Ads by HQ-Video-Pro-1.8×In short, to finish off jihadists, Washington will now work with the man who until recently funded and reinforced these same jihadists, and is proud of his love affairs with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas's overseas command center happens to be based in Turkey. Good luck.
Turkish soldiers in tanks are lined up along Turkey's border with Iraq, "observing" ISIS troops close in on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, in what appears an approaching massacre.
In pragmatic Islamist thinking, one does not properly become a "martyr" if he gets killed by an army other than Israel's.
Last week, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had to zigzag between the truth that accidentally spilled out of him and Washington's pragmatism. In a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Biden said: "[Turkish] President (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan, he is an old friend, said you were right, we let too many people through, now we are trying to seal the border."
The "people," however, whom Erdogan said Ankara had "let through" were the jihadists whom Turkey had supported with arms and money, and who have now become an international nightmare.
In other words, the U.S. vice president was publicly saying that the Turkish president had confessed to supporting terrorists.
Then Erdogan threatened: "If he [Biden] really said that, he would become history for me." Finally, a White House statement announced: "The vice president apologized for any implication that Turkey or other allies and partners in the region had intentionally supplied and facilitated the growth of ISIL or other extremists in Syria."
Erdogan has never hidden that he is ideologically a next of kin to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Hamas's overseas command center happens to be based in Turkey. Erdogan has been Hamas's staunchest (non-Hamas) cheerleader in the last decade, and the Brotherhood's key regional ally. Press reports say that Turkey has recently welcomed in the Brotherhood's top brass, who were expelled on Sept. 13 from their five-million-star hotels in Qatar. Ankara has not denied that it is offering a safe haven to the leaders of the Islamist organization.
In short, to finish off the jihadists who have captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, Washington will now work with the man who until recently funded and reinforced these same jihadists (and their various offspring) and is proud of his love affairs with Hamas and the Brotherhood. More ironically, a U.S.-led coalition of nations including Arab states recently killed one of Erdogan's heroes when the coalition forces struck an ISIS camp in Syria.
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Turkish tanks near the border with Syria, October 2014.
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When, in 2010, a Turkish-led flotilla that included the ship Mavi Marmara sailed towards Gaza to "break Israel's siege" of the Hamas-controlled land, Erdogan greeted everyone on board as "heroes." And when the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] raided the Mavi Marmara and killed nine Turks aboard, Erdogan greeted the Turks as "martyrs."