hamas
in the Gaza Strip — and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement — has
damaged Turkey’s foreign policy.
Erdogan’s
blunders have left him and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in a
more vulnerable position than at any time in its history. Will the
Obama administration and its allies capitalize on the opportunity to
influence a change in Erdogan’s anti-democratic rule?
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Β)Turkey’s Erdogan: A Smart Man With Jews on the Brain
By Jeffrey Goldberg - Aug 21, 2013
It’s time to call Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan what he is: a semi-unhinged bigot.
Optimists
have argued, these past few years, that Erdogan’s anger at Israel was
motivated by a genuine sense of grievance over the notorious 2010 flotilla incident.
The flotilla, you’ll recall, was a project of pro-Hamas Turkish
activists that was meant to break what they termed an Israeli blockade
of the Gaza Strip. Israel’s attempt to stop the flotilla ended in the
deaths of eight Turks and one Turkish-American.
The
Turks demanded, among other things, that Israel apologize for its
handling of the affair. Israel resisted for three years, saying that its
soldiers were attacked by the Turkish activists when they boarded the
ship, and that Israel had the legal right to stop the flotilla from
approaching its waters. Nevertheless, the Israeli response was horribly
botched, and this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
coaxed and cajoled by President Barack Obama, picked up the phone (with
Obama sitting right there with him) and apologized to Erdogan for the unnecessary deaths. This apology was supposed to usher in a newer, quieter era in Turkish-Israeli relations.
Except
that Erdogan has Jews on the brain, and once you get Jews on the brain
it’s hard to get them off. So the other day, in talking about the strife
in Egypt, he said:
“What is said about Egypt? That democracy is not the ballot box. Who is
behind this? Israel is. We have the evidence in our hands.”
The
evidence for the assertion that Israel was behind the violent
suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood? Erdogan himself offered none, but
an aide later said that the prime minister was referring to an Internet
video Erdogan saw in which the current Israeli justice minister, Tzipi
Livni, and the famous French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, were
speaking at a news conference in 2011. In the video, BHL, as he is
known, expressed opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruling Egypt.
And
that’s it. The prosecution rests. A Jewish philosopher from France
(albeit one with great clothes) says on television that he doesn’t like
the Muslim Brotherhood, and that’s sufficient proof for Erdogan.
Now,
if someone were to go on television in the U.S. and assert — based on
the aforementioned single piece of “evidence” — that the Jewish state
was behind the chaos in Egypt, well, that person would soon find himself
with limited opportunities to offer further commentary (even on Al
Jazeera, I assume). But we’re talking about the prime minister of a
major American military ally and the leader of a nation of more than 70
million people.
And this isn’t the first time, of course. Just recently, Erdogan blamed widespread
demonstrations against his government on the “interest-rate lobby,”
which is up there with “rootless cosmopolitans” and “dual loyalists” as
an all-purpose euphemism for Jews. (His deputy, Besir Atalay, made it
plain when he blamed the protests on “the Jewish Diaspora.”)
Although
not very good at making friends, either in Europe or in the Middle
East, Erdogan is known as a very smart man. Yet anti-Semitism is making
him stupid. As Walter Russell Mead of the American Interest magazine says,
those who are burdened with anti-Semitism are unable to discern cause
and effect relations in complex social settings. If I were an investor
in Turkey, I’d keep this mind.
You
see what I did there, right? A year from now, Erdogan — if I’m lucky —
will cite this post to explain whatever affliction is afflicting Turkey
at the moment.
================================================================================================================================================================
Γ) Erdogan’s Israel-Bashing Imperils Turkey’s Energy Hub Dreams
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s anti-Israel rhetoric is jeopardizing his ambition to make Turkey a regional energy hub.
Erdogan
linked Israel on Aug. 20 to the Egyptian army’s overthrow of Islamist
former President Mohamed Mursi, prompting rare condemnation from the
U.S. of its only Muslim-majority ally in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. Turkey cut diplomatic ties with Israel in 2010 after
Israeli soldiers raided an aid ship seeking to break the blockade of
the Gaza Strip in 2010, killing nine Turks on board.
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