By Dr. Hamad Al-Majid
The country of the wonderful “Ottoman Sultan” has
strong political, economic and military ties with
Israel to the extent that observers considered Turkey
the Muslim state with the strongest ties to Israel. He
is the same “Ottoman Sultan” who, through actions and
not words or slogans, sent his humanitarian fleet to
break the Gaza blockade. He is also the same Sultan
who explicitly and courageously declared in the
Turkish city of Konya that he told the US that he
never accepted classifying Hamas as a terrorist
organization. As for the rest of his comments, it was
as if they were made by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed al
Fatih, rather than by a Turkish leader who rules a
country where all aspects of life are dominated by
Ataturk’s extremist secular regime. Erdogan said,
“Ramallah, Nablus, Rafah, Khan Younis, Bethlehem and
Jenin are not separate from the Turkish city of Konya.”
Erdogan is not responsible for the establishment of
diplomatic and military ties with Israel, nor was he
the one who planned and implemented the strategic
coalition that linked his country to the US and NATO.
These thorny and complicated files are the legacies of
his ancestors, the guardians of the Ataturk regime. In
fact being subjected to any of these dangerous "mines"
at this particular stage might thwart his plans to
allow Turkey to take on the appropriate international
role. With the wisdom of an experienced statesman,
Erdogan managed to shift his country’s complicated
relations with Israel, the US and NATO from pressure
tools being used against him into pressure tools of
his own for his political project. For this reason,
when Arab and Islamic nations noticed the development
and political leaps taken by Erdogan's Islamist
government, they realized how wisely he dealt with
such thorny issues. Unlike some depressing Arab
"revolutionary" models, neither Erdogan nor any of his
government members issued ostentatious statements or
made empty threats against Israel or its US ally by
threatening to throw the former into the sea or cut
off the latter diplomatically. Rather, he used a more
effective tactic that had a greater impact. The
sending of a humanitarian flotilla was a
“masterstroke” that struck Israel, the US, Western
states and Iran.
Patrick Cockburn who writes for the Independent
said that the recent Israeli confrontation ended with
a victory [for the convoy’s organizers] beyond their
wildest dreams, as the Israeli blockade became the
focus of the world’s attention, and so international
calls to end it heightened after the world’s interest
in this issue had dwindled. His colleague Adrian
Hamilton asked whether the attack on the humanitarian
aid ships to Gaza will mark a turning point in history
as the moment when the international attitude towards
Israel began to change and when the Israeli government
could no longer rely on the West [to see through right
and wrong].
As for the US, it was unfortunate that the Zionist
criminal blunder against the humanitarian flotilla
took place on the eve of the first anniversary of
Obama's speech at Cairo University in which he sought
to establish new relations with the Islamic world
based on respect and partnership in the hope that he
may be able to repair the damage caused by his
predecessor George W. Bush. However, Obama's
popularity has declined dramatically due to the lack
of any slight positive change especially with regards
to the pivotal Palestinian cause. The recent Israeli
attack on the Turkish flotilla and the shameful
negative US position towards this crime was the straw
that broke the back of Obama's project to change the
stereotypical image of the US in the Arab and Muslim
mindset.
The Turkish President or the "Ottoman Sultan" Recep
Tayyip Erdogan is like the famous Turkish sweet,
Turkish Delight. For the first time, the nations of
the Islamic world tasted the special and unique taste
of the Turkish confectionery and wished these kinds of
sweets would spread all over the Islamic and Arab
world.