Re: Turks aren't Arabs.
That's not the point. You don't need to be "Arab" to bash Israel --clue:
Shifting Sides?
The problems of neo-Ottomanism
by Michael Rubin
National Review Online
August 10, 2004
"Perhaps we have more in common with our neighbors than we do with the United States," a labor-union leader told me as we smoked a water pipe in a Kasyeri café. Across Turkey, many intellectuals and journalists express the same sentiment.
There has been a profound shift in Turkish foreign policy. The ruling Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi [AKP] has sought to reorient Turkish policy away from the United States, toward both Europe and the Islamic world. Turkey's press, much of which makes the BBC look levelheaded and unbiased, happily cooperated. The first victim of Turkey's shifting diplomacy has been Israel. The late President Turgat Özal forged a strategic partnership with Israel. The Turkish-Israeli relationship was based on both the common threat posed by Iranian and Syrian-sponsored terrorism, as well as shared democratic ideals.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to diminish the Turkish-Israeli partnership. Following the targeted killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Erdogan condemned Israel's "state terrorism." He has since repeated the charge on a number of occasions. During a May 2004 meeting with Israel's infrastructure minister, for example, Erdogan, compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the Spanish Inquisition. As the Israeli army moved to seal Palestinian weapons-smuggling tunnels, Erdogan declared Israel a "terrorist" state. On June 8, 2004, he briefly recalled Turkey's ambassador to Israel. Last month, Erdogan snubbed Israel when he could find no time to meet Israel's visiting deputy prime minister, but found time to see Syria's prime minister the same day.
Neo-Ottomanism
Several businessmen and parliamentarians, including those from the AKP, suggested that Erdogan had ratcheted-up his public condemnation of Israel in order to win trade concessions from the Arab world and Iran. "It's a simple calculation," one parliamentarian told me. It's a calculation that is paying dividends.
On July 14, Erdogan and Syrian Prime Minister Muhammad Naji al-Utri agreed to double Turkish-Syrian trade to $2 billion annually. Two weeks later, Erdogan visited Iran. He and Iranian President Muhammad Khatami agreed to boost bilateral trade to $5 billion. Today, traffic in the central Anatolian city of Kayseri is snarled as workers dig up the main road in order to lay a natural gas pipeline from Iran. Merchants in central Turkey say there has been a rise in tourists from Syria, Iran, and even Iraq. Turkish foreign-affairs and national-security correspondents privately discuss linkages between increased Saudi subsidies and Turkey's abrupt shift in foreign policy. On June 15, after significant AKP lobbying and deal making, the Organization of Islamic Conference selected the Turkish professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu as its new secretary general. AKP officials point to the Ihsanoglu appointment as a sign of Turkey's increased prestige among Islamic countries.
Several Turkish politicians and analysts suggest that behind rhetoric of bridging East and West, the AKP is enacting a policy of "neo-Ottomanism." The idea that Turkey should bolster ties with its neighbors is not new. The influential Turkish journalist Çengiz Candar coined the term in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. In 1993, he told the Washington Post, "I think Kemalism makes Turkey turn in on itself. The time has come to reconsider the policy." A decade later, Ali Bayramoglu, in the Islamist daily Yeni Safak, wrote that the partisans of "neo-Ottomanism...are increasing every day."
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