How WikiLeaks Influence the Middle East

Harold Rhode
Hudson New York
09 December '10

The Middle East has its own logic: people there believe that the US is all-powerful, and when it chooses to, enforces order as it sees fit. To them, whatever the US does, it does deliberately and calculatedly. By this logic, the release of the WikiLeaks classified documents was intentional: most Middle Easterners would have great difficulty believing otherwise.

Among many foreign leaders mentioned in these documents is Turkish Prime Minister Prime Minister Erdoğan. Before the leaks, Erdoğan seemed to be able to get away with doing everything he could to undermine Israel and the United States both in the Middle East and throughout the world.

From a Turkish point of point of view, there are two explanations for America's apparent acquiesce: Either America displayed weakness by letting Erdogan get away with this, or it intentionally let him do this because it fit into some American plan, which, as the Turks say, was developed "behind the curtain," with a hidden American hand intentionally directing this policy.

But from this perspective, all that changed when the US government "intentionally" released classified documents regarding Erdoğan, his government, and Iran. Among the leaked documents is one in which the US Embassy writes about rumors that Erdoğan has multiple Swiss bank accounts in which he has more the $1 billion. As the Turks see it, Erdoğan must have been stunned by this revelation. Many believe that the US released this document in order to embarrass and humiliate him.

America had shown its power. Erdoğan therefore had no choice other than it submit to its dictates. How best to do that? A large number of Middle Easterners believe the Jews run America and the world. By this logic, now that America has thrown down the gauntlet, the best way for Erdoğan to redeem himself is to find a way to ingratiate hmself to the Americans and Israelis. This, accordingly, would help him come down off of a branch onto which he dangerously had stepped.

(Read full article How WikiLeaks Influence the Middle East)

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