Turkey's Deception

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Turkey’s Deception
Posted by Joseph Puder on Jun 24th, 2010

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s self-righteous proclamations in defense of the Palestinian Islamist terrorist group Hamas — (i.e. “Hamas is not a terrorist group,” “Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land, and they have won an election,” etc.) — are glaringly hypocritical and in accord with his Islamist ideological bent. Erdogan has become sufficiently confident in the wake of his July 2007 electoral victory. His Justice and Development party, known as AKP, received 47% of the vote, enabling him to form a single-party government, and he has since sought to forge an Islamic agenda for Turkey. His actions reveal his intent to lead the Arab and Muslim East while gambling that the Obama administration and the European Union will ignore his Islamist rhetoric and his increasingly radical actions. Aside from becoming a champion of Hamas, he is charting a course towards a revival of Ottoman hegemony by restoring the seat and center of the Caliphate.

The United Arab Emirate-based online news source, The National, reported on June 15, 2010, that “Turkey embarked on the road to a ‘Middle East Union’ as an alternative to the European Union.” The National quoted from a front page article that appeared in the Turkish daily Milliyet regarding the signing of a free-trade agreement between Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

A speech given by President Obama before the Turkish parliament in April 2009, during which Obama declared, “Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not and will never be at war with Islam,” encouraged Erdogan to ramp up his efforts. Erdogan, no doubt, is also counting on the European lack of moral courage. As such, he was able to provoke a crisis with Israel by funding and indirectly arming the flotilla that sought to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and essentially call for jihad against Israel. Neither Obama nor the Europeans have rebuked him for his repeated egregious behavior. Moreover, Erdogan has derived a backwind from the vacuum created by the perception of weakness of the Obama administration, coupled with Obama’s toughness against Israel – the only democratic ally in the region – rather than towards Iran.

While Hamas has been pitied and cuddled by Obama, the Europeans, the UN, and human rights organizations, there has been no condemnation of the Turkish regime (nor, for that matter, against the Islamic Republic of Iran) by the US and the West for the continued war on the Kurdish people in Turkey, Iran, and Iraqi Kurdistan. According to a CNN-TV December 19, 2007 report, “the US helped in attack on PKK.” The ostensible reason for the war against the Kurdish people is the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) terrorism. Neither the Western powers nor the UN ever took Turkey to task over the lives of thousands of innocent Kurds killed in the process. And while the PKK might have used guerilla warfare against the Turkish authorities, unlike Hamas, it rarely employed suicide bombers or attacked civilians. The double-standard is apparent, Saudi petro-dollars helped to smooth the Arab-Palestinian image while overlooking its jihadist nature. At the same time, the friendless Kurds have no petro-dollar patrons to count on.