Cengiz Çandar - English
Cengiz Çandar - English
Cengiz Çandar - EnglishYazarın Tüm Yazıları

Just so, Tayyip Erdoğan...

There is nothing incomprehensible about the portrayal of the drama in Davos as a "scandal" by those whose political calculations at home will be spoiled. There is no word to say to those who criticize Tayyip Erdoğan this time for his performance in Davos.

But there are a lot of things to tell those who are implied as "monsieurs" by Tayyip Erdoğan and who are from the "monsieurist" thinking school. They cannot help seeing the world as "static" and they are worried because they are from the traditional status quo wing of Turkish foreign policy and are making incorrect comments.

Israel will not forget this. America will take out the bill with the influence of the Jewish (to put it more succinctly, Israel) lobby within. Even the political future of Tayyip Erdoğan can be affected by this. Turkey will encounter problems in the world.

More or less, these are the points concerns and criticisms focus on.

If we believe that the world moves on a big dynamic of change and the world’s most turbulent geography the Middle East will take its share from this, we must say that the said concerns and criticisms are not based on sound data.

Very close relations between Turkey and Israel and their positive impact on Turkish-American ties date back to the 1990s. The end of the Cold War and its reflection on the Middle East with the Madrid Peace Conference (1991) and the beginning of the Oslo Peace Process with the Palestinians provided objective circumstances for fostering relations.

The limits were exceeded in the revival of Turkish-Israeli relations. Especially in the Feb. 28 process Israel was approached too much. Very tight military links were established with Israel.

I previously underlined for numerous times that it is wrong to put Turkey, which has the huge Ottoman heritage, into the political arena in the Middle East as a "backup power" of a small state; Israel.

In many conferences on Turkey and Israel relations, some of them held in Israel, I said trusting the military in Turkey as a guarantor of the relations with Israel and avoiding democratization and civilization process in Turkey is wrong for Israel and this will show a "boomerang" effect and return to them with a negative result. The wild attacks in Gaza returned to them in the drama in Davos. Now in a clever way they have started to repair their losses. Can Israel see Iran as "the number one enemy" in the region and oppose Turkey, a big power in the region and also not Arab?

Those who believe Israel is more powerful than Turkey may fear from the picture in Davos, but Israel is taking it in stride with the fear of losing Turkey. Israel knows that it is not stronger than Turkey.

Turkey is stronger. Moreover, Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey have become more powerful in the Middle East after Davos.

***

We should see that Israel has not grown stronger but rather lost power with the last Gaza offensive. Could Israel attempt a similar 22-day offensive again? That is the utmost limit that Israel could render its military power and this has led to a loss of "moral power" that cannot be regained so easily.

Israel’s immunity was blemished. What Tayyip Erdoğan has done in Davos was displaying Israel’s loss of immunity in a way that has been never seen or done before, and thus saying, "The king is naked."

Israel’s immunity is similarly not the same in the U.S compared to in the old days. The book by prominent American academicians John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, named "The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy" was published in 2007. It is a critical and monumental book that could no one could have dared to write by anyone until a couple of years ago. After the Gaza offensive, the period under Obama will stage similar outspoken work like this one.

Meanwhile it is obvious that special envoy of the Middle East Quartet Tony Blair favors talking to all sides including Hamas, and French President Nicholas Sarkozy has a similar tendency. Even the UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon himself has targeted Israel with strong criticism in a way that his predecessors have not done before. The massacre in Gaza also weakened Israel’s hand in Europe.

Therefore, Tayyip Erdoğan’s attitude is not counter to or in contradiction with the changing dynamics of the world; on the contrary it is in harmony with the developing international trend and actually leading that trend. As long as Erdoğan does not forget about Turkey’s EU perspective and the fact that Turkey belongs to the Western bloc while he plays his cards. Just so, he does not lead Turkey to run after Hamas like some led Turkey to run after Israel over the last 10 years. Just so, Turkey finds itself in a position that the other regional players would feel compulsory to knock on its door.
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