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Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

12th president of Turkey

  • Will Turkey succeed where Iran failed?

    Will Turkey succeed where Iran failed?

    By Huda al Husseini

    90211 1791

    Non-Arab regional leaders are seeking to win over the Arab street, for they can clearly see that Arab public opinion is taken by their stances, and they are therefore playing on their sentiments and frustrations. The Arab street is burnishing the image of these non-Arab regional leaders abroad, and helping them to extend their influence.

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is following in the footsteps of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The latter attempted to “hijack” the Arab street prior to the “Arab revolutions,” and when these revolutions broke out he claimed that they were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. As for Erdogan, he is trying to seize the opportunity and “harvest” the enthusiasm of the Arab street at the height of the Arab Spring, before the onset of the revolutions’ winter, particularly as nobody knows how long the Arab Spring will bloom.

    The Arab street is bestowing power upon these leaders, who are playing on their dreams and speaking about the region’s prosperous future. However the Arab street is like mercury; it is impossible for any leader to grasp it firmly. The Arab street is fickle, and so it turns its back on leaders as quickly as it [previously] rushed to adore them. What happened to the power or influence that Ahmadinejad believed the Arab street had granted him? He used this to quell the demonstrations staged to protest the allegedly rigged presidential elections that brought about his re-election. As a result of this, he lost the Iranian street, whilst the Arab street turned its back on him.

    The power that Erdogan obtained from his recent tour [of the Middle East] prompted him to threaten Greek Cyprus, and begin to proceed with exploring oil and natural gas surveys in the waters off northern Cyprus. Erdogan continued issuing threats, but at the same time he told the United Nations [U.N.] and the [Greek] Cypriot leadership that his country is no longer prepared to accept the concessions previously accepted by Ankara with regards to the reunification of Cyprus, in accordance with the U.N.’s 2004 plan. Turkey has said that it will not accept anything less than the recognition of two states in Cyprus. Turkey has also warned the European Union that it will not accept any solutions after [Greek] Cyprus takes over the EU presidency early next year.

    In mid-March last year, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stressed that we must protect “the territorial integrity” of our countries and region, however he did not once mention Cyprus or the Kurds.

    Erdogan is now seeking to place Turkey as a leading supporter of the Palestinian cause, and he wants the “Arab Spring” to view Ankara as a supporter and role model, stressing the need for firm Turkish – Arab unity. He is also planning to establish strategic cooperation between Turkey and Egypt.

    The preparation for such cooperation was clear in the size of the delegation that accompanied Erdogan during his tour of the Middle East. The Turkish delegation was made up of 6 ministers, and around 200 Turkish businessmen, which represents a clear signal that Turkey is determined to investing heavily in the region. In 2010, the Turkish trade with the Middle East and North Africa [MENA] amounted to 30 billion dollars, and constituted 27 percent of Turkish exports, whilst more than 250 Turkish companies have invested a figure totaling $1.5 billion in Egypt.

    We must acknowledge that despite Ahmadinejad’s attempts to win over the Egyptian street by waging a war of words with Mubarak’s regime; he failed to tempt Egyptian public opinion to support Iran. Despite this, Tehran did establish strong relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Egyptian Islamists, and there is an Iranian street named after Khaled Islambouli [the Islamist Egyptian army officer who assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981]. As for Erdogan, the Turkish state model has been extremely popular in Egypt, namely an Islamist party in power (Erdogan’s Justice and Development party), under a secular constitution. Although the army does enjoy a strong presence in Turkey, it has returned to its barracks, and this is not to mention the economic boom being witnessed by the country.

    Yet the problem with Erdogan is that he is not pursuing fixed foreign policies, and a quick review of his recent policies casts doubts on his commitment to these.

    Erdogan warned of the consequences of invading Libya, insisting that if there was going to be regime change; this must happen from within, not through foreign intervention. Turkey had billions of dollars invested in Libya, whilst more than 20,000 Turkish laborers were evacuated within days [following the outbreak of protests]. Although Turkey is a member of NATO, it strongly condemned UN resolution 1973 [which formed the legal basis for military intervention in the Libyan civil war]. However after all of this, when the Gaddafi regime was overthrown, Erdogan welcomed the rebels with open arms.

    Turkey, according to the Davutoglu policy, can say that it has “zero problems”, because economy and trade take priority. However, this policy collapsed and led to conflict with Israel, whilst the Arab revolutions have caused Ankara to amend this policy. This method (of amending the “zero problems” foreign policy) may be repeated with regards to Turkey’s new “open” policy.

    Yet, this amended policy did not succeed with Syria, as relations between the two countries were undermined after Syria neglected Turkey’s call for it to cease the military campaign against civil demonstrators, something that stripped Ankara of its position as a “mediator”. Syria is the second country, after Israel, which has stripped Turkey of its mediation position.

    In the framework of the “zero problems” policy with its neighboring countries, Ankara acted to consolidate its political and trade ties with Syria. Erdogan developed friendship with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and established political and economic ties with once hostile neighboring states, however these neighboring countries have returned to a state of hostility with Ankara after Erdogan ran out of patience and despaired of al-Assad taking his advice, ending the brutal campaign against unarmed Syrian protesters, and implementing the required reform. However it may not be Erdogan’s fault that Turkey’s “zero problems” policy towards Syria has failed, particularly as keeping promises has never been the Syrian president’s strong-suit. Indeed when Assad approved the political pluralism law requested by the Syrian opposition, he declined to sign this into law until the term “participation in rule and government” was removed.

    Last Sunday, in an interview with CNN, Davutoglu stressed that Turkey’s “zero problems” foreign policy had only failed in Syria, meaning that relations with Iran are good.

    In his book “Strategic Depth” Davutoglu stressed that Turkey is now a key player in the Middle East, saying that “this is our homeland.” To put this into context, Davutoglu drew up a new equation, namely that neo-Ottomanism plus Turkish nationalism plus Islam equals the New Turkey.

    This neo-Ottomanism has brought Turkish influence into the Arab world and the Balkans, whilst Turkish nationalist ties extend to Central Asia. As for Turkey’s Islamic links, this extends from Morocco to Indonesia. Therefore, and this is more significant for Davutoglu, he sees the partnership between Turkey and Iran as something equal to that between France and Germany [in Europe]. In light of Davutoglu’s conception of this alliance [with Iran], we can understand the relationship between Turkey and Brazil, and the position that Brazil adopted in the UN Security Council last year against Washington, London and Paris with regards to the Iranian nuclear program.

    Syria has close relations with Iran, a situation that placed Ankara in an awkward position, and this may explain the reason why Erdogan ran out of patience with al-Assad. Turkey views Iran as the golden gate to Central Asia, and perhaps to the Gulf region as well, not to mention the implementation of Davutoglu’s equation.

    Will Turkey’s long-term ambitions end up meeting the same fate of Iran’s long-term ambitions? Turkey is now exploiting the [Arab] feelings of hostility towards Israel with the aim of gaining credibility (Erdogan may have downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel but he did not sever them entirely). Indeed Turkey wants its crisis with Israel to continue in order to reap even greater political capital in the Middle East. Turkey believes that America will require it to play a greater role in the Middle East, particularly with regards to managing conflicts in the region, from Syria to Egypt to Iran. In addition to this, after the weakening of the Syrian regime in the region, Turkey is seeking to play a role in Iraq, and perhaps take up the mediation role between Washington and Tehran. Turkey took the initiative on 4 September when it officially approved the installation of an early-warning radar on its territory as part of a U.S.-led NATO strategic missile defense system. This may complicate Turkish-Russian relations, yet at the same time, it is a Turkish signal to the U.S. that Washington needs Ankara. This also serves as a signal to Tehran that Ankara is ready to play a mediation role between Tehran and Washington. This may also serve as a signal to Israel, particularly as Iran, saw the approval of this early-warning radar system as a defense of Israel.

    Does this Turkish measure hit the mark? So far, Erdogan has lost two battles, the first when Syria declined to listen to his advice, and the second when Israel declined to offer Turkey an apology [for the deaths of Turkish citizens killed by Israeli forces on the Freedom Flotilla].

    There are those in Turkey who have begun to warn [against Turkey’s new policies], noting that there are more Azerbaijani expatriates in Turkey than there are Azerbaijani’s at home, as is the case with Turkey’s Armenian Albanian, Bosnian, and Kurdish communities. These all represent potential powder-kegs.

    (Published in the London-based Asharq Alawsat on Sept. 24, 2011. Huda al Husseini is a prominent Lebanese writer.)

  • Erdogan Creates International Complications for Turkey

    Erdogan Creates International Complications for Turkey

    While Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been using his anti-Israeli rhetoric to build up Turkey as a new great power in the Arab world, his neo-Ottoman policy is sparking a reaction among other countries that could pose for him serious problems in the period ahead. For Erdogan has not only been using aggressive rhetoric against Israel. In the last few weeks the Turkish government has also been threatening Cyprus for developing its undersea gas resources in the Mediterranean. As a result, Russia has been drawn in to neutralize Turkish behaviour.

    Cyprus just signed an agreement with the Texas-based Noble Energy, which is in a partner in developing Israeli maritime gas fields, as well. Turkey’s Minister for EU Affairs, Egemen Bağış let it be known that the Turkish Navy could intervene if Greek Cyprus does not call off the project. He said “That’s what a navy is for.” As a result, the Russian Foreign Ministry publicly backed the right of Cyprus to develop its Mediterranean gas. Cyprus, in turn, described Russia as “a shield against any threats by Turkey.”

    Last Friday, the famous Russian daily, Pravda, published an article entitled “Turkey Wants to Revive the Ottoman Empire.” The article reviewed the way Turkey has been building its influence in the last few years with the Muslims of Bosnia, which is a sensitive point for Moscow, the traditional ally of the Serbs. The article also warned that Turkey was undergoing a process of “gathering strength” in order to claim territories that it lost with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. It predicted greater Turkish activity in the Caucuses and in Crimea, “which cannot but worry Russia.”

    Turkish policy in the Balkans has also raised eyebrows among a number of states in recent years, During a visit to Sarajevo in 2001 Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared “The Ottoman centuries of the Balkans were success stories. Now we have to reinvent this.” He also has spoken about the Balkans, the Caucuses, and the Middle East as Turkish spheres of influence, which were better off under the Ottoman Empire than they are today. The Caucuses are of course part of Russia, which puts this new Turkish policy into a potentially direct clash with Moscow in the future.

    Where does this Russian concern with the revival of Turkish power come from? Are there special links between Russia and Cyprus that cause Moscow to act as its defender? Looking back with some historical perspective, many have forgotten that Russia was at war with the Ottoman Empire for centuries. In 1774, the Russians seized Muslim populated territories from the Ottoman Empire for the first time when they took control of Crimea and signed a peace treaty at Küçük Kaynarca in which Russia claimed to be the protector of all Greek Orthodox Christians–including those in Greece and Cyprus.

    By World War I, the Russian Army invaded what is today Eastern Turkey; while after World War II, Russia claimed the Turkish Straits into the Mediterranean, and was held back by the US at the beginning of the Cold War. In short, Russia and Turkey are old rivals. What Erdogan and his ministers have succeeded in accomplishing is to awaken a sleeping Russian bear by reviving Moscow’s historical concerns with with an atavistic Turkey with ambitions to restore its old areas of influence.

    Looking at the Middle East from Moscow’s vantage point, a Turkey with an Islamist foreign policy poses a greater problem for Russia than Iran. Across much of Russia, most of the peoples living there speak dialects of the Turkish language. Because they are Sunni Muslims, they are more open to Sunni organizations based in Turkey than to Shiite groups operating on behalf of Iran. Secular Turkey fought against Islamist groups; yet Erdogan’s Turkey supports them, including organizations like the IHH, which was responsible for the violence on the lead ship in the 2010 Gaza Flotilla, the Mavi Marmara. According to a July 2010 report in the New York Times, many board members of the IHH have been officials in Erdogan’s ruling AKP Party.

    The Russians probably noticed that one of the IHH operatives on the Marmara, Erdinç Tekir, participated in a 1996 terrorist attack on a Russian ferry in the Black Sea, whose purpose was to obtain the release of Chechen terrorists from a Russian prison. Indeed the founders of the IHH served as volunteers in the Mujahideen Brigade that fought the Russians’ Serbian allies during the Bosnian War. Previous Turkish governments seized IHH documents which showed that its members were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. The IHH leader, Bulent Yildirim, gave a speech in October 2010, attacking Russia, as well as other major powers for killing Muslims.

    Russia is not about to go to war with Turkey. And Israel still prefers that its old relations with Turkey can be restored in the future. But at the same time Israel should be aware of the fact it is not the only state having problems with Turkey lately. Erdogan and his foreign minister are visiting former Ottoman territories and rather than acting according the the subtle rules of diplomacy that an ambitious state should follow, Turkey comes off like a “bull in a china shop” after many of these visits. Last week, Ankara threatened the European Union if it gives Cyprus the rotating presidency of the EU in 2012. The lesson is that the international politics of the Middle East are dramatically changing, and Israel will have to carefully monitor who is allied with whom in the Eastern Mediterranean in the years ahead.

    This article originally appeared in Israel Hayom

     

  • In Riddle of Mideast Upheaval, Turkey Offers Itself as an Answer

    In Riddle of Mideast Upheaval, Turkey Offers Itself as an Answer

    By ANTHONY SHADID

    ISTANBUL — Not so long ago, the foreign policy of Turkey revolved around a single issue: the divided island of Cyprus. These days, its prime minister may be the most popular figure in the Middle East, its foreign minister envisions a new order there and its officials have managed to do what the Obama administration has so far failed to: position themselves firmly on the side of change in the Arab revolts and revolutions.

    27turkey articleLargePrime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in Cairo this month. He has recently visited Tunisia and Libya, where revolutions have also ousted governments.

    No one is ready to declare a Pax Turkana in the Middle East, and indeed, its foreign policy is strewn this year with missteps, crises and gains that feel largely rhetorical. It even lacks enough diplomats. But in an Arab world where the United States seems in retreat, Europe ineffectual and powers like Israel and Iran unsettled and unsure, officials of an assertive, occasionally brash Turkey have offered a vision for what may emerge from turmoil across two continents that has upended decades of assumptions.

    Not unexpectedly, the vision’s center is Turkey.

    “Turkey is the only country that has a sense of where things are going, and it has the wind blowing on its sails,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Istanbul Bilgi University.

    The country’s foreign policy seized the attention of many in the Middle East and beyond after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tour this month of three Arab countries that have witnessed revolutions: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Even Mr. Erdogan’s critics were impressed with the symbolism of the trip.

    Though many criticize his streak of authoritarianism at home, the public abroad seemed taken by a prime minister who portrayed himself as the proudly Muslim leader of a democratic and prosperous country that has come out forcefully on the side of revolution and in defense of Palestinian rights.

    One Turkish newspaper, supportive of Mr. Erdogan, called the visits the beginning “of a new era in our region.” An Egyptian columnist praised what he called Mr. Erdogan’s “leadership qualities.” And days later, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke boldly of an axis between Egypt and Turkey, two of the region’s most populous and militarily powerful countries, that would underpin a new order in the region, one in which Israel would stay on the margins until it made peace with its neighbors.

    “What’s happening in the Middle East is a big opportunity, a golden opportunity,” a senior Turkish official said in Ankara, the capital. He called Turkey “the new kid on the block.”

    The trip marked a pivot after what many had viewed as a series of setbacks for a country that, like most of the world, utterly failed to predict the revolts in the region.

    After long treating the Arab world with a measure of disdain — Israel and Turkey were strategic allies in the 1990s — Turkey had spent years cultivating ties with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. More than 25,000 Turks worked in Libya, and Syria was seen as the gateway to Turkey’s ambitions to economically integrate part of the Middle East.

    Even after the uprisings erupted, Turkey opposed NATO’s intervention in Libya. Until last month, it held out hope that Mr. Assad, despite evidence to the contrary, could oversee a transition in Syria.

    Though Mr. Erdogan came out early in demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down in Egypt — at the very time American officials were trying to devise ways for him to serve out his term — that stance came with little cost. Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Erdogan were not fond of each other, and Egyptian officials resented Turkey’s growing profile.

    “The old policy collapsed, and a new policy is required now toward the Middle East,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of political science at Sabanci University in Istanbul.

    In an interview, Mr. Davutoglu, viewed by many as the architect of Turkey’s engagement with the region, laid out that new policy. In addition to a proposed alliance with Egypt, he said Turkey would position itself on the side of the revolts, especially in neighboring Syria, which represents Turkey’s biggest challenge. He insisted that Turkey could help integrate the region by virtue of its economy, with its near tripling of exports since Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party took power in 2002.

    Next Page »

    A version of this article appeared in print on September 27, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: In Riddle of Mideast Upheaval, Turkey Offers Itself as an Answer.

    via In Riddle of Mideast Upheaval, Turkey Offers Itself as an Answer – NYTimes.com.

  • Turkey: The Indispensable nation

    Turkey: The Indispensable nation

    When former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright referred to the U.S. as the “indispensable nation” in 1998, she was justifying America’s unique role as global Leviathan. She explained this unfortunate hegemonic burden by adding, “If we have to use force, it is because we are America.” Although the Turks have taken on this mantle in recent years, Turkey’s indispensability derives from factors other than the size of its military.

    1d84ab9f7e9bb8dfbefc7e851b4e9e4dDiplomatic prowess and mastery of Realpolitik have undoubtedly served Turkey well, but the source of Turkey’s global influence has been, quite simply – the power of its example.

    Ironically, the U.S. – once upon a time – led in similar fashion. In 1630 John Winthrop believed the Massachusetts Bay Colony would serve as a “city upon a hill” to be watched by the world.

    This attitude, according to Andrew Bacevich, became the basis of a distinctly American approach to leadership from the time of the Founders and one “informed by a conviction that self-mastery should take precedence over mastering others”.

    Turkey’s pluralistic democracy has emerged as a governing model exemplar, especially for Muslim countries seeking to balance secular law with religious principle.

    It has played a crucial economic and geopolitical role over the past decade in the affairs of a number of countries across the globe.

    In the face of global recession, Turkey’s vibrant economy has grown from $250 billion in 2002 to an annual GDP of around $800 billion, making it Europe’s sixth largest economy and the 17th largest in the world. Not to mention it happens to be the EU’s largest trading partner.

    David Garner in the Financial Times described Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the non-Arab leader Arabs have most admired since Saladin recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.

    Turkey’s unrivaled level of popularity is evidenced by Zogby’s 2011 survey of Arab attitudes, in which Turkey received stellar approval ratings from a broad spectrum of countries, from Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia (98%) to Shia strongholds like Lebanon (93%).

    Within Egypt, the world’s largest Arab country, 62% of residents agree with Erdogan’s policies. Compare this to President Obama’s approval rating which has sunk to an all-time low of 3%.

    There is no doubt Turkey has good timing with respect to its rising importance in balancing the Greater Middle East. Steven Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations recently pointed out that on top of Washington being broke, Europe is burdened with debt and has been unable to shape events in the region since Paris and London abandoned their colonies and protectorates in the 1960s and early 1970s.

    Cook also indicated that Turkey, with its rapid economic growth and entrepreneurial spirit, could provide Egyptians, Tunisians, and Libyans with what they need most – investment of the type that lacks the “conditionality” of Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati aid.

    Geopolitically-speaking, the Saudis rely on Turkey as a Sunni bulwark against Iran in Iraq. In Syria, experts believe Bashar al-Assad will not survive without Turkey’s support.

    Syrians from around the world gathered in Istanbul last week to establish the official opposition movement – yet another sign of Turkey’s appeal as chief arbiter of regional dilemmas.

    Turkey has even acted as a key interlocutor in Afghanistan’s reconciliation process by hosting a number of negotiations between the Taliban and representatives from the Karzai regime, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia at different points in time.

    Turkey has also embarked on a diplomatic strategy that includes humanitarian aid as a key flank and has been able to raise impressive levels of assistance for a still emerging market. Political, economic, and civil initiatives in Africa today, for example, were beyond the imagination a decade ago.

    As Somalia suffers through the famine of the century and the international system fails to come up with a viable solution, Ergodan has been the only world leader to visit the country during the crisis. Turkey has donated over $250 million to Somalia and Turkish ambulances just started operating in Mogadishu this past weekend.

    Turkey’s Muslim bona fides have been buttressed by its escalating hostility towards Israel and support for the Palestinian cause. The situation has put the Obama administration in a tough position, because Turkey is also indispensable to the U.S. and its allies.

    A member of NATO and an EU candidate, Turkey is valued as a bridge between the Western world and the Middle East and is esteemed by U.S. leaders as a key ally in the war on terror and a counterbalance to Iranian influence.

    Turkey has even agreed to station a radar on its territory as part of a missile defense system to protect NATO countries from long-range Iranian missiles.

    Prudence dictates the U.S. to embrace Turkey’s ascendance on the international stage and to continue solidifying its relationship with Ankara as Washington’s global standing wanes.

    Otherwise, long term, the U.S. could be left looking from the outside in – and might find itself on the wrong side of history, just as it has amidst the Arab Spring.

    via Turkey: The Indispensable nation – National Geopolitics | Examiner.com.

  • The man who could trigger a world war

    The man who could trigger a world war

    By David Warren, Ottawa Citizen

    The greatest threat to the world’s peace, at this moment, comes from a man named Recip Tayyip Erdogan. He is the prime minister of Turkey, at the head of the Justice and Development Party (“AK,” from the Turkish). A former mayor of Istanbul, he was arrested and jailed when he publicly recited Islamist verses (“the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets are our bayonets,” etc.), in defiance of the old secularist, Ataturk constitution, which made it an offence to incite religious and racial fanaticism.

    Erdogan’s credentials as an anti-Semite, but also as an anti-Communist, were established from his school days. He came from an observant Muslim family, and while nothing he says can be taken without salt, he claims an illustrious ancestry, of fighters for Turkish and Ottoman causes.

    He is an “interesting case” in other respects. His post-secondary education was in economics; he is a very capable technocrat, and under his direction the Turkish economy was rescued. He is a dragonslayer of inflation, and public deficits; he took dramatic and effective measures to clean up squalor in the Turkish bureaucracy, and as the saying goes, “he made the trains run on time.”

    Erdogan is also a “democrat,” who has no reason not to be, because he enjoys tremendous and abiding domestic popularity. The party he founded came to power by a landslide, and has been twice re-elected. (He had a stand-in for prime minister at first, for he was still banned from public office.) There are demographic reasons, too, why Turkish secularism has been overwhelmed by Turkish Islamism. The Muslim faithful have babies; modern secularists don’t.

    The “vision” of this politician, which he can articulate charismatically, is to combine efficient, basically free-market economic management, with a puritanized version of the religious ideals of the old Ottoman Caliphate. (Gentle reader may recall that I am allergic to visionary and charismatic politicians, who operate on the body politic like a dangerous drug.)

    Erdogan’s vision has turned outward. His strategy has been to seek better economic integration with the West, while making new political alliances with the East – most notably with Iran. He now presents Turkey as the champion of “mainstream” Sunni Islamism, while trying to square the circle with Persian Shia Islamism. This could still come to grief over Syria, where the Turks want Iran’s man, Assad, overthrown, and the Muslim Brotherhood brought into a new Syrian government.

    Turkey’s military was the guarantor of pro-western Turkish secularism, under the Ataturk constitution. With characteristic incomprehension of the consequences, western statesmen supported Erdogan’s efforts to establish civilian control over the generals – our old NATO friends. By imprisoning several senior officers on (probably imaginative) charges of plotting a coup, Erdogan was able to induce the entire Turkish senior staff to resign, last month.

    They did this because they had run out of allies. Hillary Clinton and company hung the only effective domestic opposition to Erdogan out to dry. Turkey’s powerful, western-equipped military is now entirely Erdogan’s baby, and the country’s secularist constitution is a dead letter. Erdogan, the Islamist, now has absolute power.

    It was he who sent the “peace flotilla” to challenge Israel’s right to blockade Gaza (recognized under international law and explicitly by the U.N.). He made the inevitable violent result of that adventure into an anti-Israeli cause célèbre. He has now announced that the next peace flotilla will be accompanied by the Turkish navy.

    This will put Israel in the position of either surrendering its right to defend itself, or firing on Turkish naval vessels. There is no way to overstate the gravity of this: Erdogan is manoeuvring to create a casus belli.

    He has made himself the effective diplomatic sponsor for the Palestinian declaration of statehood next week – from which much violence will follow. Every Palestinian who dies, trying to kill a Jew, will be hailed as a “martyr,” with compensation and apologies demanded.

    He has been playing Egyptian politics, by adding to the rhetorical fuel that propelled an Islamist mob into the Israeli embassy in Cairo last Friday. He is himself in Cairo, this week, on a mission to harness grievances against Israel, in the very fluid circumstances of the “Arab Spring.” For action against this common enemy is the one thing that can unite all disparate Arab factions – potentially under Turkish leadership.

    The West is just watching, while Erdogan creates pretexts for another Middle Eastern war: one in which Israel may be pitted not only against the neighbouring states of the old Arab League, but also Turkey, and Iran, and Hamas, and Hezbollah.

    This is what is called an “existential threat” to Israel, unfolding in live time. It could leave the West with a choice between defending Israel, and permitting another Holocaust. In other words, we are staring at the trigger for a genuine world war. With Recip Erdogan’s twitching finger on it.

    David Warren’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

    © Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

    via The man who could trigger a world war.

  • Erdogan pitches Turkey’s democratic model on ‘Arab Spring’ tour

    Erdogan pitches Turkey’s democratic model on ‘Arab Spring’ tour

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined hands with Libya’s new leaders at Friday prayers today and promised to help their revolution succeed.

    By Alexander Christie-Miller, Correspondent / September 16, 2011

    Istanbul, Turkey

    Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (l.) and Chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdel Jalil wave to people during a rally at Martyrs' Square in Tripoli on Friday, Sept. 16. Suhaib Salem/Reuters
    Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (l.) and Chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdel Jalil wave to people during a rally at Martyrs' Square in Tripoli on Friday, Sept. 16. Suhaib Salem/Reuters

    Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (l.) and Chairman of Libya’s National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdel Jalil wave to people during a rally at Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli on Friday, Sept. 16.

    Suhaib Salem/Reuters

    Given the cheering throngs who greeted Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Libya and Egypt this month, one could be forgiven for thinking he was a rock star.

    Few images of Turkey’s expanding influence are more powerful than of Mr. Erdogan joining hands with Libya’s new leaders for Friday prayers today.

    “After we thank God, we thank our friend Mr. Erdogan, and after him all the Turkish people,” prayer leader Salem al-Sheikhi told the crowd of several thousand in Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square. Erdogan knelt in the front row beside Mustafa Ahmed Jalil, chairman of Libya’s National Transitional Council.

    “Our hands are clasped with those of the Turkish people,” said Mr. Sheikhi. “We will never forget what you did for us.”

    Erdogan replied in kind afterward, turning the prayer session into a rally where Turkish flags commingled with new revolutionary ones. “Turkey will fight with you until you take all your victory,” he said. “You proved to all the world that nothing can stand in the way of what the people want.”

    Indeed, the Turkish prime minister’s “Arab Spring tour” has been a hit as he makes his way across North Africa extolling Turkey as a democratic model for fellow Muslims who have cast off their dictators.

    As the elected leader of a thriving Muslim democracy, Erdogan portrays himself as uniquely placed to encourage an orderly transition from autocracy to democracy – one that will rein in the more extremist Muslim groups unleashed by the Arab Spring.

    But while Erdogan’s message of secular democracy may resonate with the West, the foundations of his growing prestige are worrying to US leaders. As his Islam-rooted party has increased its influence, Erdogan has taken a tougher stance against Israel, which he accuses of oppressing the Palestinian people and flouting international law.

    Some say he risks a breach with the West by antagonizing Israel, but others contend he is offering a type of Muslim leadership that Europe and the US would do well to heed.

    via Erdogan pitches Turkey’s democratic model on ‘Arab Spring’ tour – CSMonitor.com.