Turkey Turkish/Israeli Relations Zvi Mazel

ANALYSIS OF TURKEY BY FORMER ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO EGYPT AND SWEDEN……..

 

The man was given one highly anti-Israel post after another, and knows how to read a situation, so what he states about Turkey and the region should be given serious consideration. The only part where the Tundra Tabloids disagrees with the former ambassador, is with the time frame of Turkey’s departure from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular democratic rule. It was much earlier, being only within a few years of his death, and shows the amazing speed in which the Western concept of democratic rule can be rooted out of an Islamic country, if it ever really had taken root at all. KGS

Analysis: Israel, Egypt, Turkey – shifting sands

By ZVI MAZEL
09/18/2011 03:31

[…]Erdogan dismantled one after the other the bulwarks built by Ataturk, father of modern Turkey, that ensured that the country would remain secular. Making use of an unlikely ally, the European Union, which saw in the strong army and its special powers a threat to democracy and an obstacle to Turkey joining the union, Erdogan started promoting officers who were faithful to him and threw 400 high ranking officers into jail without a trial on charges of plotting against the regime. When the commander in chief of the armed forces and the heads of the different branches resigned in protest, Erdogan happily accepted their resignation and put his men in charge. The army was thus effectively neutralized, which brought about an end to the cooperation with Israel.

Erdogan targeted the judiciary as well, changing laws and rules and reversing the steps painstakingly taken by Ataturk to build a secular country. Secular forces having been effectively rendered powerless, Turkey became more and more Islamic while hailed by Europe as being a model of moderate Islam. No thought was given to the fact that Ataturk’s revolution, which had turned Turkey into the strong country it is today, had been thoroughly undermined and that the Islamic revolution of Erdogan was only beginning. The present hostility to Israel must be seen in that context.

Erdogan then tried to set up a strategic front under his leadership by strengthening ties with Syria and Iran. The ongoing popular uprising in Syria and Iran’s growing estrangement from the West and its support for Syria demonstrated the fragility of those alliances.

Turkey dramatically changed tack. Solicited by NATO, of which it is a major member, it agreed to install on its territory a tracking station to monitor Iran’s missiles, which could be directed towards Europe and Israel.

Though Turkey was now without any ally in the region, Erdogan went on boasting that it was the greatest power there and that its influence was felt in every country. His highly vocal attacks on Israel and his support for the Palestinians are to be seen as efforts to position himself in the Arab world – a world made of countries torn by internal strife and so deeply divided that they would be shaky allies at best. He nevertheless went to Egypt to see whether a strategic alliance could be made with a country which had long been his rival.

Read it all here.

4 Responses

  1. what are you talking about?there haven’t been any changes turkey’s democracy,but you hate turkey so what to do.oh wait let’s play the secular-islamic,west-east cliche cause there can’t be something in between.

    1. Listen pal, your country has been circling the drain ever since Attaturk died, the slow decay of Turkey into totalitarianism has been put into hyperdrive since the rise of the AKP. There are more journalists in Turkish jails than in any other country in the West. Face it, your President and PM’s drive to islamization is sending your state over the cliff.

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