The many commentators who have lamented in the past few days about the isolation of Israel in the Middle East have apparently forgotten that this is nothing new. Arab armies tried to destroy the newborn state in 1948; successive attempts having failed as well, Arab states dealt with the existence of the Jewish state as with something which had to be endured, not accepted. Yes, peace was achieved between Israel and Egypt, then Jordan, but this was a peace between governments, not peoples. Incitement against the Jewish state never stopped, finding fertile soil in the minds of youngsters taught from the cradle that Jews are the enemies of Islam and will be destroyed on Judgment Day.
What was left were agreements fueled by transient political interests.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan brings to mind the story about the housewife who calls her husband during rush hour. “Be careful driving home on the Beltway, dear,” she advises. “The news says that there’s a maniac driving in the wrong direction.” “What do you mean, ‘a maniac’?,” he replies. “Everybody’s driving in the wrong direction!”
Now that Turkey has threatened Europe with a “freeze in relations” if Cyprus (as planned) assumes the presidency of the European Union in 2012, it must seem to Erdogan that everyone is driving in the wrong direction. Earlier this month Turkey declared “null and void” the United Nations’ Palmer Commission report, which supported Israel’s right to enforce a blockade against Gaza. That was a minor gaffe, because United Nations dicta have the authority of revelation to the liberal media, except, of course, when they support Israel. It’s one thing for Turkey to freeze relations with Israel — we take it for granted these days that everybody hates Israel — but the Europeans? Everybody likes the Europeans, who have replaced their defense ministries with an answering machine that says, “We surrender.” And over Cyprus? Even Russia, Turkey’s key trading partner and the host for millions of Turkish guest workers, is aghast at Erdogan’s tantrum. Russia has strong ties to Cyprus.
Turkey’s Moralpolitik: World Leader in Imprisoning Journalists
by Anna Mahjar-Barducci – September 23, 2011
Some analysts, under the impression that Turkey is severing relations with Israel because Turkey claims that it is its duty is to champion “human rights” in the Middle East, have written that Turkey is abandoning “realpolitik” for “moralpolitik.”
According to a large number of academics and journalists in the Western media, especially in Europe, Turkey has chosen to follow a new ethical policy based on moral attitudes. This simplistic and naïve interpretation of the Turkish agenda is becoming so that the international community fails to denounce human rights abuses in Turkey. In Italy, several media sources, such as the newspaper La Stampa, wrote that Turkey is an example of democracy to be followed in the Middle East, whereas the Washington-based Middle East Institute wrote in an article published by Dr. Gonul Tol that Turkey is balancing strategic interests with idealism.”Turkey views its conduct of foreign policy as a balance between diplomacy and hard power to pursue its interests, both moral and geopolitical,” Tol wrote..
Erdogan Creates International Complications for Turkey
Dore Gold – September 23, 2011
While Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been using his anti-Israeli rhetoric to build up Turkey as a new great power in the Arab world, his neo-Ottoman policy is sparking a reaction among other countries that could pose for him serious problems in the period ahead. For Erdogan has not only been using aggressive rhetoric against Israel. In the last few weeks the Turkish government has also been threatening Cyprus for developing its undersea gas resources in the Mediterranean. As a result, Russia has been drawn in to neutralize Turkish behavior.
Cyprus just signed an agreement with the Texas-based Noble Energy, which is in a partner in developing Israeli maritime gas fields, as well. Turkey’s Minister for EU Affairs, Egemen Bağış let it be known that the Turkish Navy could intervene if Greek Cyprus does not call off the project. He said “That’s what a navy is for.” As a result, the Russian Foreign Ministry publicly backed the right of Cyprus to develop its Mediterranean gas. Cyprus, in turn, described Russia as “a shield against any threats by Turkey.”
Turkey has suspended talks with Syria and may impose sanctions on Damascus, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan said, the clearest sign yet that Ankara has parted ways with President Bashar al-Assad over his bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Jeg har brugt en hulens masse tid på at læse om konflikten mellem Tyrkiet og Israel. Og noget af det bedste tog jeg fra til bloggen. Men først et nyt interview med Tyrkiets præsident, Abdullah Gül:
“Turkey is No Longer a Friend of Israel” Says President of Turkey
Det, man siger, er man selv? Erdogan er en dårlig taber. Det var Tyrkiet, der handlede i strid med international lov, fordi de ikke stoppede den “flotilla”:
Turkish PM declares freeze on Israel ties
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announces a total freeze on military and trade ties with Israel and threatens to visit Gaza as the one-time allies’ diplomatic spat intensifies
Desuden audio fra NPR – Talk of the Nation den 13. september 2011. Man kan følge med i en komplet udskrift her:
Israel Feeling Increasingly Isolated From Allies
Israeli diplomats have fled Egypt after an attack on their embassy in Cairo and were forced to leave Turkey after a diplomatic row. As Israel appears to lose its Muslim allies, many worry about possible repercussions on the peace process, Israel’s security and the U.S. role in the region.
Guests
Joel Greenberg, Jerusalem correspondent, Washington Post
Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist, Ha’aretz
Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations
Host
Neal Conan
Startes HER eller her - åbner Windows Media Player. Varighed ½ time. Og til artiklerne:
UN Report on Flotilla Incident Exonerates Israel
Sep 3, 2011 • By Elliott Abrams
The United Nations report on the Mavi Marmara incident, entitled “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident,” is now public and largely exculpates Israel. All the facts are as Israel contended and as the Commission notes “Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure” and “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.”
The Commission makes the judgment that the use of force by the Israelis was “excessive and unreasonable,” but the real verdict is evident in the way the Israeli and Turkish governments have reacted. Israel has accepted the report and its findings of fact while of course disagreeing with that judgment about its soldiers; Turkey has rejected the report entirely.
First, the panel challenges the motives of the flotilla:
Turkey no economic powerhouse, Erdogan’s credit bubble will soon explode
Guy Bechor – September 15, 2011
Some refer to him as “the Middle East’s new sultan in a neo-Ottoman empire” – yet the truth about Erdogan’s kingdom is utterly different. We are not facing an economic power, but rather, a state whose credit bubble will be bursting any moment now and bringing down its economy.
The budget deficit of the collapsing Greece compared to its GDP stands at some 10%, and the world is alarmed. At the same time, Turkey’s deficit is at 9.5%, yet some members of the financial media describe the Turkish economy as a success story (for comparison’s sake, Israel’s deficit stands at some 3% and is expected to decline to 2% this year.)
Why the West Cares about Turkey’s Diplomatic Conflict with Israel
September 10, 2011 – Dore Gold
Under the surface, there have been growing concerns in the West about the general direction of Turkish foreign policy under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP Party. In an extremely important 2004 cable from the US Department of State, revealed by WIKILEAKS, that was described previously in this column, an American diplomat in Turkey wrote about his concerns with Ankara’s “new, highly activist foreign policy,” Like many other commentators he focused on what he called the “neo-Ottoman fantasies” of Ahmet Davutoglu, who was then only an advisor and today is Turkey’s foreign minister.
But the American diplomat went much further in his description. He attended a meeting at the main think tank of Turkey’s ruling AKP Party where he heard many in the AKP saying that it is Turkey’s role to spread Islam in Europe. He added that among the participants in the think tank there was “the widespread belief” that Turkey should ”avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683″–where the Ottoman armies loss to the Hapsburg Empire.
Mere HER i The Algemeiner. Kan også læses her hos Dore Gold.
A Brilliant Fraud
By Stanley Weiss – September 15, 2011
It was the first time that cattle cars would be used in the 20th century to carry people to concentration camps, a systematic annihilation of a whole population so horrific that a new word had to be invented to capture its brutality: genocide.
In the midst of World War I, over a million Christian Armenians in Turkey were rounded up by the Ottoman Empire and slaughtered in unspeakable ways. No less a mass murderer than Adolf Hitler, in a speech to Nazi commanders before he invaded Poland, reportedly defended his order to, “kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race” by asking, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Turkey rebukes Israel: do they remember Northern Cyprus and the Kurds?
04 Sep, 2011 – Boutros Hussein and Lee Jay Walker
Turkey is once more playing the “Israel card” whereby in order to gain credibility at home and to appease the anti-Israeli lobby, the same issue keeps on popping up. However, while individuals or governments who oppose Israel may welcome the ongoing outbursts which break out frequently it is obvious that mass hypocrisy in Turkey renders this a farce.
If Turkey is so concerned about human rights then why not focus on leaving Northern Cyprus, give greater freedom to the Kurds, install equality for the Alevi Muslims, stop attacking Kurds in Northern Iraq and recognize the mass genocide of Christians which took place in 1915 (pogroms before and after this date).
Under Islamic law (“Shariah”), non-Muslims (such as Christians and Jews) are mostly free to practice their religion in private but are discriminated and treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmis. As the Quran clearly states, non-Muslims must “feel themselves subdued” (Sura 9:20). When the Jews regained their independence in 1948, they not only rebelled against “dhimmitude.” They also regained and freed, like the Spaniards after the Reconquista, a land once ruled by Islam. To Muslims, this was -and still is- a double offence.
Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan has taken upon himself to make Israel a “dhimmi state.” Edorgan was raised as a Sufi Muslim and was imprisoned in 1998 for singing out loud that “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” While mainstream Western media are at pains to describe Turkey’s Islamist AKP Party as “moderate,” Erdogan himself declared on Kanal D TV in August 2007 that describing Islam as moderate “is offensive and an insult to our religion.” Erdogan has been embracing the presidents of Iran and Sudan. While Sudan’s president is accused of genocide by the International Criminal Court, and while Turkey has been asked to apologize for the Armenian genocide, Erdogan has declared that “No Muslim can perpetuate genocide.”
Mere HER hos For the Sake of Zion. Kan også læses her hos Arutz Sheva.
As Israel-Turkey Alliance Disintegrates, Analysts Worry
By Piotr Zalewski – Sep 6 2011
The rapidly worsening fall-out between these two allies could have serious repercussions for an already fragile Middle East
After Turkey’s decision to suspend military ties with Israel, expel the country’s ambassador, and now possibly to apply to the International Court of Justice for an investigation into Israel’s Gaza blockade — on account of Israel’s refusal to apologize for last year’s lethal attack on the Mavi Marmara, a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship — it’s difficult to decipher who, if anyone, might benefit from the current impasse. For Turkey, the breakup with Israel is another nail in the coffin of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s vaunted “zero problems” policy that, until recently, allowed the country to keep lines open with all sides of the Middle East’s conflicts. For Israel, the potential loss of a crucial regional ally only deepens the country’s isolation as it scrambles to come to terms with the Arab spring and its fallout. Among experts, there is some hope that the Turkey-Israel relationship could recover, if slowly. Yet there is also fear that it will deteriorate much further — and quickly.
Not long ago, Turkey could rightfully claim to maintain open diplomatic relationships with practically everyone in the Middle East. But, as Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, told me, “those times are over.” “Turkey is not going to have much of a role to play. It cannot replicate the Syrian-Israeli proximity talks, which it masterminded a few years ago.” Same, he said, for the Israeli-Palestinian talks. “Turkey will probably be hailed by the Palestinians but it will isolate itself from the peace process, if the process ever comes back to life.”
Only weeks after its release, the Palmer Report into the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident appears to have been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Despite leveling criticism at Israel for “excessive force”, the report could and should have been a major prize for Israel public diplomacy. How often, and particularly at a time of precious few PR gifts, does a UN-sponsored investigation uphold the legitimacy of Israel’s naval blockade as well as highlighting the danger of Hamas from Gaza?
Mere HER hos Ynetnews eller her hos HonestReporting.
Og endelig to artikler om de israelske naturgas-fund, som siges at styrke Israels position både i Mellemøsten og i Vesten. Fra hhv. Foreign Policy og Family Security Matters:
Et klart mønster tegner sig. Konservative medier får etiketten ‘højreorienteret’, hvorimod venstreorienterede får ‘uafhængig’, ‘velanset’ eller ‘troværdig’.
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