Erdogan's Double Standards
By Shlomi Eldar
Al-Monitor Israel Pulse – 3/3/2013
`Turkey and Israel are both vital allies of the United States. We want to
see them work together in order to be able to go beyond the rhetoric and
begin to take concrete steps to change this relationship,' said new U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry at a news conference in Ankara on Friday
[March 1]. Kerry also condemned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
for his verbal attack two days earlier, when he compared Zionism to fascism
and called it a `crime against humanity.' These two sentences by Kerry
express the vast distance between hope for rehabilitating the relations
with Ankara – and reality.
In the past, I had thought that it would be possible for Israel and Turkey
to consider their joint interests and restore their relationship in the
near future. The leaders of the two countries, I had reckoned, would be
forced to swallow their pride, if only out of Middle Eastern logic. After
all, friends are friends, all hell broke loose in the Middle East and this
is the time to make up and bury the hatchet.
But then along came Erdogan's statement this week in the United Nations -which was uttered, by the way, at a U.N. forum, established to `improve
understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples across
cultures and religions.' This statement certainly proved how far off the
mark I had been.
Erdogan is a serial troublemaker. Two-and-a-half years ago he quarreled
with Israel over the Marmara episode; a year ago he quarreled with France;
and over the past year he quarreled with Damascus, almost to threat of war.
If we can rely on commentaries and evaluations of the situation, Erdogan's
crass verbal exchanges with his old friend Syria is meant to help
ingratiate him with Cairo, Tehran, Baghdad, Qatar and in effect the entire
Arab world, in order to actualize his megalomaniac aspirations to become
the Mukhtar of the Muslim world.
I believed that one day, Erdogan would understand that he could fill the
tremendous void left by the leaders of the Arab world that were deposed or
weakened - and diplomatic wisdom would dictate to him to soften his
position vis-a-vis Israel.
This `path of wisdom' seemed tangible, attainable, logical and even selfevident to me. True, no one believes that a new friendship between the two
countries could reemerge; a relationship as close and courageous as in the
past. But even a cold friendship could be useful. These hopes/assessments
were strengthened when I'd occasionally hear leaks about secret contacts
between Israeli and Turkish representatives regarding an end to the crisis.
We even received news recently in the Turkish press that Israel supplied
Turkey with advanced electronic warfare systems for aircraft systems, that
significantly upgrade the Turkish Air Force's Airborne Warning and Control
System (AWACS). This happened last month.
So, I asked myself, if that's not a sign portending well for the future, if
that doesn't bode well, how else can we explain it? Two countries that were
friends and became enemies are now taking confident steps toward
reconciliation.
But then Erdogan rose to the speaker's rostrum at the U.N. Alliance of
Civilizations in Vienna, leaving his listeners in shock and causing me to
feel baffled with myself over my naiveté. `The international community
should consider Islamophobia a crime against humanity like Zionism or antiSemitism or fascism,' said Erdogan at the stand of the startled U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
`Crime against humanity,' he said.
That is the moment when the penny dropped. Erdogan's conduct vis-à-vis
Israel is not a reaction or a result of anything. It has no connection to
diplomatic mishaps or to the failures connected to the tragic takeover of
the Mavi Marmara ship. It is not connected to the various operations of the
IDF in the Gaza Strip; it's not even about Erdogan's megalomaniac
aspirations to lead the Muslim world, for which he is willing to sacrifice
the long-standing friendship between Turkey and Israel. It's not about the
impasse in negotiations between Israel and [Palestinian Chairman] Abu Mazen
and not even connected to the ridiculous conduct of former Deputy Foreign
Minister Danny Ayalon, who subjected Turkey's ambassador to Israel to the
humiliating ceremony of placing him on a low seat.
It is hatred.
Erdogan simply hates Israel. If we listen carefully to his words at the
Vienna convention, we realize that he doesn't even try to hide it. He
simply hates the Israelis and everything they represent with such deep,
built-in, dark hatred that nothing will help. We should have understood
this a long time ago, but better late than never.
`Obviously, we not only disagree with it. We found it objectionable. We
denounce Erdogan's statement,' Kerry said at that same press conference in
Ankara during the weekend [March 1], and it was good that he said what he
did.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who also recently expressed
opinions similar to those of the prime minister, fixed his gaze on Kerry
without batting an eyelash.
And since Erdogan started all this, since he was the one to hurl the `crime
against humanity' hot potato, the time has come for us to turn the historybook pages and consider an item that all Turkish leaders in the past
attempted to hush up, and even forced those surrounding them to deny.
Again, I raise the subject here with the requisite caution, only because
Erdogan himself felt free to run off at the mouth. I am referring to
something that can only be labeled a `crime against humanity,' meaning
genocide, that Turkey was connected to. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
A few months ago, I visited Armenia. I went on a tour of the genocide
museum in Yerevan, the capital city. A million and a half Armenians were
murdered in what is called the =80=9CArmenian Genocide' that was carried
out during World War I in the Ottoman Empire period, before the founding of
the modern Turkish state. The museum is located in the heart of the capital
city, longingly overlooking the Ararat Mountain that is holy to the
Armenians but located in Turkish territory. The museum is full of appalling
testimonies and photographs that clearly answer to the description of
`crime against humanity.'
Despite the tremendous efforts invested by Turkey in the last hundred years
to prevent this, dozens of democratic countries in the world have
acknowledged the Armenian genocide. Dozens of countries - bur not Israel,
which has avoided recognizing the genocide for years, when relations with
Turkey were close and even after the crisis with Turkey erupted. It seems
that some small spark of hope for repairing the relations between the
countries, prevented Israel from officially acknowledging the genocide of
the Armenian nation.
I have no intentions of settling accounts with the Turkish nation, or
pouring more oil on the fire of the ongoing conflict. But to throw out into
the air that `Zionism is a crime against humanity' and continue to deny the
Armenian genocide =80' that's impossible.
So Erdogan, with your permission, one friendly piece of advice: The one who
searches for justice must come with his hands clean. Otherwise, his search
might wake up undesirable ghosts from the past – ghosts that you have tried
to keep dormant.
Shlomi Eldar is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse. For
the past two decades, he has covered the Palestinian Authority and
especially the Gaza Strip for Israel's Channels 1 and 10, and has reported
on the emergence of Hamas. In 2007, he was awarded the Sokolov Prize,
Israel's most important media award, for this work. He has published two
books: Eyeless in Gaza (2005), which anticipated the Hamas victory in the
subsequent Palestinian elections, and Getting to Know Hamas (2012).