Turkish Forum

Tag: Israel’s attacks

  • Regional Balances Are Changing Rapidly

    Regional Balances Are Changing Rapidly

    Turkey’s decision to completely stop its trade with Israel is likely to trigger a number of new developments in the coming months, deeply affecting Israel’s strategy of aggression, genocide and extermination of the Palestinian people.

    Israel is the 12th country to which Turkey exports the most.

    According to Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data, the volume of trade between Turkey and Israel in 2023 was $6.8 billion, 76 per cent of which consisted of goods sold by Turkey to Israel.

    In addition to this, Israel imports overland – especially strategic products such as oil – through Turkey. Therefore, it is certain that Turkey’s imposing restrictions on the shipment of products that Israel buys from third countries, raw materials and reserve ores that Israel needs for production, especially the oil that Israel buys from Azerbaijan, through its territory and ports, will put Israel’s economy in trouble. (Israel’s dependence on Turkey in this regard is many times higher than Turkey’s dependence on Israel).

    Considering these facts, Turkey’s decision to completely halt mutual trade with Israel resembles and evokes the global isolation policy that many countries implemented in the last years of the 20th century against the ‘apartheid’ regime in the Republic of South Africa, which ruthlessly implemented the idea that whites of European origin were superior to other races, including the suspension of the purchase and sale of all goods and services, and the severing of political and diplomatic relations.

    The last government in the Republic of South Africa, formed by whites of European descent, which had managed to maintain the apartheid regime for more than a century with the use of brute force in addition to the military and police force, in which whites were not arrested in any way, was crushed under these global isolations and gave up. Apartheid was buried in the dusty pages of history, never to return. 

    It should be noted that Turkey’s decision is not primarily directed against the Israeli people. The reason for this decision is the removal of the Israeli government, which persistently pursues the policy of genocide with its policy of global isolation, from power and the cessation of attacks against the Palestinian people and Gaza.

    It is certain that if some countries with common sense take Turkey’s decision to stop trade with Israel as an example and decide to stop their trade with Israel in the coming days, this will put Israel in a difficult situation despite all the support that the US has given/will give to Israel.

    At this stage, the US factor and Turkey-US political and economic relations have begun to come to the fore and gain importance. A few days ago, 57 Democratic Party members of the US House of Representatives asked US President Joe Biden to cut off aid to Israel, stating that Israel’s continued attacks would bring the region to the brink of a war that Israel and the US cannot afford, and the US government’s statement that it respects Turkey’s decision indicates that the regional balances have changed.

    In the coming weeks, it is possible to say that Israel will lose global support to a great extent, will rapidly move towards isolation, and as a result, the pro-genocide government will leave power, the attacks will stop and the Palestinian state will make great gains towards recognition.   

    Prof. Dr. (Civil Engineer), Assoc. Prof. Dr. (UA. Relations) Ata ATUN

    Member of the Advisory Board of the TRNC President

    TRNC Republican Assembly 1st Term Deputy

  • Israel’s attacks will lead to its isolation

    Israel’s attacks will lead to its isolation

    By Gideon Levy

    A8Israel has been dealing one blow after another to the rest of the world. While China has still not recovered from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s absence from the reception at its Tel Aviv embassy – a serious punishment for China’s support for the Goldstone report – France is licking its wounds after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “vetoed” a visit by the French foreign minister to Gaza. And Israel has dealt another blow: Its ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, will boycott the conference next week of the new Israel lobby J Street.

    China, France and J Street will somehow get by despite these boycotts, Turkey will also recover from the great vacationers’ revolt, and we can expect that even the Swedes and Norwegians will recover from Israel’s loud reprimands. But a country that attacks and boycotts everyone who does not exactly agree with its official positions will become isolated, forsaken and detestable: North Korea of today or Albania of yesterday. It’s actually quite strange for Israel to use this weapon, as it is about to turn into the victim of boycotts itself.

    Israel strikes and strikes again. It strikes its enemies, and now it strikes out at its friends who dare not fall exactly in line with its official policies. The J Street case is a particularly serious example. This Jewish organization rose in America along with Barack Obama. Its members want a fair and peace-seeking Israel.

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    That’s their sin, and their punishment is a boycott.

    Oren, meanwhile, is a devoted representative: He also is boycotting. After criticizing Israeli columnists, including this one, in an article in The New Republic for daring to criticize Netanyahu’s speech at the UN – an outrage in its own right – the ambassador-propagandist uses the boycott weapon against a new and refreshing Jewish and Zionist organization that is trying to battle the nationalistic and heavy-handed Jewish-American establishment.

    In whose name is Oren doing that? Not in the name of Israeli society, whose ambassador he supposedly is. The former ambassadors from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would have acted the same way.

    Such aggressiveness is a bad sign. It will drive away our last true friends and deepen our isolation. “A nation alone” has turned into our goal, our isolation has become an aspiration. Whom will we have left after we attack and boycott everyone? Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League? Our propagandist-attorney Alan Dershowitz?

    Dividing the world up between absolute good and evil – our side and our enemies, with no middle ground – is a sign of despair and a complete loss of direction. It’s not just our ambassador in Washington, who knows nothing at all about democracy and pluralism and only wants to please his masters. Such behavior – kicking and barking crazily in every direction – is destroying Israel.

    Without giving us a chance to voice our opinion, Israel is falling to the status of an international pariah, the abomination of the nations. And whom can we thank for that? Operation Cast Lead, for example. Only the United States remains our automatic and blind ally for all our mistakes. Another democracy that saw its status deteriorating so much would ask itself first and foremost what mistakes it had made.

    In Israel our approach is exactly the opposite: The rest of the world is guilty. The Scandinavians are hostile and the Turks are enemies, the French and British hate Israel, the Chinese are only Chinese and the Indians can’t teach us anything.

    Any legitimate criticism is immediately labeled here as anti-Semitism, including Richard Goldstone, the Jewish Zionist. We are pushing everyone into a corner roughly and hope they will change their opinions and suddenly be filled with a deep understanding for the killing of children in Gaza. Now America too, even its Jews, are no longer immune to this aggressive Israel mad with grandeur.

    The damage is piling up from Beijing all the way to New York. After the J Street boycott even American Jews will know that Israel is not a tolerant, open-minded or liberal country, despite what they are being told.

    Now they will know that “the only democracy in the Middle East” is not exactly that, and whoever does not repeat and proclaim its propaganda messages will be considered an enemy – they may also be punished severely.

    They should just ask the billion Chinese who are licking their wounds from the mortal blow the Israeli Foreign Minster dealt them personally.

    Haaretz