Erdogan's Gritted-Teeth Peace with Israel: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 6, 2016 — Modern Turkey has never been so disconnected from its Western allies.
A Message to Trump: Turkey’s Erdoğan Can’t Be Trusted: Ben Cohen, JNS, Nov. 25, 2016— Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was at his repellent best when he was interviewed by Israeli television journalist Ilana Dayan this week.
In Post-Coup Turkey, Jews Plan Their Future Abroad: Cnaan Liphshiz, Times of Israel, Nov. 19, 2016 — At a chic café overlooking the Bosphorus, two Turkish Jewish women are discussing their plans to emigrate when the call to Friday prayers blasts from the loudspeakers of a nearby mosque.
Turkey's Erdogan Continues Harsh Repression of Political Opponents: Stephen Schwartz & Veli Sirin, National Review, Nov. 21, 2016— Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appears as the sole person in his country's politics who knows what he wants.
Turkey's Shredded Syria Policy: Amberin Zaman, Al-Monitor, Dec. 7, 2016
Iranian-Made Drone Involved in Attack on Turkish Soldiers in Syria: Sevil Erkuş, Hurriyet Daily News, Dec. 8, 2016 Erdogan in a Corner After Blunders and Bluster : Melik Kaylan, World Affairs, Dec. 1, 2016
Turkey: Child Rapists to Go Free, Journalists Not?: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 27, 2016
ERDOGAN'S GRITTED-TEETH PEACE WITH ISRAEL
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Dec. 6, 2016
Modern Turkey has never been so disconnected from its Western allies. Its Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently accused the West of helping the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). His evidence? Because, he said, ISIS is fighting with Western weapons — overlooking, of course, that they were probably captured or stolen.
This dislike and hostility is not unrequited. On November 24, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly for a motion calling to suspend Turkey's membership talks with the European Union (EU), citing "disproportionate, repressive measures" taken by Erdogan's government. The motion, although non-binding, passed 479 to 37 in favor. In retaliation, Erdogan threatened that "if the EU goes further," Turkey will open its border gates and let refugees stream toward Europe.
The Turks, too, are distancing themselves from the idea of EU membership. According to a survey by the pollsters ANDY-AR, 75.3% of Turks believe that their country is drifting away from accession, while only 19.9% believe it is not. Forty-four percent think freezing membership talks would be a positive development. Confirming the growing anti-Western mood, Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, wrote in a newspaper column: "With its internal problems, micro-nationalisms and the Brexit process, Europe is narrowing down its strategic outlook and losing its relevance."
Against this backdrop, Turkey is normalizing its relations with Israel — in theory, at least. Ankara and Jerusalem agreed to appoint ambassadors to each other's country after an absence of more than six years. Two prominent career diplomats, Kemal Okem and Eitan Na'eh, will struggle to improve ties in Tel Aviv and Ankara, respectively. They will have a hard job. The diplomats may be willing, but with Erdogan's persistent Islamist ideological pursuits, they would seem to have only a slim chance of succeeding.
Turkey's dwindling Jewish community is uneasy over increasing signs of anti-Semitism in an increasingly Islamized country. In Istanbul, where a majority of Turkey's 17,000 Jews live, unknown people recently started hanging posters in a posh district. The posters call on Muslims "not to be fooled by the missionary activities of Jew-servant Jehovah's Witnesses." They say: "These people are trying to destroy the religion of Islam." Signed: Sons of Ottomans. Feeling unsafe, more than 2,500 Turkish Jews have recently applied for Spanish citizenship, and hundreds applied for Portuguese citizenship. Only last year, 250 Turkish Jews emigrated to Israel. That being the case, Islamist Turks are warning their fellow Muslims against missionary activities of Jehovah's Witnesses who are, according to them, "servants of Jews."
This is not surprising. Erdogan has pragmatically agreed to shake hands with Israel, but his ideological hostility to the Jewish state and his ideological love affair with Hamas have not disappeared. Only a week after Turkey and Israel officially resumed full diplomatic relations, in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 television, Erdogan refused to back down from his earlier comments equating Israel's military action in Gaza in 2014 to Hitler's atrocities.
Erdogan said: "I don't agree with what Hitler did and I don't agree with what Israel did in Gaza." Erdogan thinks that Israel's military action in response to Hamas's rockets indiscriminately targeting Israeli citizens is no different than the murder of six million Jews by a lunatic. "There is no point in comparing and asking who is more barbaric," Erdogan concluded. In other words, Erdogan thinks that Hitler and the Israel Defense Forces are "equally barbaric."
What else? Erdogan said that he is in constant contact with Hamas officials and that he does not believe Hamas is a terrorist organization. What, then is Hamas? According to Erdogan, Hamas is a "political movement born from the national resurrection." During the interview, Erdogan was asked if he was aware of the shock his reference to Hitler caused among Jews. He replied: "I'm very well aware … But is the Jewish community aware of what is done (in Gaza)?"
Much of Erdogan's hostile sentiment over Israel is religious. So is his admiration of Hamas. There is a point of irony, too, in this equation. The total amount of humanitarian aid Turkey has ever sent to Gaza is worth about half of the value of goods, measured at about 400 trucks, that Israel sends to Gaza each and every day. In other remarks, Erdogan accused Israel of restricting Muslim worship. He called on all Muslims to embrace the "Palestinian cause and protect Jerusalem" — which he seems to think is a Muslim city. Yes, blessed are the peacemakers. Nevertheless, the Turkish-Israeli "peace" will not be easy to sustain.
A MESSAGE TO TRUMP: TURKEY’S ERDOĞAN CAN’T BE TRUSTED
Ben Cohen
JNS, Nov. 25, 2016
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was at his repellent best when he was interviewed by Israeli television journalist Ilana Dayan this week. Although the interview was supposed to cover the restoration of Turkish-Israeli bilateral ties this past summer, Erdoğan used the occasion to spit his usual invective against Israel and Jews more generally. Many of Erdoğan’s favorite topics — the supposed symbiosis between Nazi Germany and the Jewish State, Israel’s insulting intransigence in the face of his personal attempts to negotiate a solution to the Palestinian question, Israel’s alleged desire to change the religious status of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (known to Muslims as Al-Haram al-Sharif) — arose in the conversation, and he addressed them in the fanatical, embittered tone that has come to symbolize his ascendance as a Turkish dictator.
Like the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Erdoğan has developed a reputation for offensive quotes that shore up, at the same time, his aloofness from and contempt for the morals and values of the West. And as with Ahmadinejad, the Nazi Holocaust and its 6 million Jewish victims provide an ideal tool for Erdoğan in this regard. In the summer of 2014, when Israel went to war in Gaza to bring an end to the barrages of missiles and rockets that Hamas terrorists fired over the border, Erdoğan declared that the actions of the Israel Defense Forces constituted “barbarism that surpasses Hitler.” Ponder that for a moment: the president of a European Union (EU) candidate country and NATO member state sounding off like some anonymous lunatic on Twitter by leveling the ugliest insult imaginable against the state of Israel and the Jewish people.
That wasn’t the first time that Erdoğan gave voice to his deep-seated antisemitism. In 2009, while appearing on a panel in Davos with the late Israeli President Shimon Peres, Erdoğan stormed off the stage screaming insults as he exited the room. “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill,” he told Peres. Even more bizarrely, Erdoğan cited Gilad Atzmon, a leading UK-based antisemite, saying that “Israeli barbarism is far beyond even ordinary cruelty.”
The Ilana Dayan interview, perhaps, was regarded as an opportunity for Erdoğan to make amends to both Israel and the Jewish people. But when asked about his notorious 2014 statement, Erdoğan simply reasserted the moral equivalency between Nazi Germany and Israel. “I don’t approve of what Hitler did, and neither do I approve of what Israel has done,” he growled. “When it’s a question of so many people dying, it’s inappropriate to ask who was the more barbarous.” Yet again, this profoundly antisemitic insult, which places the Jewish state in the same soiled universe as the Nazis, has been spread around the public domain by one of the world’s most well-known heads of state. As tempting as it is to conclude that while political rhetoric is one thing, political action is another — an impression increasingly conveyed in the aftermath of the US presidential election — in Erdoğan’s case, such a distinction isn’t really possible.
That’s because Erdoğan really is a dictator. In the months since Turkey’s failed and rather murky coup attempt against Erdoğan this past July, more than 40,000 people have been arrested or detained, including many journalists and opposition politicians. The civil service and the higher education sector have been purged, and hundreds of independent NGOs, such as the Association of Lawyers for Freedom, have been “temporarily” shut down. The strategy here was captured well by Thor Halvorssen, the president of the Human Rights Foundation. “Erdoğan has transformed Turkey from a democratic country to an authoritarian regime,” Halvorssen said. “He has done this by abusing the state of emergency powers he claimed after an attempted coup that, by the hour, looks more like a very convenient justification for the total dictatorial takeover of Turkey by his nationalist political party.”
Sure enough, Erdoğan has now laid out his plan to execute those ambitions. The president is now preparing a bill for a referendum on Turkey’s constitution. A “yes” vote in that referendum would mean the abolition of the prime minister’s office and the transformation of Erdoğan into an executive president empowered to stay in office until 2029.
The internal crackdown in Turkey is mirrored in Erdoğan’s aggressive strategy for Turkey’s “near abroad.” As Burak Bekdil of the Gatestone Institute think tank recently pointed out, Erdoğan is complaining aloud that Turkey lost the borders of the Ottoman Empire under duress in the years following World War I — during which the Ottoman rulers systematically exterminated more than 1.5 million Armenians. Turkey’s imposed borders, Erdoğan says, “are the greatest injustice…done to the country and the nation.” At the same time, Turkey is pushing deeper into Syrian territory, using the offensive against the Islamic State as a cover to defeat the Syrian Kurds, who have proved themselves to be the most reliable and courageous allies in the fight against Islamic State barbarism. Now the US and its allies are holding off support for Turkey’s push on the town of Al-Bab, uncertain as to what exactly Erdoğan’s intentions are.
That is why clarifying America’s policy on Turkey is such an urgent task for the incoming American administration. Erdoğan has praised President-elect Donald Trump, projecting ever so slightly when he told Ilana Dayan, “A country without a strong leader will go down.” But that embrace has the potential to be poisonous. One can only hope Trump understands that a Turkish dictatorship closely aligned with Russia — Erdoğan has been talking about spurning Turkey’s EU membership bid in favor of the Moscow-backed Shanghai Cooperation Organization — is neither in America’s interests nor in the interests of regional US allies, among them Israel and the Kurds. That needs to start from the realization, as Ilana Dayan amply demonstrated during her interview, that Erdoğan is not going to change.
IN POST-COUP TURKEY, JEWS PLAN THEIR FUTURE ABROAD
Cnaan Liphshiz
Times of Israel, Nov. 19, 2016
At a chic café overlooking the Bosphorus, two Turkish Jewish women are discussing their plans to emigrate when the call to Friday prayers blasts from the loudspeakers of a nearby mosque. Unable to talk over the deafening singing that fills the café in the Bebek neighborhood of western Istanbul, the women turn to their smartphones to read the news. At least they try to.
Turkey’s government has jammed access to the internet on this November day, reportedly to prevent terrorists from communicating with each other. It spurs major traffic disruptions and overloads several cellular towers. “This is Turkey,” said one of the women, a 42-year-old businesswoman and mother named Betty, who asks that her last name not be used for security reasons. “If they don’t want you to communicate, you won’t,” adds her friend Suzette, who makes the same request about her surname.
Betty and Suzette are among the thousands of Turkish Jews seeking foreign passports this year amid growing religiosity in a society where civil rights activists and some ethnic minorities are feeling the weight of the increasingly authoritarian policies of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s Islamist president who has used anti-Israel rhetoric. “Of course we’re thinking about emigrating,” said Betty while scanning the top floor of the café — a quiet place that she proposes for an interview because she does not want to be overheard speaking about Jews to a journalist. “Everyone in the Jewish community is because it is hard to imagine a future for ourselves here. Many Muslims are, too.”
Of the 4,500 Sephardic Jews who have applied recently for Spanish citizenship, at least 2,600 are Turks, according to Pablo Benavides, the consul general of Spain in Turkey. Last year, a law of return went into effect for Sephardic Jews whose ancestors were chased out of Spain during the Spanish Inquisition 500 years ago. Hundreds more have applied for naturalization in Portugal, where a similar law also went into effect last year. Indeed, Turkish Jews are the largest single group of applicants for a Portuguese passport. And approximately 250 Jews from Turkey have immigrated to Israel in the past year — a figure that is more than double the 2015 tally and constitutes more 1 percent of Turkey’s Jewish community of approximately 17,000 people.
The rush to obtain Spanish and Portuguese passports may not reflect any imminent desire to emigrate. Several applicants, including 38-year-old Nedim Bali, describe the move merely as a contingency plan. But the figures nonetheless seem to reflect a growing insecurity among Turkish Jews, many of whom blame Erdogan of using anti-Israel rhetoric with anti-Semitic overtones. In 2014, he accused protesters angered by his handling of a mining tragedy of being “spawn of Israel” — a country that Erdogan had previously accused of murdering Palestinian babies.
And in 2010, Erdogan suspended diplomatic relations with Israel over the slaying by commandos of nine passengers aboard a Gaza-bound ship that had sailed from Turkey in defiance of Israel’s blockade on the coastal strip, which is controlled by Hamas. Relations were restored officially only earlier this year and remain cold, though earlier this week Israel appointed an ambassador to Turkey as part of the countries’ reconciliation.
Still, discomfort over Erdogan’s rhetoric is being compounded by his crackdown on the opposition, media and civil liberties amid an increase in terrorist attacks and following the failed coup attempt in July to topple the Erdogan government. Arbitrary internet blackouts like the one that occurred on Nov. 4 are common in Turkey, where the government since July has assumed vast executive powers under emergency laws. Even before these measures, Turkey was criticized routinely for its human rights abuses and undemocratic practices — the criticism has escalated with the abuses.
Earlier this month — amid a wave of arrests, newspaper closures and a purge of thousands of people suspected of complicity in the coup try — the US State Department said it was “deeply concerned by what appears to be an increase in official pressure on opposition media outlets in Turkey.” To countless Turkish Jews and non-Jews, the failed overthrow was significant, not only because it ushered in more repressive policies, but because it demonstrated a potential for instability, according to Rifat Bali, a Jewish writer, publisher and historian from Istanbul.
“We turned on the TV and it was unbelievable. We thought Turkey was past the stage of coups, but we were wrong,” he said, recalling the July 15 attempt, which ended after countless civilians, called to act by a besieged Erdogan, confronted and effectively paralyzed rebellious army units. The episode led to an explosion of nationalist sentiment in Turkey — never a particularly cosmopolitan country — where countless Turkish flags, including some the size of buildings, now dominate public urban spaces.
Regime stability is of paramount importance to Turkish Jews, whose synagogues are under heavy army guard following terrorist attacks and threats. A 2015 survey by the Anti-Defamation League suggested that 71% of the population holds anti-Semitic views — by contrast, in Iran the figure was 60 percent. Before Erdogan’s rise to power in 2003 — the year he was elected to lead the ruling Islamist AKP party — the army was an important political player, poised to neutralize forces perceived as detrimental to a ruling class that was committed, on paper at least, to Turkey’s Western allies and to some principles, including a separation between religion and state…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
TURKEY'S ERDOGAN CONTINUES HARSH
REPRESSION OF POLITICAL OPPONENTS
Stephen Schwartz & Veli Sirin
Weekly Standard, Nov. 21, 2016
Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appears as the sole person in his country's politics who knows what he wants. Erdogan seeks absolute power and acts against all obstacles to his ambitions. He is eager to identify new "enemies" whose purported conspiracies he believes justify his harsh rule. Through the end of October and most of November, Erdogan has carried out a spree of enhanced repressive measures. This latest onslaught reflects his current fixation on a referendum, proposed for spring 2017, to ratify or reject constitutional amendments that would provide a dramatic increase in his presidential powers.
To hold the referendum, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) must first gain a parliamentary majority authorizing its placement on the national ballot. The party needs 330 legislative votes, out of 550, to permit the referendum. AKP won 317 deputies in the national elections of November 2015. AKP lacks the two-thirds majority, or 367 parliamentary seats, to allow immediate enactment of the constitutional changes. Erdogan is promised a coalition majority of 357 for a referendum by joining with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has 40 seats. MHP is an extremist party with a background of antisecularist violence during the 1970s and anti-Kurdish agitation.
From 2012 to 2015 the Turkish authorities conducted a "peace process" with the Turkish Kurds. Erdogan sought backing from the Kurdish-dominated People's Democratic Party (HDP)—the third biggest force in the national legislature, with 59 deputies, after the November 2015 election—for his reinforcement of the presidency. When the HDP declined to support him, the ceasefire collapsed and fighting resumed in Turkey's Kurdish southeast.On November 4, HDP chairperson Selahattin Demirtas was arrested, as noted by the Guardian, with at least 10 of his colleagues in the party's leadership. The HDP representatives' parliamentary immunity from prosecution was abolished this year.
According to Erdogan's government, the HDP, as a Kurdish-interest party, is a front for the radical Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). But as the London Independent pointed out, the HDP alleges they are under attack for "daring to oppose" the new presidential system. HDP chief Demirtas had made defiance of the scheme a priority for his party, denouncing it as leading to a dictatorship.
On November 17, the New York Times observed that the number of journalists arrested in Turkey since the coup attempt in July has reached 120. Of them, 10 were employed by Cumhuriyet (Republic), the country's leading newspaper and a pillar of the secular tradition known as 'Kemalism' for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who modernized Turkey beginning in the 1920s. Cumhuriyet is the last independent media institution under Erdogan's rule. At the end of October, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, Murat Sabancu, was arrested with a group of his colleagues. On November 11, Cumhuriyet's chairman, Akin Atalay, was detained at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport. All are charged by Ankara with terrorism.
The assault on Cumhuriyet, the favorite media of the secular elite, suggests that in the wake of the crackdown on the HDP, the Republican People's Party (CHP), which represents the Kemalist legacy in politics, will be a fresh target of Erdogan's rage. Removal of parliamentary immunity for the HDP could be extended to the 134 CHP deputies. The CHP is an opposition party, but it has echoed the AKP in blaming the failed July coup on the followers of the Sufi preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania. Yet already on November 8, Erdogan and the AKP filed a criminal complaint against CHP head Kemal Kilicdaroglu and several CHP elected representatives for allegedly "insulting the president." The CHP luminaries had expressed concern about the consequences of Erdogan's post-July state of emergency, which remains in effect…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Turkey's Shredded Syria Policy: Amberin Zaman, Al-Monitor, Dec. 7, 2016—Turkey’s outsize ambitions in Syria lie in shreds as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad press on to assert control over the rebel strongholds that remain in Aleppo. Ankara's long-running support for the rebels in the war-ravaged city has seemingly been reduced to appeals from Turkish rebel sympathizers on Twitter, with #HaleplcinAyaktayiz, “We Are Mobilized for Aleppo,” trending on the social media site.
Iranian-Made Drone Involved in Attack on Turkish Soldiers in Syria: Sevil Erkuş, Hurriyet Daily News, Dec. 8, 2016 —An Iranian-made unmanned drone was used in an attack on a Turkish military camp in northern Syria on Nov. 24, killing four soldiers, a senior Turkish official has told the Hürriyet Daily News. Turkey identified the drone as Iranian-made, but it was still not identified whether Hezbollah, the Quds Force or another Shiite militia group in Syria had used it, said the official, who spoke on anonymity.
Erdogan in a Corner After Blunders and Bluster : Melik Kaylan, World Affairs, Dec. 1, 2016 —Turkey's President Erdogan has put himself in a geostrategic corner with almost no options. Having publicly railed against the US for allegedly supporting the failed coup at least tacitly, he has roused popular feeling against Turkey's NATO alliance.
Turkey: Child Rapists to Go Free, Journalists Not?: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 27, 2016—Turkey, officially, is the world's biggest jailer of journalists. But its ruling Islamist party has drafted a bill that would release about 3,000 men who married children, including men who raped them. Public uproar has only convinced the ruling conservative Muslim lawmakers to consider revising the bill.
