Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Israel and Turkey have enjoyed a long and durable friendship — a remarkable achievement in the hornet’s nest that is the modern Middle East. The first Muslim-majority nation to recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel back in 1950, Turkey has for decades cooperated with Israel in economic, intelligence and military matters. (Ironically enough, Iran was the second Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel, but of course that wasn’t the Iran of the Islamic Republic that we know today.)
The last decade has witnessed a marked decline in Turkey’s treatment of Israel, however. This has occurred in concert with the creeping Islamicization of what had once been a rare Middle Eastern bulwark of secularism. Under its Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has governed in Ankara since 2003, Turkey’s education system has grown more religious, and the government has enforced Islamic prohibitions such as that against drinking alcohol. Erdogan has also weakened the standing of the military, the country’s traditional guardian of the secular state. Not surprisingly, he has also ensured that relations with Israel have deteriorated significantly.
Over the last several years, Erdogan has never missed an opportunity to launch cheap, demagogic attacks on Israel. To wit, when Israeli commandos killed several Turks who were attempting to illegally break the naval blockade on Gaza in 2010, he labeled Israel’s Gaza policy “state terrorism,” a remarkable rhetorical attack on a country that has too often been the victim of terrorism.
Recent developments are even more alarming. David Ignatius of The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Erdogan betrayed the identities of 10 Iranian spies for Israel to the government of Iran. (Israel runs much of its Iran-intelligence operations through Turkey, and Erdogan gave up the spies’ identities after they had met their Israeli contacts in Turkey.) If the report is accurate, that’s a stunning betrayal of Israel by an alleged ally.
It’s a betrayal of the United States, too, as we are Israel’s primary guardian and protector in the international community, and also a putative ally of NATO-member Turkey ourselves. U.S. officials would do well to make their displeasure at Erdogan’s latest machinations abundantly clear to Turkey’s powers that be.
via Turkey turns from West | Providence Journal.