{"id":20189,"date":"2010-06-27T00:52:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T22:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=20189"},"modified":"2023-07-26T10:57:56","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T07:57:56","slug":"punishing-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/06\/27\/punishing-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Punishing Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Does anyone remember the movie\u00a0The Boys from Brazil<\/em>?\u00a0 It told the story of how a group of top Nazis had moved to Brazil where they made a number of clones of Hitler-as-a-child that were being strategically placed around the world to eventually bring about a Fourth Reich. The movie ended ambiguously, with many of the Hitler children still alive and evidently expected to eventually turn into Hitler adults.\u00a0 The movie makers were clearly on to something because there have been a lot of Hitler sightings by Israel and its friends over the past few years.\u00a0 Saddam Hussein was described as a new Hitler while Iran\u2019s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been depicted in even more heinous terms as a reborn Nazi leader preparing a new Holocaust.\u00a0 More recently Israel demonstrators have displayed effigies of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the hairline altered and a moustache added to create a caricature of Hitler.<\/p>\n

The Turkish prime minister\u2019s Hitler-like leanings first appeared when he dared\u00a0confront<\/span> Israel\u2019s President Shimon Peres at an international meeting in Davos in January 2009.\u00a0 Referring to the slaughter of Gazan civilians earlier that month, Erdogan told Peres “\u2026you know well how to kill.”\u00a0 But if there was any lingering doubt, Erdogan definitely became Hitler through his support of the flotilla that sought to bring aid to Gaza three weeks ago followed by his denunciation of the massacre initiated by Israeli commandos. His diabolical intent was made manifest when he then demanded justice for the nine Turkish citizens who were murdered.\u00a0 Hitlerization is the price one inevitably pays for criticizing Israel or opposing its policies.<\/p>\n

Whenever Israel discovers that yet another foreign nation has turned Nazi and is intent on recreating the Holocaust, the American lap dog soon picks up the scent.\u00a0 Andrew Sullivan has recently\u00a0described<\/span> the phenomenon as “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” which he describes as a “\u2026form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned.\u00a0 And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers.\u00a0 There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.”<\/p>\n

The Gaza flotilla has been handled by the mainstream media in precisely that fashion \u2013 blaming the victim with a unanimity that overwhelms both justice and fairness.\u00a0 No humanity, no mention of the deliberate attempt to starve Gaza most recently\u00a0endorsed by alleged United States Senator from New York Charles Schumer who said “strangle them economically.”\u00a0 Or, if one prefers the\u00a0wisdom of Representative Eliot Engel, also from New York, the flotilla was “filled with hate-filled provocateurs bent on violence.”\u00a0 Confronted by such hatred it is surprising that the Israeli commandos were so restrained, killing only nine passengers and wounding about forty more.<\/p>\n

As the popular narrative in the media has unfolded, Turkey was the aggressor and Israel yet again the victim.\u00a0 Turkey now has to be punished.\u00a0 Congress is already considering passing the frequently shelved Armenian Genocide resolution and Representative Mike Spence\u00a0warns “There will be a cost if Turkey stays on its present heading of growing closer to Iran and more antagonistic to the State of Israel.”\u00a0 Representative Shelley Berkley agrees, saying that she would actively oppose Turkey\u2019s attempt to join the European Union. \u00a0 Just exactly how she will do that is not completely clear.<\/p>\n

The American media and the punditry in Washington has obediently been lining up to condemn Ankara, using two basic arguments.\u00a0 The first contention is that Turkey has become a stronghold of Islamism, is edging towards a political and economic alliance with Iran, and is even acting friendly to terrorism-supporting neighbors like Syria.\u00a0 The second narrative is that Turkey is no longer reliable due to its support of initiatives like the flotilla and also its bid to negotiate a solution to the Iranian nuclear program dilemma.<\/p>\n

Those who know Turkey well realize that the country\u2019s Islamism is a reflection of the simple fact that many Turks are deeply religious.\u00a0 It does not mean that Turkish democracy is dead and the desire to make the state more reflective of religious sentiment will be held in check by the many Turks in the judiciary and military who see themselves as guardians of the secular constitution. Educated Turks in liberal urban environments are also frequently not religious at all and many are hostile to expressions of piety.\u00a0 It is absolutely in the United States\u2019 national interest to encourage the development of political systems in Muslim majority countries that accommodate both democratic pluralism and religiosity.\u00a0 Turkey is far from perfect but it is a good example of how such a system might develop and should be encouraged, not subject to criticism that really has nothing to do with the Turks themselves and everything to do with Israel.<\/p>\n

As for the claim that Turkey is sliding eastward, Turks have always seen themselves as a bridge between east and west and establishing a modus vivendi with one\u2019s neighbors is just good politics and good business in the Near East.\u00a0 As for the charge that Turkey is no longer reliable, one only has to note that nearly the entire world excepting only Israel supports the lifting of the siege of Gaza while many nations welcomed Turkey and Brazil\u2019s initiative to resolve the stand-off over Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions.\u00a0 The United States, inevitably lining up in support of Israel and seemingly willing to go to war with Iran on Tel Aviv\u2019s behalf, is, as usual, politically isolated in its support of policies that will go nowhere and accomplish nothing.<\/p>\n

The hysteria about Turkey is, if anything, more intense at the various neocon think tanks and in their websites on the internet where leading supporters of Israel are calling not only for punishing Turkey but also for kicking it out of NATO.\u00a0 The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) has led the charge.\u00a0 JINSA is the home base of leading neocons to include John Bolton, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Richard Perle and Kenneth Timmerman.\u00a0 A\u00a0JINSA report<\/span> issued on June 8th\u00a0cited Turkey for its “anti-Semitic ravings” and recommended that Washington “seriously consider suspending military cooperation\u2026as a prelude to removing it” from NATO.\u00a0 The hue and cry was shortly thereafter picked up by the other neocon heroes who continue to feature on the mainstream media in spite of their inability to get anything right.\u00a0 The\u00a0National Review<\/em> Online\u2019s Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0called<\/span> Turkey a “\u2026sponsor of Hamas, ally of theocratic Iran, and fellow traveler with terrorist sponsoring Syria” conditions that are “antithetical to its NATO membership.”\u00a0 Professor Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University\u00a0added<\/span> in a June 7th\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em> op-ed that “A combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe, and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and interests.”<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0Weekly Standard<\/em> article on June 21st, Elliot Abrams chimed in with more of the same,\u00a0observing<\/span> that “it\u2019s obvious that our formerly reliable NATO ally Turkey has become a staunch supporter of the radical camp. In the flotilla incident, it not only sided with but also sought to strengthen the terrorist group Hamas.”\u00a0 As always the neocons speak with one voice in defense of Israel, making it appear that the entire process is orchestrated, which, of course, it is.\u00a0 Will the neocons marginalize Ankara and succeed in forcing Turkey out of NATO?\u00a0 Difficult to say, but one should fully expect moves by Congress to do just that or to pressure Turkey in such a way as to make Ankara withdraw from the alliance.<\/p>\n

Turkey is a vital strategic partner for Washington. With its large population and thriving economy, it might well be the indispensible nation in the arc of states running from the Mediterranean to central Asia.\u00a0 It has a long history of friendship towards the United States combined with a national interest that compels it to encourage stability among the countries that it borders and more broadly throughout the Middle East.\u00a0 In spite of misgivings about specific policies, it houses a major US airbase at Incirlik and has supported Washington\u2019s nation building efforts in Afghanistan.\u00a0 But now it must be punished because it has crossed the line by opposing the kleptocracy Israel.\u00a0 And it will be punished, first pilloried in the US media, a process which is underway right now, and then by the US Congress and White House, which will together find some subtle and not-so-subtle ways to bring Ankara to heel.\u00a0 And the loser in all of this will be the American people, who will alienate a good and staunch friend in the Middle East and make another unnecessary enemy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/giraldi\/2010\/06\/23\/punishing-turkey\/, June 24, 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does anyone remember the movie\u00a0The Boys from Brazil?\u00a0 It told the story of how a group of top Nazis had moved to Brazil where they made a number of clones of Hitler-as-a-child that were being strategically placed around the world to eventually bring about a Fourth Reich. The movie ended ambiguously, with many of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":20191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,89,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-turkey","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}