An Open Letter to Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

IPT News
01 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

Editor's note: The writer is a Turkish-American citizen and a tenured academic. He submitted this column to the Investigative Project on Terrorism to express his frustration over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's movement away from the West and toward Islamist influence. That includes his work with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to avoid sanctions over Iran's nuclear program and Erdoğan's aggressive leadership on the recent flotilla designed at breaking the blockade on Gaza.

Congratulations, Mr. Prime Minister. You have accomplished in eight years what no other contemporary Turkish politician could achieve. You have successfully entered the final stages in your efforts to transform Atatürk's Turkey into an Arab-style Islamist dictatorship. Some people had warned the world 20 years ago about the likely Islamist outcome of the September 12, 1980 military coup—a momentous point in Turkey's history that "masterfully crushed" the Turkish left. They were right. You are here. Today.

How proud you must feel. After all your hard work, some of the Islamist Turks that you encouraged to sail to Gaza have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. You and your fellow Islamists have been celebrating this like nothing I can recall. You have immediately declared them as şehitler (shuheda, the martyrs). With this Arab-style "martyrdom" discourse, you have surely strengthened your image in the entire Arab world and among the Ahmadinejad followers in Iran. Not surprisingly, you have even managed to nourish most of your citizens' anti-Jewish and anti-American sentiments. Your fellow Turkish Islamists, the great majority of the Turkish liberals, and, unfortunately, the many manipulated but otherwise ordinary, beautiful, innocent Muslims joined you and your not-so-strategically-deep brothers.

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