Submit your comments on this article | |||
The Grand Turk | |||
Erdogan's Troubling Friends | |||
2010-06-10 | |||
In 1974, when Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was president of the Istanbul youth group of the MSP (the Islamist National Salvation Party), he wrote, directed, and starred in a play called Mas-Kom-Ya, which addressed subversive elements in Turkish society: masons, communists and yahudi (Jews). This very same performer has managed to convince gullible Western politicians that Turkey is committed to EU membership. Equally convincingly, he has played to the Arab gallery since his AKP (Justice and Development Party) came to power in 2002. Erdogan's tirade against Shimon Peres during a panel discussion at last year's World Economic Forum in Davos – “you know very well how to kill' – earned plaudits all around the Arab world. The Lebanese daily Dar A-Hayat suggested that Erdogan should restore the Ottoman Empire and be the Caliph of all Muslims. By some accounts, this has been identified as the driving force behind Turkey's expansionist foreign policy, which has been dubbed “neo-Ottoman.' This new course obviously played out in Turkey's role in the Gaza flotilla incident. According to Debka (an open source intelligence website) the flotilla was personally sponsored by Erdogan, and according to the same source, he is even prepared to sail aboard the next flotilla himself. Some awareness of the consequences must have been know, as a week before the flotilla sailed, Ankara threatened Israel with reprisals if it was impeded.
Ankara's support for Iran's nuclear program, ostensibly for peaceful purposes, is likewise a cause for concern in the Western world, and President Abdullah Gül has admitted in an interview with Forbes magazine that “it is their final aspiration to have a nuclear weapon in the end.' Turkey and Syria have agreed on a long-term strategic partnership and Erdogan continues to defend Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir (who is on the International Criminal Court's wanted list) with the claim that “a Muslim can never commit genocide.' Also alarming is the secret meeting between Prime Minister Erdogan and a Sudanese financier, Dr. Fatih al-Hassanein, during an Arab League summit in Khartoum in 2006. Dr. al-Hassanein is believed to have ties with al-Qaeda and other Islamist movements (e.g. in Bosnia). What has caused another stir is the friendship between Prime Minister Erdogan and a Saudi businessman, Yassin al-Qadi, who, according to the U.S. Treasury and the United Nations Security Council, is a major financier of Islamic terrorism. Erdogan's advisor and co-founder of the AKP, Cüneyd Zapsu, was also al-Qadi's partner.
Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press. | |||
Posted by:ed |