Israel Matzav

Turkey's foreign policy epic fail

In Turkey's Hurriyet, Burak Bekedil concludes that Turkish foreign policy hasn't gone exactly the way they wanted it to go since 2010, when Turkey made its major foreign policy center on isolating Israel. In fact, the Turkish policy has been a complete failure.

Most ironically, as the Turkish Parliament condemned the Khojaly Massacre, in which Armenian troops killed more than 600 Azeris in Khojaly, Nagorno-Karabakh, and more than 20,000 Turks, including Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin, staged a colorful protest rally at Taksim Square in Istanbul, Israeli defense officials said Israeli Aerospace Industries had secured a $1.6 billion contract to sell drones and anti-aircraft and missile defense systems to Azerbaijan.

Now, this does not much fit into the famous slogan, “one nation, two states,” between Turkey and Azerbaijan. It also does not look like Israel has been terribly isolated because a major arms client, Turkey, no longer buys weaponry made in Israel.

If the “Israeli defense officials” chose the timing to announce the lucrative Azeri deal, they must have a genuine sense of humor: A $1.6 billion handshake between Israel and “one nation-two states” Azerbaijan on the same day when the other of the (one nation) two states was exhibiting solidarity for the Azeri victims of Karabakh in demonstrations previously unseen!

If there is one region that is the ostensible reason for all this reshuffling of political balances in this part of the world, it is Gaza (see Ömer Çelik, deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling party, who said that the “Gaza conflict is Turkey’s domestic issue”). If there should be another, it is Jerusalem.

Now we have Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay swinging his sword in the Battle for Jerusalem. A few days ago, Mr. Atalay said Jerusalem had to be freed of Israeli occupation if a lasting settlement was to reign in the Middle East. “Without the liberation of Jerusalem,” he said, “No real peace and stability can be achieved.” Speaking at the International Conference for the Defense of Jerusalem in Doha, Qatar, Mr. Atalay described Jerusalem as “a captive city in the hands of Israel.”

Ah, the hunt and the hunter…

Read the whole thing. Imagine where we would be if the President of the United States regarded Israel as a more important ally than Turkey and sought to cultivate a better relationship with Binyamin Netanyahu than with Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Messiah's times on the way. Heh.

Labels: Gaza, Mavi Marmara, Turkey, Turkish obsession with Israel

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:26 PM