Jew-Hating Turkish President ‘Mas-Kom-Ya’ Erdogan Extols Hitler’s Presidency: Andrew G. Bostom, Breitbart, Jan. 4, 2016 — Upon returning from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited a striking example to illustrate his quest for consolidation of executive powers.
Russian Imperialism Meets Illusions of Ottoman Grandeur: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 31, 2015 — In a 2012 speech, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, then foreign minister, predicted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's days in power were numbered and that he would depart "within months or weeks."
Experts say Hamas and ISIS Cooperating to Fight Their New Common Enemy: Egypt: Ariel Ben Solomon, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 17, 2016— Hamas and Islamic State in Sinai have been cooperating in the smuggling of weapons, demonstrating that while Hamas is a nationalist Islamist movement, it also has common roots from which to build a functioning relationship with jihadists.
The Coptic Pope Goes to Jerusalem: Samuel Tadros, Weekly Standard, Nov. 27, 2016 — In a move that has sent shockwaves throughout Egypt, the Coptic Pope, Tawadros II, travelled to Jerusalem Thursday at the head of a distinguished delegation of bishops from the Coptic Church.
Just What the Middle East Needs: Turkey’s Getting an Aircraft Carrier: Thomas Seibert, Daily Beast, Jan. 5, 2016
Is Turkey Heading to Partition?: Kadri Gursel, Al-Monitor, Jan. 4, 2016
Gunmen Fire at Bus Carrying Israeli Tourists in Egypt: Ariel Ben Solomon, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 7, 2015
Saving Gazans or Saving Gaza’s Terrorist Tunnels?: Lenny Ben-David, JCPA, Dec. 29, 2015
JEW-HATING TURKISH PRESIDENT ‘MAS-KOM-YA’
ERDOGAN EXTOLS HITLER’S PRESIDENCY
Andrew G. Bostom
Breitbart, Jan. 4, 2016
Upon returning from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited a striking example to illustrate his quest for consolidation of executive powers. Per a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency, Erdogan invoked Adolf Hitler’s Germany as an effective presidential system, stating, “There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Germany.”
Clumsily attempting to explain away Erdogan’s unambiguous remarks, a senior Turkish official claimed the good President intended to highlight Nazi Germany as an example of “how not to implement” such a system, averring, “There are good and poor examples of presidential systems and the important thing is to put checks and balances in place.” Citing Hitler is sadly concordant with the current Turkish President’s well-established animus towards Jews—rooted in Islam’s conspiratorial Jew-hating canon within Turkey and beyond.
For example, Erdogan’s religiously-inspired Jew-hatred did not pass unnoticed by Gabby Levy, an Israeli ambassador to Turkey, as recorded in a WikiLeaks cable from October, 2009, sent by the US embassy in Ankara, Turkey. Levy’s views were validated by US ambassador James Jeffrey in “C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 001549. SUBJECT: ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TRACES HIS PROBLEMS TO ERDOGAN. REF: ANKARA 1532. Classified By: AMB James F. Jeffrey.” Here are relevant extracts from Ambassador’s Jeffrey’s 2009 cable:
Levy dismissed political calculation as a motivator for Erdogan’s hostility, arguing the prime minister’s party had not gained a single point in the polls from his bashing of Israel. Instead, Levy attributed Erdogan’s harshness to deep-seated emotion: “He’s a fundamentalist. He hates us religiously and his hatred is spreading.” [US ambassador Jeffrey’s observations] Our discussions with contacts both inside and outside of the Turkish government on Turkey’s deteriorating relations with Israel tend to confirm Levy’s thesis that Erdogan simply hates Israel…
As I have detailed in the past, Erdogan wrote, directed, and played the leading role in a theatrical play titled Maskomya, staged throughout Turkey during the 1970s. He was serving as president of the Istanbul Youth Group of Erbakan’s National Salvation Party at the time. “Mas-Kom-Ya” is a compound acronym for “Masons-Communists-Yahudi” — “Jews” — and the play focused on the evil nature of these three, whose common denominator was Judaism. When Valley of the Wolves was released in Turkey in 2006, it became the most expensive film ever made in Turkey. The film included a “cinematic motif” which featured an American Jewish doctor dismembering Iraqis allegedly murdered by American soldiers in order to harvest their organs for Jewish markets. At the time, then-Prime Minister Erdogan not only failed to condemn the film, he justified its production and popularity. His wife, Emine, also attended a gala screening of the film and sat next to the movie’s star.
Erdogan’s perfidious tribute to Hitler’s executive attributes is compounded by his morally cretinous equation of Jews/the Jewish State of Israel with the Nazis and Hitler, across two decades. As Istanbul mayor, during a June 1997 celebration of the mass murderous 1453 jihad conquest of then Byzantine Constantinople, Erdogan declared: “The Jews have begun to crush the Muslims of Palestine, in the name of Zionism. Today, the image of the Jews is no different from that of the Nazis.” Nearly 20 years later, addressing an August 2014 rally prior to his election as President of Turkey, Erdogan intoned, “Just like Hitler tried to create a pure Aryan race in Germany, the State of Israel is pursuing the same goals right now.”
Yet in June, 2006, despite Erdogan’s (and his coterie’s) already well-established public record of visceral Islamic Jew-hatred, the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] awarded, and Erdogan personally accepted, the ADL’s “Courage to Care Award.” Then-Prime Minister Erdogan even had the temerity to claim in his acceptance speech, “Antisemitism has no place in Turkey. It is alien to our country.” Erdogan’s mendacious hypocrisy notwithstanding, 69% of Turks share his intense level (i.e., affirming ≥ 6/11 antisemitic stereotypes) of Jew-hatred according to the ADL’s own 2014 “Global 100: A Survey of Attitudes Toward Jews in Over 100 Countries Around the World.”
The Islamic revival movement of Erdogan’s mentor Erbakan, which spawned the current ruling AKP party, has always employed a virulently Jew-hating discourse, hinging on canonical themes from Islam. Thus central to this hatred are frequent quotations from the Koran and hadith [traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community], nurtured by early Islam’s basic animus towards Judaism. For example, Milli Gazete, mouthpiece of the traditionalist Islamic revival, published articles in February and April of 2005 rehashing toxic amalgams of ahistorical drivel and virulently Jew-hating and anti-non-Muslim “dhimmi” (per Koran 9:29). The articles used Koranic motifs, including these prototypical comments based upon Koran 2:61/3:112, which stamp eternal humiliation on the Jews for numerous transgressions, including “prophet killing”:
In fact no amount of pages or lines would be sufficient to explain the Koranic chapters and our Lord Prophet’s [Muhammad’s] words that tell us of the betrayals of the Jews… The prophets sent to them, such as Zachariah and Isaiah, were murdered by the Jews…
Also in April 2005, a Turkish jihadist organization monthly, Aylik, published 18 pages of antisemitic material produced by those claiming responsibility for the November 15, 2003, dual synagogue bombings in Istanbul. “Why Antisemitism?,” an article written by Cumali Dalkilic, combined traditional Koranic Jew-hating motifs with Nazi Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial. Another article’s title, “The Tschifits Castle,” repeats the very pejorative if commonplace Turkish Muslim characterization of Jews, “Tschifit,” which translates as “filthy Jews“—a debasing term for Jews whose usage was recorded by the European travelers Carsten Niebuhr, in 1794, and Abdolonyme Ubicini, in 1856, based upon their visits to Ottoman Turkey.
Nine years later, AKP lawmaker Cuma Icten lauded as a “magnificent speech” Imam Sait Yaz’s July 2014 sermon in Diyarbakir, broadcast on Oda TV, punctuated by these comments, redolent with Koranic themes: “The most rabid and savage enemies of Islam on Earth are the Jews. Who says this? Allah says this [Koran 5:82]… The Jews and the Christians will never accept you unless you submit to their religion [Koran 2:120]. These Jews spoil all the agreements on Earth [2:100-101; 5:13] and have murdered [Koran 2:61/3:112] 17 of their own prophets… And I declare here: All Jews who have taken up arms to murder Muslims must be killed, and Israel must be wiped off the map! And it will be wiped out with Allah’s help!”
Moreover, it is well past time to dispel the corrosive myth of an alleged half millennium of Ottoman Turkish comity towards the dhimmi Jewish communities it ruled under the Sharia. This false narrative, as I detail in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, has been perpetuated and projected on to the comportment of the modern era Turkish Republic by Turkey’s oppressed dhimmi Jewish community, and mimicked in the behaviors of major Jewish organizations outside Turkey, notably the ADL. Courageous historian Rifat Bali, a Jew who still resides in Turkey, condemned these local and international Jewish communal attitudes and [in]actions, after the November 15, 2003 Istanbul synagogue bombings: “…all seemed determined to ignore…[rather than] to confront face to face the anti-Semitism which is incorporated in the political Islamic movement…[i.e., which currently governs Turkey].”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM MEETS ILLUSIONS OF OTTOMAN GRANDEUR
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Dec. 31, 2015
In a 2012 speech, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, then foreign minister, predicted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's days in power were numbered and that he would depart "within months or weeks." Almost three and a half years have passed, with Assad still in power, and Davutoglu keeps on making one passionate speech after another about the fate of Syria.
Turkey's failure to devise a credible policy on Syria has made the country's leaders nervous. Both Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have lately resorted to more aggressive, but less convincing, rhetoric on Syria. The new rhetoric features many aspects of a Sunni Islamist thinking blended with illusions of Ottoman grandeur. On December 22, Davutoglu said, "Syrian soil is not, and will not be, part of Russia's imperialistic goals." That was a relief to know! All the same, Davutoglu could have been more direct and honest if he said that: "Syrian soil will not be part of Russia's imperialistic goals because we want it to be part of Turkey's pro-Sunni, neo-Ottoman imperialistic goals."
It is obvious that Davutoglu's concern is not about a neighboring territory becoming a theater of war before it serves any foreign nation's imperialistic goals. His concern, rather, is that neighboring soil will become a theater of war and serve a pro-Shiite's imperialist goals. Hardly surprising. "What," Davutoglu asked Russia, "is the basis of your presence in Syria?" The Russians could unconvincingly reply to this unconvincing question: "Fighting terror, in general, and ISIL in particular." But then Davutoglu claims that the Russian military hits more "moderates" (read: merely jihadist killers, not to be mixed with jihadist barbarians who behead people and cheerfully release their videos). Translation: more Islamist targets and fewer ISIL targets.
A legitimate question to ask the Turkish prime minister might be: What is the basis of "moderate" Islamists' presence in Syria — especially when we know that a clear majority of the "moderate" fighters are not even Syrians. According to Turkish police records, they are mainly Chinese Uighurs, several Europeans and even one from Trinidad and Tobago. Could the basis be the religious bond? Could Prime Minister Davutoglu have politely reminded the Russians that the "moderate" fighters are Muslim whereas Russia is not? But then, one should ask, using Davutoglu's logic, "What is the basis of the U.S.-led Western coalition's airstrikes in Syria?" Since when are the Americans, British, Germans and French Muslims?
In Turkish thinking, there is just one difference between non-Muslim Russia's presence in Syria and non-Muslim allies' presence: The non-Muslim Russians seriously threaten the advancement of our pro-Sunni sectarian war in the Levant, whereas the non-Muslim allies can be instrumental in favor of it. Hence Turkey's selective objection to some of the non-Muslim players in Syria.
Earlier in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he found it difficult to understand what Russia was doing in Syria, since "it does not even border Syria." By that logic, Turkey should not be "doing anything" in the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan or any of the non-bordering lands into which its neo-Ottoman impulses have pushed it over the past several years. By the same logic, also, Turkey should be objecting to any allied (non-Muslim) intervention in Syria, or to any Qatari or Saudi (non-bordering) intervention in the Syrian theater.
In the unrealistic imperial Turkish psyche, only Turkey and the countries that pursue regional ambitions convergent with Turkey's can have any legitimate right to design or re-design the former Ottoman lands.
Such self-righteous and assertive thinking can hardly comply with international law. The Turks and their imperial ambitions have already been declared unwelcome in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Nor would such ambitions be welcomed in any former Ottoman land to Turkey's west. But if, as Turkey's Islamists are programmed to believe, "historical and geographical bonds" give a foreign nation the right to design a polity in another nation, what better justification could the Russians have had for their post-imperial designs in Crimea?
When they have a moment of distraction from their wars against Western values, the West, Israel, Jews or infidels, the Sunni and Shiite Islamists in the Middle East fight subtle-looking (but less subtle than they think) and cunning (but less cunning than they think) wars and proxy wars, and accuse each other of pursuing sectarian policies. Turkey's rulers are no exception.
EXPERTS SAY HAMAS AND ISIS COOPERATING TO FIGHT
Ariel Ben Solomon
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 17, 2015
Hamas and Islamic State in Sinai have been cooperating in the smuggling of weapons, demonstrating that while Hamas is a nationalist Islamist movement, it also has common roots from which to build a functioning relationship with jihadists. “Over the past two years, IS Sinai helped Hamas move weapons from Iran and Libya through the peninsula, taking a generous cut from each shipment,” according to a Washington Institute for Near East Policy report on Tuesday by Ehud Yaari, a Lafer international fellow at the think tank.
Yaari, a Middle East commentator for Channel 2, points to a secret visit by Islamic State in Sinai’s military leader, Shadi al-Menai, to Gaza this month to hold talks with Hamas’s military wing. Both Hamas and Islamic State trace their origins to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Sheikh Hassan al-Banna. Hamas is a direct offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and until its official founding in 1987, it ran its activities through the Islamic Association founded in the mid-1970s and headed by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. It was the first intifada that led the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza to embark “upon a direct and violent confrontation with Israel,” as explained in detail by Anat Kurz and Nahman Tal in a 1977 article for the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies titled, “Hamas: Radical Islam in a National Struggle.” “The operational turn was marked by an organizational change – the establishment of Hamas,” they wrote.
While all Islamist movements, including Islamic State and al-Qaida, are offshoots from the more pragmatic Muslim Brotherhood, they have no patience and use violence to seek immediate results to achieve their goals. Despite some shared goals between Salafist jihadists and Hamas, such as wanting to establish a caliphate to rule the world, they go about it in different ways. Islamic State, for example, totally rejects the modern concept of nationalism, while Hamas, and its mother movement the Muslim Brotherhood, accept the reality in order to build its power base in each state over time.
In addition, “Hamas rejects the Salafi jihadist concept of declaring Muslims as apostates (takfir), if they fail to follow the strict Salafi interpretation, and the declaration of jihad against irreligious Muslim rulers,” says Prof. Meir Litvak, the director for the Alliance Center of Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University in a journal article “‘Martyrdom is Life’: Jihad and Martyrdom in the Ideology of Hamas.” Litvak, an expert on Hamas, told The Jerusalem Post that while Hamas and Islamic State have ideological differences, they have a common enemy now, which is the Egyptian government. “Hamas needs the Salafi jihadists to break the Egyptian siege on Gaza. The Salafists need Hamas’s technical know-how to produce short-range rockets and other weapons,” he said. “Hence, they ignore their ideological differences for the time being and cooperate.”
Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told the Post, “Hamas has always been part of the global jihad movement, despite persistent claims that it is a nationalist terrorist group with strictly nationalist aims.” Hamas and al-Qaida trained together in Sudan during the early 1990s and the two terrorist groups maintained close ties for more than a decade, said Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the US Department of the Treasury. Furthermore, Hamas also cooperates with other Shi’ite terrorist supporters and is plugged into the Iran-sponsored terrorist network, he commented.
The Gaza-based group’s “deep ties to Hezbollah have yielded finance and operational gains over the years,” added Schanzer. “It is further instructive to note that illicit channels of finance are often shared by multiple actors." In this case, Islamic State and Hamas appear to be sharing the same channels for weapons smuggling and perhaps other financial means. “In some cases, this is simply a marriage of convenience. In others, it is a deeper strategic cooperation,” continued Schanzer, adding that in the case of these two terrorist groups, the shared disdain for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government could be an indication of the latter.
THE COPTIC POPE GOES TO JERUSALEM
Samuel Tadros
Weekly Standard, Nov. 27, 2015
In a move that has sent shockwaves throughout Egypt, the Coptic Pope, Tawadros II, travelled to Jerusalem Thursday at the head of a distinguished delegation of bishops from the Coptic Church. The short flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv can be measured in minutes; the psychological distance stretches back decades. It is the dream of every Copt to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem before one’s death, and for centuries the Copts did. In the process, the Coptic community acquired a dozen churches and several monasteries in the Holy Land as well as partial rights to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. After the six-day war in June 1967, it became impossible to make the pilgrimage with Egypt and Israel at war.
Those who held hopes that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979 would open the gates of Jerusalem to Coptic pilgrims were quickly disappointed as the late Pope Shenouda III (1971-2012) quickly made his decision known: No Copt would be allowed to travel to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage. Copts would only enter Jerusalem with Muslims, he declared. The decision was purely political, with the man once described as Egypt’s most astute politician reasoning that if Copts went to Israel for the pilgrimage, the rest of the Arab world would see them as traitors. Many sins could be forgiven in the Arab world, he presumably reasoned, but visiting Israel is not one of them…
For thirty plus years, Pope Shenouda held firm. Nonetheless, the lure of visiting Jerusalem continued to have its hold on the hearts and minds of Copts, and some decided to ignore the Pope’s ban and make the pilgrimage. The situation became embarrassing to a Pope known for his stubbornness. In the 1990s as the hopes of peace between Israel and the Palestinians encouraged more Copts to make the journey, the Pope decided to enforce his ban by prohibiting those travelling from receiving communion. Was redemption not possible? Well, one way was presented; those making the pilgrimage would then publish an apology in Egypt’s leading newspaper asking forgiveness from the Pope. Only then would they be allowed to take communion. The formula soon turned into a farce when tourism companies included the fee for the newspaper apology as part of the travel package to Israel.
Since his ascension as Pope in 2012, Pope Tawadros has tried to ease the tension. While officially maintaining his predecessor’s position, he has allowed Copts abroad to make the journey. And without making any public fuss about it, removed the ban on communion for those who defy the church’s position inside Egypt. It became obvious to church observers that his heart was not fully behind Pope Shenouda’s ban. In all cases, even under his predecessor, the Coptic Church had regularly sent monks and priests to Israel to maintain its property there. The church also ordains a Metropolitan, the second highest position in the church hierarchy after the Pope, based in Jerusalem and responsible for a wide diocese stretching from Israel to the Gulf.
Metropolitan Abraham’s death … is what brought the Pope to Jerusalem, where he will head the funeral service. The Church has already attempted to portray the visit as exceptional—that is, very different from pilgrimage, but it is unlikely anyone will buy that. Islamists will use the visit to further incite animus and hatred against the Copts. And Egypt’s deeply anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli political class will condemn the Pope’s visit.
Why did the Pope decide to go to Jerusalem? He must have known that he will pay a heavy political price for his decision. But since his ascension to the Papacy, Tawadros has shown that once he is convinced of the soundness of a decision, he ignores its political costs. No matter what his calculus might have been, there is no turning back now. Next April when it is time for pilgrimage, thousands of Copts will make the journey no matter what the Church says officially. Pope Tawadros’ short trip may not be as historical as Sadat’s 1977 visit to Israel, but for Egypt’s Copts it may prove to be no less significant.
Just What the Middle East Needs: Turkey’s Getting an Aircraft Carrier: Thomas Seibert, Daily Beast, Jan. 5, 2016—Turkey is getting ready to widen the reach of its military considerably by building a multipurpose aircraft carrier with “trans-continental” capabilities.
Is Turkey Heading to Partition?: Kadri Gursel, Al-Monitor, Jan. 4, 2016—“Red lines” have been a fixture in Ankara’s policies toward the Kurds for decades. Blurring or shifting, thinning or thickening, decreasing or increasing, myriad red lines were drawn as Ankara grappled with the painful consequences of the Kurdish problem and sought to keep it under control instead of resolving it. The more the problem became regionalized, the more the red lines crossed borders.
Gunmen Fire at Bus Carrying Israeli Tourists in Egypt: Ariel Ben Solomon, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 7, 2015—Gunmen opened fire on Israeli Arab tourists as they boarded a bus in Cairo on Thursday but there were no casualties, security sources said, while the Interior Ministry said the attack was directed at security forces.
Saving Gazans or Saving Gaza’s Terrorist Tunnels?: Lenny Ben-David, JCPA, Dec. 29, 2015—Fourteen Gaza tunnel diggers were rescued on December 28, 2015 after their smuggling tunnel collapsed, purportedly because of Egyptian flooding of the extensive tunnel system in Gaza.
