It's May. The ‘conquest-over-occupation’ season opens

...Conquering Jerusalem? Did the top cleric not acknowledge the fact that Jerusalem was not a Muslim city before its “conquest?” He did. So, how can the occupation of a non-Muslim city, Constantinople, be a “conquest” but the occupation of a non-Muslim city, which was once occupied by Muslims, be “occupation”?

Burak Bekdil..
Huuriyet Daily..
23 May '14..

It’s May. It’s the month when Islamist Turks observe the tradition that explains why “conquest” is good but “occupation” is bad.

For instance, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu thinks that “those who do not understand the importance of Jerusalem and Palestinian rights are attacking the conscience of humanity.” I hope this columnist fell into Mr. Davutoğlu’s “brave” category when he wrote that “Turkey is not North Korea,” (this column, “Turkey is not North Korea – nor Syria, nor Egypt,” May 14), but today he will be attacking the conscience of humanity.

Mr. Davutoğlu thinks Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque (where he has said he wants to pray after Jerusalem has become the capital of the Palestinian state) have been under occupation since 1948 – when the state of Israel was founded, which is wrong. Last week, he said that “under the term[s] of international law, Jerusalem is under [Israeli] occupation.” Then he asked: “If U.N. decisions [resolutions] are not being implemented then why are they taken in the first place?”

If Mr. Davutoğlu was attending chess classes at the age of 11 he would probably be kindly requested to quit immediately. How can a foreign minister cite U.N. resolutions about “Jerusalem’s occupation” when several other U.N. resolutions have described his own country as the occupier of Cyprus over the last four decades?

Ironically, Mr. Davutoğlu’s speech on the occupation of Jerusalem came around the same day as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Turkey to pay 90 million euros to Greek Cyprus for the 1974 occupation and the island’s subsequent division. Really, could you explain, honorable minister, “if the U.N. [and the Council of Europe’s] rulings are not being implemented, then why are they taken in the first place?”

But in response to the ECHR’s verdict, Mr. Davutoğlu said that he viewed the ruling as “neither binding nor of any value.” That would be a breach of the Constitution, since Article 90 of the Turkish Constitution states that “international agreements duly put into effect have the force of law. No appeal to the Constitutional Court shall be made with regard to these agreements, on the grounds that they are unconstitutional.”

Of course, we could always ask Mr. Davutoğlu if he would be willing to explain why Israel should be obliged to implement all U.N. resolutions, but in Turkey’s case both U.N. resolutions and ECHR rulings should be “neither binding nor of any value.” I am sure he won’t explain. But I think I know the answer.

And from our Turkish friends - The historic march of our holy nation...

...I recall mentioning in this column twice: “On a fine February afternoon at the Cafe Nicola in Lisbon in 2011, my Lebanese friend sipped his wine, turned to me and explained the real meaning of the glittering ‘Turkish model’ for the Arab Spring: ‘[Turkey is a model] because anyone who stands against Israel is a friend of Arabs.’ Then he added: ‘But that thinking has only built temporary alliances which later easily turned into longer-term hostilities among the Arabs.’”

Burak Bekdil..
Hurriyet Daily News..
16 August '13..

In a speech in Sarajevo in October 2009, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu heralded: “As in the 16th century, when the Ottoman Balkans were rising, we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East, together with Turkey, the center of world politics in the future. That is the goal of the Turkish foreign policy, and we will achieve it.”

That mission has been partly accomplished. Most headlines on world politics refer to the former (and present) Ottoman lands: Civil war in Syria; nearly 1,000 Muslims killed by other Muslims in Iraq in a span of a month; a military coup in Egypt and hundreds of deaths; and simply blood, sweat and tears across Turkey. The Balkan and Caucasus nations should be happy not to have joined the former Ottoman lands to become the center of world politics.

In an April 2012 speech, Mr. Davutoğlu was even more specific: “On the historic march of our holy nation, the AK Party signals the birth of a global power and the mission for a new world order. This is the centenary of our exit from the Middle East... whatever we lost between 1911 and 1923, whatever lands we withdrew from, from 2011 to 2023 we shall once again meet our brothers in those lands. This is a … historic mission.”

Some of the other foreign policy goals Mr. Davutoğlu had earlier specified as part of that bounden historic mission was to “pray altogether at the al-Aqsa mosque in the Palestinian capital al-Quds (otherwise mistakenly known by the world as Jerusalem)” and to “pray together in a liberated Damascus.” It is not certain yet how soon the foreign minister will add to this portfolio “praying altogether in a liberated Cairo,” but there is every indication that “meeting our brothers” in the former Ottoman lands is becoming increasingly riskier.

Crossing the border into Syria could be a lethal adventure unless the traveler is a jihadist bound for Raqqa or Deir ez-Zor, or a Kurdish paramilitary patrolling in Ras al-Ayn or Hasaka. As for praying in Damascus, Mr. Davutoğlu could always seek permission from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Iraq and Iran could be less lethal but equally unadvised for the neo-Ottoman traveler.

A “passage to the Gaza Strip” has not been made possible even for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – undoubtedly an embarrassment for a sultan. Meanwhile, Mr. Davutoğlu’s quest to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque in the Palestinian capital al-Quds may have to wait for a few more centuries, if not longer. Instead, Mr. Davutoğlu could always pray at a mosque of his choice in Cairo, likewise a former Ottoman land, to be followed by a gathering of Muslim Brothers in al-Adawiya square: a nice package tour in another center of world politics, the emergency rule in Cairo permitting.

Turkey has become a chief impediment to the fight against terrorism

Kurds carry the coffins of victims
of a Turkish air raid, outside
Uludere Hospital in Uludere,
Sirnak province, on 30 December '11

Michael Rubin..
Commentary/ Contentions..
05 February '13..

Evelyn Gordon wrote yesterday about the strange silence of the Western media on the threats made by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to attack Israel. It was no misspeak; later that the day, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—whom President Barack Obama has called one of his top foreign friends—essentially repeated the warning.

Turkey’s hypocrisy is growing. Over the past decade, Israel struck Syria unilaterally on three occasions:

 - On October 5, 2003, Israeli jets attacked Ain es Saheb, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad training camp about 15 miles northwest of Damascus. The airstrike followed a suicide bombing in Haifa the previous day. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, of course, is an unrepentant terrorist group founded by Iran.

 - On September 6, 2007, Israel bombed Syria’s nuclear weapons plant. Elliott Abrams has a must-read article on the episode in this month’s COMMENTARY.

 - And, of course, last week Israel struck at Syrian missiles being transferred to Hezbollah and perhaps also a Syrian chemical and biological weapons laboratory.

Erdoğan calls this “state terrorism.” Of course, over the same period, the Turkish Air Force has bombed sovereign Iraqi territory on a couple dozen occasions, often striking not Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) activists, but villagers and children. In one of the most egregious examples, on December 28, 2011, Turkish warplanes attacked a number of Kurds, killing 34 civilians including women and children. No PKK members were killed or even apparently present. There has been no accountability for what Kurds call the “Roboski massacre.”

Turkey Joins the Middle East - Conspiracy Theories Triumphant

Daniel Pipes..
National Review Online..
05 February '13..

I wrote in The Hidden Hand, my 1996 book surveying conspiracy theories in the Middle East, that

Turkey and Israel stand out as the only two Middle Eastern countries where leaders are fully accountable to electorates, where the West is viewed more as an ally than as an enemy, and where conspiracy theories have a relatively minor role in public life. … Few mainstream politician, intellectual, or religious leaders [in Turkey] engage in conspiratorial thinking, which exists mostly at the fringes of polite society.

How sadly have things changed in the intervening years. Here’s one example of many, not more egregious but more spectacular than most:

The background: On Jan. 30, Israeli warplanes struck targets in Syria. A week later, the exact details remain murky, but it concerned the transfer of advanced armaments by the Syrian regime to the Hizbullah terrorist group in Lebanon. One might expect the Turkish authorities to applaud this step, both because it did damage to the regime Ankara wants to overthrow and because those advanced armaments could potentially be used against Turkish interests. But no, both the government and the communist opposition spun elaborate and unconvincing conspiracy theories about the Israel raid.

Turkish FM Davutoglu Threatens to Attack Israel - Media Stays Mum

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
04 February '13..

This weekend, a NATO member threatened to attack one of America’s major non-NATO allies–and nobody in Washington even appears to have noticed. According to the Turkish daily Hurriyet, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu lambasted Israel’s reported airstrike on an arms convoy inside Syria and warned that “Turkey would not stay unresponsive to an Israeli attack against any Muslim country.” He also lambasted Syrian President Bashar Assad for failing to launch retaliatory strikes against Israel himself and charged that Assad must have “made a secret deal with Israel.”

Granted, Turkey isn’t really going to attack Israel, nor is Assad likely to do so in response to Davutoglu’s taunts–which is why most Western media outlets, even had they noticed the story, would have dismissed it as non-newsworthy. But they’d be wrong. The failure to report this constant drumbeat of anti-Israel incitement–not just in Turkey, but also in other countries–may be the biggest single reason why so many Americans, including senior policy-makers, consistently misread the Middle East.

Consider, for instance, what Davutoglu actually told his countrymen via the press briefing quoted in Hurriyet. First, he told them Israel is the kind of criminal state that attacks other Muslim countries for no good reason: He didn’t bother mentioning that the reported target was a convoy ferrying sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization openly dedicated to Israel’s eradication. Second, he told them Israel is the kind of criminal state that makes secret deals with Assad, a leader who has slaughtered over 60,000 of his own citizens. Nor is this unusual: Officials from the ruling AKP party produce a constant stream of anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) incitement. Indeed, as we know from WikiLeaks, even former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey concluded that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan “simply hates Israel.”

Our Brothers (not-so-much) in arms

Burak Bekdil..
Hurryiet Daily News..
18 July '12..
H/T  Elder of Ziyon ..


Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu must have been too busy isolating (now) Russia and China (after Israel) to notice that his favorite brothers in the Middle East, the Palestinians, recently sounded an alarm when they found out that they were incapable of paying June salaries to 160,000 employees on time.

The shortfall was considered the biggest crisis in Palestinian history, and the authorities said they heavily relied on the availability of Arab and international aid. It is bizarre that Ankara did not pay any attention to the Palestinian cry. Which other nation in recent history has been the loudest supporter of the “Palestinian cause?” Where are the Turkish brothers of our Palestinian brothers? Some facts and figures I recently came across might shed light on the situation.

In the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara tragedy, Mr. Davutoğlu said this was “Turkey’s 9/11,” that more Turkish-led flotillas would be on their way to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, that Turkish military planes and ships would protect these “aid vessels” and that Israel would eventually be entirely isolated.

That challenge was followed by numerous other promises for every manner of possible Turkish aid for our Palestinian brothers, including a revelation that Minister Davutoğlu was dreaming about “praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque in the Palestinian capital Jerusalem.” Naturally, all that made Mr. Davutoğlu and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan heroes in the Palestinian lands – for some time.

Rubin - Turkey’s Foreign Minister Bashes Israel as Turkey Slaughters Kurds

Michael Rubin..
Commentary/Contentions..
12 February '12..

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has been visiting Washington, supposedly to talk about Syria. He has, however, upheld his promise last autumn to use every international gathering to bash Israel. As the Turkish press reported at the time:

“[Israel] despises and plays with the people’s honor in this region,” Davutoğlu said, adding that Turkey would continue to highlight Israel’s unlawful acts in all international platforms.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Davutoğlu told Israel “enough is enough,” and drew moral equivalence between Russia’s veto of Syrian atrocities and American support of Israel at the United Nations. The ultimate irony, however, came as Turkish jet fighters crossed an international border to bomb Kurds in Iraq, once again.

Yes, Mr. Davutoğlu, enough is enough.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/12/turkey-bashes-israel-and-slaughters-kurds/


Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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IHH's Ties to Turkey's AKP Government

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA/Snapshots
27 January '11

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/01/ihhs_ties_to_turkeys_akp_gover.html

In the New York Times' feature this week on Turkey's Foreign Minister ("Turkey's Role in Middle East is Bolstered by Vision of Foreign Minister"), Ahmet Davutoglu insists that he did all he could to convince the IHH to cancel the departure of the Mavi Marmara, and reporter James Traub doesn't contradict him:

In the spring of 2010, a Turkish charitable organization, I.H.H., chartered the flotilla designed to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Davutoglu says that he tried to persuade the group not to sail and then asked the organizer of the flotilla to turn aside if Israel stopped the ships, as it was certain to do, and to offload the cargo at a port outside Gaza if necessary.

Taub describes Ankara's apparent orchestration of the Mavi Marmara's confrontation with Israeli forces as merely an Israeli "view." A report released today by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) details the close ties between IHH (described by Traub only as a Turkish charitable organization) and "the upper echelons of the Turkish regime," including the government's "logistical support" and "political-propaganda protection."

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Change we must believe in

Turkey is collaborating with Syria against the Kurds.


Caroline Glick
Column One/JPost
23 July '10

Posted before Shabbat

Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world’s top weapons systems.

Syria is Iran’s junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

Last September, as Turkey’s Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.

“We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems,” Davutoglu proclaimed.

And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.

On Wednesday, Al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of Kurds have been killed in recent weeks.

The Syrian government media claim that 11 Kurds have been killed.

There are conflicting reports as well about the number of Kurds who have been arrested since the onslaught began. Kurdish sources say 630 have been arrested. The Turkish media claims 400 Kurds have been arrested by Syrian security forces.

(Read full story)

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Turkey's 9/11

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror
14 June '10

It wasn't some feverish activist who claimed that the Israeli raid of the Mavi Marmara was like "Turkey's 9/11". It was Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu over breakfast with reporters in Washington.

Obviously enough, Davutoglu's comparison was cynical and offensive, all the more so if one takes into account that Turkey can claim to be the "most anti-American country in the world." Apparently, this suits Turkey's Islamist government just fine, since media outlets close to the ruling AKP and Prime Minister Erdogan have accused the US not only of committing all sorts of atrocities in Iraq, but also of causing various natural disasters.

It doesn't take a big leap from this kind of anti-American conspiracy theories to antisemitic tropes, and thus, "praise of Hitler, Holocaust denial, and passages from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are also part of the output of Turkey's Islamist media. So it was hardly surprising to see a sign at a recent demonstration in Istanbul that announced: "Legendary leader Adolf Hitler, our patience is running out, we need your spirit."

In a somewhat different way, the Nazis and the Holocaust were also once again a favorite reference point in the commentaries published by Western media outlets, where pundits vied with each other to bemoan that, unlike the enlightened rest of the world, the Jewish state has failed to grasp what a wonderful morality lesson the Holocaust offered particularly for Jews. To quote just one of many examples, Henry Siegman, currently at the University of London, put it this way:

If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions - and even its legitimate security concerns - are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

Perhaps one should appreciate that this is actually refreshingly honest: writing about Gaza, Siegman decries Israel's "territorial ambitions", and then, perhaps faintly realizing that this is utter nonsense, he throws in the "security concerns" that are supposedly "legitimate", but apparently not legitimate enough to be actually defended.

(Read full article)

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Erdogan and the Israel Card

Mr. Erdogan has become a hero in the Muslim world, where he is seen as the "new Nasser," in the words of one Saudi writer.


Steve Rosen
Middle East Forum
Wall St. Journal
10 June '10

The deaths of nine Turkish citizens in the Gaza flotilla incident would have brought a severe reaction under any circumstances. What is nonetheless striking in this incident is the unbridled anger and fiercely hostile reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish public. Mr. Erdogan said Israel was guilty of "state terrorism" and a "bloody massacre." His foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said "This attack is like 9/11 for Turkey," comparing it to a premeditated act of aggression that took 2,900 lives.

Mr. Erdogan does not always display such reactions to allegations of human rights violations. Last year, he defended Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for killing half a million Sudanese Christians and non-Arab Muslims. In March 2010, he denied that Turks ever killed Armenian civilians. He labeled a U.S. congressional resolution on the Armenian deaths "a comedy, a parody." He said that the Turkish military garrison stationed in Cyprus since 1974 is "not an occupier" but "[ensures] the peace." On tens of thousands of Kurds killed by Turkish security forces from 1984 to 1999, he says nothing.

Could it be that there is something more to Mr. Erdogan's rage against Israel than just a spontaneous reaction to the loss of life here?

Turkish elections, 13 months away, hold the answer. Backing for Mr. Erdogan's party has fallen to 29%, the lowest level since it won power in 2002 and far below the 47% it scored in July 2007. So Mr. Erdogan decided to play the Israel Card.

He tested this tactic in January 2009, in a confrontation with Israeli President Shimon Peres at Davos. Mr. Peres asked him in front of the cameras: "What would you do if you were to have in Istanbul every night a hundred rockets?" Mr. Erdogan shot back, "When it comes to killing you know very well how to kill." Thousands of Turks applauded Mr. Erdogan's performance, greeting him with a hero's welcome and a sea of Turkish and Palestinian flags upon his return home to Ataturk Airport.

(Read full article)

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Why is Palestine ‘a second Cyprus’ for Turks?

Burak Bekdil
Hurriyet Daily News
03 June '10

(This is certainly not what I expected to see coming from Ankara, but we do live in a funny world)

The State of Israel has every right to do smart or silly things. Its leaders may or may not be crypto-mullahs as the joke went in this column on Wednesday (amazing, there were readers who took it seriously!). But let’s visit the “Turkish side” of the incident.

Mr. Strategic Depth, otherwise known as Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, thinks the Israeli raid on the Gaza “aid” flotilla was “Turkey’s 9/11.” Big words. But they hint at something serious.

The scenario plotted by very important Islamist Turks remains incomplete to this day. For a perfect closure, i.e., cashing in on the event for domestic and global Muslim popularity – the former to secure power and the latter to bolster neo-Ottomanist dreams – something bold should happen to inject one idea into the Muslim audience’s mind: that Tayyip Bey gave the bloodthirsty Jews a big lesson!

Many options are on the table, with their pros and cons, and the official Turkey sitting around various meeting tables pondering where, when and how to hit back best (best = maximum public impact, minimum political cost). There is plenty of time. Elections are more than a year ahead. But if I were an Israeli cabinet minister running into Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at an international conference I would either run away immediately. Sadly, there will be a closure, and it won’t come in a pleasant way.

Mr. Erdoğan made a very smart speech in Parliament when he warned angry Turks to distinguish among Israelis, Jews and the Israeli government. Echoing the big boss, Istanbul’s new governor, Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, has said, “He is perfectly confident every Turkish Jew was as safe as Muslims” and that “we are certain no Turkish Jew feels threatened.”

I have an idea! Should the esteemed governor agree, we can put his “confidence” to a little test.

I suggest having the governor disguise himself perfectly as an Orthodox Jew and let him have a solo stroll on İstiklal Avenue. If he can manage to safely reach halfway on İstiklal, I’ll confess I know nothing “about my own people.”

(Read full story)

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