Israel is living in a region whose people believe that the Zionist regime is their archenemy.
But with the backing of the United States and other allies, Israel was able to obtain the support of the Arab dictators of the region, who suppressed anyone opposed to the cancerous Zionist entity.
For many years, the people of the Middle East have been lamenting the plight of oppressed Palestinians expelled from their homeland. The people of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria directly witnessed this barbaric act, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and forced to live in refugee camps in their countries.
However, since the fall of some of the dictatorships in the region, the Arab masses have found the courage to stand up to the Zionist regime.
In addition, the Israel-Lebanon war of summer 2006 shattered the Israeli military’s myth of invincibility, especially in the eyes of the Arab masses.
This has increased Israel’s isolation and animosity toward the Zionist regime.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must now deal with this gradual isolation, which is leading to the Zionist regime’s destruction. The Israeli people are also feeling pressure due to the rise in insecurity and emigrating from the occupied territories in greater and greater numbers day by day.
Although Ankara has made some miscalculations in its foreign policy in regard to relations with the West, the policy adopted by the Turkish government toward Israel is a positive step at this critical juncture.
The Turkish government’s suspension of its military agreements with Israel has also encouraged the brave Egyptian people, who have made many bold moves recently, such as the storming of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.
The level of regional governments’ support for the Palestinian people is a criterion for determining the veracity of their rhetoric.
And the stance recently adopted by the Turkish government is definitely a positive move.
Hossein Sheikholeslam formerly served as Iran’s ambassador to Syria. He is currently the parliament speaker’s advisor on international issues and the director of the Secretariat of the Conference for Defending the Palestinian Intifada.
via Turkey’s anti-Zionist stance is a positive move – Tehran Times.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that Islam and democracy are not contradictory.
Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, right, shakes hands with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the prime minister office in Tunis, September 15, 2011.
On the second leg of his North Africa tour, Erdogan spoke in Tunis where the “Arab Spring” protest movement began this year. After meeting with Tunisian prime minister Beji Caid Essebsi, Erdogan said “a Muslim can run a state very successfully.”
Tunisians are set to vote on October 23 in assembly elections, the first since Tunisian protests helped depose longtime ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
In Turkey, Erdogan’s party has Islamist roots and its election success has served as a model for political groups spreading in the Arab world. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim.
In comments to reporters, Erdogan also slammed Israel for saying Turkey is ready to deploy warships “at any time” if a feud with Israel over its blockade of Gaza escalates.
Erdogan’s visit to Tunisia comes after a stop in Egypt.
On Wednesday, Erdogan spoke with leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood after receiving a hero’s welcome from Egyptians for his pro-Palestinian stand.
Erdogan’s four-day diplomatic visit to North Africa is aimed at expanding Turkey’s growing influence in a region full of political upheaval.
He goes next to Libya, and is expected to meet with the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council Friday.
Some in Israel have expressed concern that Erdogan’s “Arab Spring” diplomatic tour will stoke anti-Israel tensions, as it comes while Turkish-Israeli relations have hit new lows.
The two countries have been in a dispute over Turkey’s demand for an apology for Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship last year. Turkey recently expelled the Israeli ambassador and other top diplomats from Ankara, and has suspended military trade and cooperation with Israel.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
via Turkey’s Prime Minister Hails Arab Democracy Efforts in Tunisia | Middle East | English.
CAIRO—In Cairo’s Opera House on Tuesday, the standing ovations, chants and fist pumping from the audience began even before Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood up to speak.
Associated Press Prime Minister Erdogan, embracing his Egyptian counterpart Essam Sharaf in Cairo Tuesday, is seen by many Arabs as a heroic figure.
When he got to threatening further retribution against Israel for its refusal to apologize over the killing of Turkish citizens during a scuffle on an aid ship last year, the audience roared.
Mr. Erdogan was on the first stop of an “Arab Spring” tour that will take him to Tunisia and Libya later this week, as he seeks to extend Turkey’s influence in the region using his own popularity and a tough line on Israel to draw support.
As vendors distributed posters of Mr. Erdogan and his face looked down from giant billboards in the city center, he seemed to be successful. “People in Egypt see him as the new Gamal Abdel Nasser,” said Mohamad Mosalam, a banker from Société Généralé in Egypt, referring to Egypt’s revered post-colonial president, who faced down Britain, France and Israel over control of the Suez Canal in 1956. “For 40 years [after Nasser], Arab people felt they had no leader.” Now, said Mr. Mosalam, they have Mr. Erdogan.
Speaking just blocks away from where U.S. President Barack Obama sought to persuade Arabs to trust America again in a speech on the Middle East two years ago, Mr. Erdogan also chided Washington. He called on the U.S. to rethink its plan to oppose Palestinian statehood in the United Nations this month.
That stance, said Mr. Erdogan, “does not fit the understanding of justice in U.S. foreign policy.” He went on to warn Arabs against adopting ideas from outside the region, without specifying what or whose ideas he was referring to.
Turkey’s prime minister sought to make common cause between Arabs and Turks. He stressed their common faith and history (during the Ottoman Empire), their desire for democracy and above all, common opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Israel, he said in an address to Arab League foreign ministers earlier Tuesday, “is going to lose in the end.”
Israeli officials have said they believe Mr. Erdogan’s recent downgrading of diplomatic relations with Israel and sharp rhetoric are designed specifically to boost his stature in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring. Turkish officials say the moves are linked solely to Israel’s refusal to apologize for the deaths of its citizens on the ship.
Turkey’s outspoken leader called Tuesday for close partnership — including military — between Egypt and Turkey, two of the region’s most populous Muslim countries. He pledged to boost trade to $5 billion from $3 billion today, within five years. And he signed 11 agreements with Egypt’s transitional government, covering areas from energy to the creation of a new joint High Security and Cooperation Council.
But there were also signs of the potential limitations to Mr. Erdogan’s bid for leadership in the Arab world.
His visit came at a sensitive time for Egypt’s interim military leaders, who have reached the nadir of their post-revolutionary prestige. In the past week, the military has announced a wider remit for Egypt’s 30-year old emergency law while cracking down on media groups that it considered to be inciting public disorder.
So far, the military has acted as a conservative counterweight to those Egyptian voices who would like to see a bolder foreign policy. That triggered popular anger, in particular, when the military tried to protect Israel’s embassy rather than expel its diplomats after Israeli forces killed six Egyptian border guards earlier this month.
“They don’t want to go in clashes with the U.S. and Israel so I don’t think that there will be a good and solid feedback from Erdogan’s visit with Egypt,” said Bashir Abdel Fattah, a Turkey expert at the government-financed Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Indeed on Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan called several times for democratic forms not to be held back, without specifying to whom he was referring.
“I don’t think it could be a beginning of an alliance between Egypt and Turkey in the future, because both countries know that there are limits between cooperation,” said Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Erdogan also had to tread carefully with regard to Syria, which he didn’t even mention in his address to the Arab League foreign ministers.
Outside the building, meanwhile, Syrian activists protested against Mr. Erdogan’s stance, which they saw as too accommodating to President Bashar Al-Assad.
Speaking to ordinary Egyptians at the Opera house, however, Mr. Erdogan attacked the Syrian president by name. “Now the Syrian people do not believe Al Assad. I don’t either,” said Mr. Erdogan. “A leader that murders his people loses his legitimacy.”
—Ayla Albayrak contributed to this article.
Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com
via Erdogan Seeks Closer Ties With New Arab Rulers – WSJ.com.
Israel and Turkey: How a Close Relationship Disintegrated
Posted by Karl Vick Monday, September 12, 2011 at 1:08 pm
37 Comments • Related Topics: arab uprisings, Egypt, israel, Palestinian, Turkey
Pro-Islamic Turks stage a protest to show their solidarity with Palestinians and to protest against Israel on the "Jerusalem Day" outside the Israeli embassy residence in Ankara on August 26, 2011. (Photo: Adem Altan / AFP / Getty Images)
Many are the challenges facing Israel on the cusp of a new season.
The Palestinians’ approach to the United Nations for statehood looms. The bid, set for Sept. 21, bears down on Jerusalem with the certainty of an autumn chill.
The weekend desecration of the Israeli embassy by a Cairean mob was one of those shocks that is not quite a surprise, given the longstanding antipathy of the Egyptian public toward the Jewish State. More telling was the response of the Egypt’s military rulers, who according to Israeli officials went missing during the hours that mobs laid siege as Israeli guards awaited rescue from Egyptian commandos who didn’t show up til 4 a.m. How fraught are relations between Egypt and Israel? On Sunday, an Israeli army vehicle patrolling near the site of the Aug. 18 terror attack near the resort city of Eilat took fire from the Egyptian side of the border. The Israelis did not return fire. Who knew who was shooting at them?
And yet, the trash talk with Turkey qualifies in many ways as the great crisis of the moment. It’s not just that Turkey’s Prime Minister was threatening to send warships to confront the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, calling the 2010 deaths of eight Turks at the hands of Israeli commandos “a casus belli,” or act of war. Nor is it reports that, in response, Israel’s reliably bellicose Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, mulled aloud about reaching out to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK — regarded by the U.S. as a terrorist organization — just to mess with the Turks.
It’s that, not five years ago, these two countries were not merely allies, but strategic allies, the kind a nation forms a foreign policy around.
“Israel-Turkey relations were great up to three or four years ago,” recalls Dan Haloutz, a former chief of staff for the Israel Defense Forces. “When I was a commander, I used to fly to Turkey on every military training we had with the Turkish air force, and we had a lot — a lot.”
The ties were snug, and at least appeared essential. Israel hasn’t a lot of air space, and so was grateful for access to the wide open skies over Anatolia for fighter pilots to log flight hours. In return Turkey bought Israeli tanks, and still relies heavily on Israel’s remote controlled drones to track and attack the very PKK rebels the foreign minister reportedly was looking to cultivate. Away from government, commerce runs at least $3 billion a year between the countries.
And though 99 percent of Turks are Muslims, Jews have been long welcome in Istanbul, not least since the Spanish Inquisition, when the Ottoman sultan gave refuge to those offered the choice of conversion to Christianity, death or expulsion. Some still speak Ladino, or “Jewish Spanish.” Even after 9/11 Israelis felt safe enough in Turkey to flock to its Mediterranean discount resorts; the departures board at Ben Gurion Airport on a summer day lists charter flight after charter flight to Antalya.
That abruptly changed on Memorial Day, 2010, when Israel’s version of the SEALs boarded the Mavi Marmara. The converted ferry was en route to supply the besieged residents of Gaza, an act that ostensibly violated Israeli sovereignty. These were the people about whom Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had angrily lectured Israel’s head of state at Davos a year earlier, in the wake of the three-week Israeli military incursion that left 1,400 Palestinians dead.
After the flotilla fiasco, charters to Turkey were cancelled overnight, and Israel began steering its tourists toward Greece. But things really did appear to be on the mend this summer. In June, Turkey joined Greece in preventing the makings of a new flotilla from leaving their ports to challenge the Gaza blockade anew. Behind the scenes, Israel dispatched diplomats to hammer out language that would salve the wounds to Turkey’s quite extraordinary national pride and finally put the 2010 deaths behind both countries, who said they wanted to be friends again. “Turkey welcomes you,” said the resort ads that began appearing in Israel. In smaller print: “As always.”
The negotiations, however, ended not in language acceptable to both sides but in the release of a United Nations report on the flotilla that found fault with both sides but simply outraged Turkey. Israel’s ambassador to Ankara was formally expelled to Jerusalem. He was joined the following week by Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, who merely fled. And on Monday, Erdogan arrived with great fanfare in Cairo.
The days are growing shorter.
via Israel and Turkey: How a Close Relationship Disintegrated – Global Spin – TIME.com.
But with the backing of the United States and other allies, Israel was able to obtain the support of the Arab dictators of the region, who suppressed anyone opposed to the cancerous Zionist entity.
