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CONFRONTING TURKEY
By JPOST EDITORIAL
02/05/2013 23:59
The West must stop deluding itself with regard to the political
leadership of Turkey. The time has come to recognize that Turkey has
changed radically - and for the worse.
How can one explain the reticence of the US and other Western powers
in the face of Turkey's aggressive declarations? On Saturday night,
Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister of Turkey, a country that is a
member of NATO and a candidate to join the EU, threatened to launch
a military offensive against Israel, an important US ally.
Turkey would not "stay unresponsive" to an Israeli aggression against
any Muslim country, Davutoglu said, according to the Istanbul-based
daily Hurriyet, in response to Israel's reported air strike on an arms
convoy inside Syria. If those are not fighting words, what are? On
Sunday, meanwhile, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan kept up
the heat claiming Israel has "a mentality of waging state terrorism."
Israeli officials, speaking off record to The Jerusalem Post's
diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon, rightly noted Ankara's "brazen
hypocrisy."
Erdogan and Davutoglu have no qualms taking Israel to task for a
"crime" that Turkey itself is guilty of perpetrating.
Have the two men forgotten that just last October, after Syrian
shelling killed five Turkish civilians, Turkish military forces fired
salvos at Syria? Or that Ankara actively supports Syrian opposition
forces? Southern Turkey has in recent months become a launch pad
for the smuggling of crucial supplies across the border into Syria,
including weapons, communications gear, field hospitals and even
salaries for soldiers who defect.
But what for Ankara is taken as an inalienable right to self-defense
becomes "state terrorism" when applied to Israel. Indeed, anytime the
Jewish state resorts to force to protect itself, Erdogan is quick to
issue denunciations, whether those on the receiving end are Turkey's
close allies, such as Hamas terrorists in Gaza, or foes, such as
Syria's repressive military forces.
According to nearly all media reports, last Wednesday's purported
Israeli air strike targeted a Syrian convoy that was trying to
smuggle into Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon Russian-made SA-17
surface-to-air missiles that are designed to attack anything from
cruise missiles and smart bombs to fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft,
to unmanned aerial vehicles. Introducing these SA-17 missiles to
Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon would compromise Israel's air
superiority, which has so far provided important deterrence against
Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
Turkey's hypocrisy is so blatant and absurd that we wonder if the
flurry of accusations and threats is nothing more than a diplomatic
ploy designed to distance Ankara from Jerusalem so that the impression
of an Israeli-Turkish entente against Syrian President Basher Assad's
regime is summarily dismissed.
Perhaps Turkey is simply jumping at an opportunity to galvanize support
across the Middle East, from Cairo to Tehran, by using the standard
method known to all Middle East rulers for the last 80 or so years -
bash the Zionists.
Whatever the motivation, the unfortunate fact remains that a NATO
member state threatened to attack one of America's major non-NATO
allies - and nobody in Washington, or for that matter, London, Paris
or Berlin, bothered to issue even the feeblest denunciation of Turkey
or defense of the legitimacy of the purported Israeli air strike.
The West had high hopes for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development
Party, better known by its Turkish acronym, the AKP. The Bush
administration saw an AKP-governed Turkey as a model Islamist state -
moderate, democratic and with a booming economy - for other Islamist
parties in the region to follow. The Obama administration seems to
have adopted that optimistic approach. In a January 2012 interview
with Time's Fareed Zakaria, US President Barack Obama named Erdogan as
one of his top five international "best friends" together with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The West must stop deluding itself with regard to the political
leadership of Turkey. This is the same leadership that, according
to the Committee to Protect Journalists, has broken the world record
for jailing the most journalists (more than 70); that threatened in
2011 to attack Cyprus over gas drilling off its shores; that made the
ridiculous claim The Economist was a part of an "Israeli conspiracy"
because its editorial board recommended ahead of the 2011 elections in
Turkey not to vote for the AKP; and that in 2009 denied the genocide
in Darfur and defended Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the man
responsible for this genocide.
The time has come to recognize that Turkey has changed radically -
and for the worse.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=302232
By JPOST EDITORIAL
02/05/2013 23:59
The West must stop deluding itself with regard to the political
leadership of Turkey. The time has come to recognize that Turkey has
changed radically - and for the worse.
How can one explain the reticence of the US and other Western powers
in the face of Turkey's aggressive declarations? On Saturday night,
Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister of Turkey, a country that is a
member of NATO and a candidate to join the EU, threatened to launch
a military offensive against Israel, an important US ally.
Turkey would not "stay unresponsive" to an Israeli aggression against
any Muslim country, Davutoglu said, according to the Istanbul-based
daily Hurriyet, in response to Israel's reported air strike on an arms
convoy inside Syria. If those are not fighting words, what are? On
Sunday, meanwhile, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan kept up
the heat claiming Israel has "a mentality of waging state terrorism."
Israeli officials, speaking off record to The Jerusalem Post's
diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon, rightly noted Ankara's "brazen
hypocrisy."
Erdogan and Davutoglu have no qualms taking Israel to task for a
"crime" that Turkey itself is guilty of perpetrating.
Have the two men forgotten that just last October, after Syrian
shelling killed five Turkish civilians, Turkish military forces fired
salvos at Syria? Or that Ankara actively supports Syrian opposition
forces? Southern Turkey has in recent months become a launch pad
for the smuggling of crucial supplies across the border into Syria,
including weapons, communications gear, field hospitals and even
salaries for soldiers who defect.
But what for Ankara is taken as an inalienable right to self-defense
becomes "state terrorism" when applied to Israel. Indeed, anytime the
Jewish state resorts to force to protect itself, Erdogan is quick to
issue denunciations, whether those on the receiving end are Turkey's
close allies, such as Hamas terrorists in Gaza, or foes, such as
Syria's repressive military forces.
According to nearly all media reports, last Wednesday's purported
Israeli air strike targeted a Syrian convoy that was trying to
smuggle into Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon Russian-made SA-17
surface-to-air missiles that are designed to attack anything from
cruise missiles and smart bombs to fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft,
to unmanned aerial vehicles. Introducing these SA-17 missiles to
Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon would compromise Israel's air
superiority, which has so far provided important deterrence against
Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
Turkey's hypocrisy is so blatant and absurd that we wonder if the
flurry of accusations and threats is nothing more than a diplomatic
ploy designed to distance Ankara from Jerusalem so that the impression
of an Israeli-Turkish entente against Syrian President Basher Assad's
regime is summarily dismissed.
Perhaps Turkey is simply jumping at an opportunity to galvanize support
across the Middle East, from Cairo to Tehran, by using the standard
method known to all Middle East rulers for the last 80 or so years -
bash the Zionists.
Whatever the motivation, the unfortunate fact remains that a NATO
member state threatened to attack one of America's major non-NATO
allies - and nobody in Washington, or for that matter, London, Paris
or Berlin, bothered to issue even the feeblest denunciation of Turkey
or defense of the legitimacy of the purported Israeli air strike.
The West had high hopes for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development
Party, better known by its Turkish acronym, the AKP. The Bush
administration saw an AKP-governed Turkey as a model Islamist state -
moderate, democratic and with a booming economy - for other Islamist
parties in the region to follow. The Obama administration seems to
have adopted that optimistic approach. In a January 2012 interview
with Time's Fareed Zakaria, US President Barack Obama named Erdogan as
one of his top five international "best friends" together with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The West must stop deluding itself with regard to the political
leadership of Turkey. This is the same leadership that, according
to the Committee to Protect Journalists, has broken the world record
for jailing the most journalists (more than 70); that threatened in
2011 to attack Cyprus over gas drilling off its shores; that made the
ridiculous claim The Economist was a part of an "Israeli conspiracy"
because its editorial board recommended ahead of the 2011 elections in
Turkey not to vote for the AKP; and that in 2009 denied the genocide
in Darfur and defended Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the man
responsible for this genocide.
The time has come to recognize that Turkey has changed radically -
and for the worse.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=302232