Erdogan at Davos
The situation in Turkey is going from bad to worse.
Last week at Davos, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan showed his true colors when he barged out of a meeting with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, Arab League head Amr Musa and Israel's President Shimon Peres.
The incident occurred after Shimon Peres presented Israel's position on Gaza in response to Erdogan's practically hysterical diatribe against Israel.
"When it comes to killing you know well how to kill," Erdogan yelled at Peres, a Noble Peace Prize recipient. For the past several weeks Erdogan had been mounting an anti-Israel campaign so vicious that it fostered a convulsion of the vilest anti-Semitism directed at the Turkish Jewish community ever seen in that country.
Why did this happen now? Erdogan's handlers would claim that the casualties in Gaza moved him, but the prime minister was also aware of the thousands of Hamas rockets and mortar bombs Israel endured for months without response. Nobody needs to explain to the Turks what it means to be a constant target of terrorism. Nobody needs to explain to the Turks the necessity of being unyielding in their response to terrorism. They wrote the book on it.
So why did Turkey take this anti-Israel turn now?
The Turkish press reported that it was Erdogan who requested the Davos panel suggesting that the dramatics were premeditated. Observers note that electioneering had already begun in anticipation of the March 29 municipal elections in Turkey.
Ever since his election in 2003, it has been Erdogan's intention to steer Turkey away from Kemalism and hurl the country back to its Ottoman glories.
Erdogan also learned from the mistakes of the earlier failed Islamist Welfare Party government of Necmettin Erbakan. Erbakan tried to implement his Islamist reforms too quickly and was forced out by the Turkish military in 1997.
A shrewd politician, Erdogan learned two lessons from Erbakan's ouster. The first was that change would have to be gradual. The second was that the military would have to be neutralized.
In both he has succeeded.
What the world saw at Davos was an Erdogan confident enough in his consolidation of power to act.
Erdogan's two weeks of hostility to Israel, Turkey's stalwart friend and trading partner, served notice that he was putting himself and his country on the side of Iran, Syria and Hamas against the more pro-Western Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And how better to consolidate his vision than to stir up hatred against one of Turkey's most modern Kemalist elements - the Jews?
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