Turkey's Erdogan: A Smart Man With Jews on the Brain

[King_David]

It's time to call Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan what he is: a semi-unhinged bigot.

Optimists have argued, these past few years, that Erdogan's anger at Israel was motivated by a genuine sense of grievance over the notorious 2010 flotilla incident. The flotilla, you'll recall, was a project of pro-Hamas Turkish activists that was meant to break what they termed an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel's attempt to stop the flotilla ended in the deaths of eight Turks and one Turkish-American.


The Turks demanded, among other things, that Israel apologize for its handling of the affair. Israel resisted for three years, saying that its soldiers were attacked by the Turkish activists when they boarded the ship, and that Israel had the legal right to stop the flotilla from approaching its waters. Nevertheless, the Israeli response was horribly botched, and this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaxed and cajoled by President Barack Obama, picked up the phone (with Obama sitting right there with him) and apologized to Erdogan for the unnecessary deaths. This apology was supposed to usher in a newer, quieter era in Turkish-Israeli relations.

Except that Erdogan has Jews on the brain, and once you get Jews on the brain it's hard to get them off. So the other day, in talking about the strife in Egypt, he said: "What is said about Egypt? That democracy is not the ballot box. Who is behind this? Israel is. We have the evidence in our hands."


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-21/turkey-s-erdogan-a-smart-man-with-jews-on-the-brain.html

[King_David]

1. Desperately seeking scapegoat

There he goes again, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, throwing another fit. With these distractions is he merely reinforcing the image of the "wild Turk" that his countrymen have been stereotyped with, or is there a method to his madness?

Erdogan declared he has proof that Israel is behind the downfall of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. And what does this proof consist of? In 2011, Jewish-French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy told the Israeli justice minister that "the Muslim Brotherhood will not be in power in Egypt even if they are elected, because democracy is not determined at the voting booths." In other words: Not only did the Jews predict Morsi's downfall, they also acted to fulfill their prophecy.

Erdogan emphasizes that Levy is an "intellectual" -- a derogatory term used by despots and reactionaries from Stalin to McCarthy, and of course that he is Jewish. Anti-Semitism? Yes, certainly, but there is more to it. Erdogan today needs scapegoats to cover up his many diplomatic failures: Europe is pulling further away, and Syria is a reminder to him and the rest of the world of his failed attempt to position Turkey as the leader of the Middle East, particularly for those countries that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire (a goal that he and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have boasted about).


http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5487