Two months after the event, the New York Times discovers that the Gaza flotilla intercepted by Israeli commandos last May is “tied to the elite of Turkey,” a conclusion that was obvious on the face of it from initial news reports. This occurred after the German government banned the Turkish “charity” IHH, which had sponsored the flotilla, on the grounds that it had channeled millions of dollars in supposed philanthropic contributions to fronts for Hamas, which both the U.S. and the European Community list as a terrorist organization.
According to a senior Turkish official close to the government [the Times writes], who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue, as many as 10 Parliament members from Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship where the deadly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.
When leaders of the charity returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warmly embraced by top Turkish officials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy director of the charity, who was aboard the flotilla.
“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trouble for what happened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istanbul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, in tears,” he said in an interview. “We have good coordination with Mr. Erdogan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is happy with us now.”
What has transpired during the past two months is this: The Obama administration has come to the rueful conclusion that the President’s public embrace of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan as a principal ally in outreach to the Muslim world has backfired. In a June 24 essay for the Tablet, a Jewish-oriented webzine, I explained:
Mickey Mouse must have felt a bit like this, midway through the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” episode of Fantasia. In the remake, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan plays the role of the runaway broom conjured up by President Barack Obama, who wanted a fresh set of allies to advance a 21st-century foreign policy that rejected U.S. hegemony. Now his inventions have taken on a life of their own, and the White House is awash in a flood of trouble.
The volatile Turkish leader was supposed to have been a key U.S. partner in a new world order founded on diplomacy rather than force. Obama reached out to him repeatedly, first in a high-profile pilgrimage just after taking office and most recently to mediate a secret nuclear fuel deal with Iran. But Erdogan has a different agenda, which a group of Turkish diplomats recently characterized as “neo-Ottoman.” He sees an opportunity to become the Mideast’s regional hegemon, as well as Russia’s strategic partner in oil and gas transmission. And to succeed he wants to rally the region’s extremists to his neo-Ottoman cause.
Obama’s sponsorship of Erdogan has had devastating consequences for US interests in the Middle East, I argued:
Turkey’s public embrace of Hamas—which the European Union and the United States consider a terrorist organization—has undercut traditional U.S. allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The biggest loser might be the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas. After a year of riding point for the Obama Administration’s Mideast policy, and after five years spent nursing George W. Bush’s promise of U.S. support for a Palestinian state, Abbas was cut off at the knees when Obama buckled to Turkish demands over Gaza. The White House declared after the flotilla debacle that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was “unsustainable” and “must be changed” and announced a new $400 million Gaza aid package that will help resuscitate Hamas. Visiting the White House days later, Abbas reportedly begged Obama not to lift the Gaza blockade, which was sponsored by the Bush Administration after Hamas gunmen slaughtered Abbas’ security people during the June 2007 Gaza coup in order to squeeze Hamas into “reconciliation” with the Palestinian Authority.
In Goethe’s ballad “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the source for the Paul Dukas tone-poem and the Disney animation, the hapless apprentice cannot stop his enchanted brooms from bringing water to the already-flooded laboratory. Chopping the broom in half only produces a pair of water-carriers. At length the master sorcerer returns and gives the incantation:
In die Ecke
Besen, Besen,
Seids gewesen!
(“Into the corner/Broom, Broom/Be what you were” — or “Sei das gewesene”). A team of State Department philologists is working day and night to translate this into Turkish.
Obama, to be sure, does not deserve all the blame for this policy disaster. As I explained in a July 29 “Spengler” essay at Asia Times Online entitled “Sympathy for the Turkish Devil,” the Bush administration backed Erdogan against the secular Turkish establishment after Turkey in 2003 refused American requests to allow coalition a Northern invasion route into Iraq:
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a monster, but for the Turks a useful monster. The 1988 Anfal campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq killed up to 180,000 of them, and the crackdown on the Kurds after the 1991 First Gulf War killed as many as 100,000. The Turks, by contrast, killed perhaps 20,000 to 40,000 Kurds during the 1980s and 1990s.
Turkey in 2003 refused America permission to open a northern front against Saddam out of fear that the war would destroy Turkey’s ability to control its restive border. The destruction of the Iraqi state, moreover, created a de facto independent Kurdish entity on Turkey’s border, the last thing Ankara wanted. If America had simply installed a new strongman and left, Turkey would have been relieved. But America’s commitment to “nation-building” and “democracy” in Iraq, to Ankara’s way of thinking, meant that Iraq inevitably would break up; the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq would become a breakaway state; and Iran’s power would grow at the expense of Turkey.
Turkey has many reasons to fear Iran, whose possible nuclear ambitions make it a prospective spoiler in the region. But there is another vital issue. Among the fault lines that run through the modern Turkish state is a religious divide. Iran exercises influence through the Alevi minority in Turkey, a heretical Muslim sect closer in some ways to Shi’ite than Sunni Islam. No accurate census of the Alevi exists; they may comprise between a fifth and a quarter of of Turkey’s population. The late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared the Alevi to be part of Shi’ite Islam in the 1970s, and they have been subjected to occasional violence by Sunni Turks.
The Iraq war undermined the position of the Kemalist military, which had bloodied its hands for decades in counter-insurgency operations against the Kurds. Erdogan’s Islamists argued that the weak glue of secular Turkish identity no longer could hold Turkey together, and proposed instead to win the Kurds over through Islamic solidarity. The Kurds are quite traditional Muslims; unlike the Turkish Sunnis, the provincial Kurds of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq often practice female circumcision.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the George W Bush administration saw no reason to back the Turkish generals who had let them down in Iraq, and instead threw their backing to the Islamists, on the theory that Erdogan represented a sort of “moderate Islam” that would provide an example to other prospective democratic Muslim regimes. When Erdogan won parliamentary elections in 2003, Bush invited him to the White House before he took office, a gesture that persuaded most Turks that America had jettisoned its erstwhile secular allies, as I wrote in 2007.
Credulously and fatuously, Obama compounded the error of the Bush administration, which also believed that Erdogan’s supposedly “moderate” brand of political Islam was a weaker form of the virus with which to inoculate the rest of the Muslim world. That was also the view of the Jesuit Islamologists in the entourage of Pope Benedict XVI—Christian Troll, Samir Khalid Samir, and Felix Koerner—who worked closely with the Theology Department of the University of Ankara to concoct a revised version of the Hadith, the “traditions” of purported sayings of Mohammed.
For the record, I warned in 2008 that Turkey was “in the throes of Islamist revolution.”
July 16th, 2010 | 1:15 pm
In the first paragraph, I think it is rather “European Community” or “European Union” than “European Communist”.
July 16th, 2010 | 1:31 pm
Have to check the right-wing credentials of the proof-readers — this slip seems more than Freudian. Sort of has a ring to it, though.
July 16th, 2010 | 1:37 pm
Google translate doesn’t do the trick. For “In die Ecke/Besen, Besen/Sei das gewesene” it gives us:
Köşesinde, süpürge, süpürge, ne olmasıdır.
Back into German, we get:
“In die Ecke, Besen, Staubsauger, was ist das.”
The State Department philologists have their hands full.
July 16th, 2010 | 1:55 pm
Why worry this soon? Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims are doing the square dance. The music is going to get faster, and faster, and faster and faster. Then promenade.
Others are ready to ante, if instead the dance turns into a “new world order” poker game.
Don’t get hysterical. Nobody is going to persuade you to sign a trifling piece of paper such as a peace agreement, or at least not until after the poker game starts that is.
Quiet down. It will be OK. I think…
July 16th, 2010 | 2:32 pm
Dear Mr. Goldman,
From your Spengler essays we know already that you consider the Western Europeans are half-pagans, suicide-minded decadent civil servants and pacifist (which is to some point true), but that we are communists is a completely new point.
Surprisingly, as some major western country, speaking of one whose president is considered somehow as a “Zauberlehrling” by you, seems to strive for the same level of government spending and social security, as the metioned western entity of Asia, and this western country has always been regarded as the benchmark of market liberalism.
BTW if I alter to “Seid es gewesen”, I get:
“Ecke
Besen, Mopp,
Aber Sie!”
Somehow also a statement…
You could consider it as the missing requirement you asked for Google being accepted as a God in your blog one ATol.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KC31Ak02.html
July 16th, 2010 | 2:47 pm
Windhorst,
Leider haben Sie vollkommen Recht: Unsere jetzige Obrigkeit gaengelt uns in die selbe Richtung. Hier machen wir immer doch noch Kinder, dadurch es noch Hoffnung gibt, dass wir das Schreckensschiksal Europas entkommen werden.
July 16th, 2010 | 2:51 pm
Why should Americans care about keeping Turkey subservient to Western interests? It’s not as if there’s even all that much oil for us in the Middle East compared to in, say, Canada or Venezuela. And if human rights are a concern, then the US would better use its attention and resources intervening in the DRC.
July 16th, 2010 | 3:35 pm
Steve,
Several points which do not target dircectly on America itself but its allies and the political stability in general:
As Turkey is and in the future the major hub for the European gas and oil supply from Russia and Central Asia (see the BTC and Nabucco projects), the EU member states could be forced to move even more towards the East as it is already the case.
Secondly, a “finlandized” Turkey which fears its dissolution would not be capable of shielding its the Turkic Central Asian states like Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan from Persian or Russian desires. The latter has already been a subject of interest in the 90s when Russia-backed Armenia was about to attack and only stopped due to Turkish intervention.
And thirdly, the perception of Israel’s strength in the region also profitated somehow from its close military relations to Turkey, and Israel’s security should be also to some interest of the West.
July 16th, 2010 | 3:54 pm
Herr Goldman,
Das ist natürlich wahr. Ich glaube aber nicht, es die Vereinigten Staaten treffen wird. Alle Freunde von mir, die ein Auslandssemester in den USA machen, sind begeistert von dem amerikanischen Unternehmergeist.
Ich bin etwas optimistischer, was die Zukunft Europas angeht. 40 Jahre Teilung sollten eigentlich genug Strafe sein.
Vielleicht findet sich ein neues Gleichgewicht.
Hals- und Beinbruch!
הצלחה וברכה
July 16th, 2010 | 11:28 pm
Windhorst,
If the EU moves to “the East,” why shouldn’t the US also do so (though I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that)?
Other than the US intervention in Iraq, I’m not sure what influence the US has on whether Turkey is “finlandized.”
Also, I don’t see why US policy toward a nation of over 70 million (Turkey) should be completely dictated by the national interests of a nation of just over 7 million (Israel), even though there are obviously closer cultural ties to the latter. Are you seriously suggesting that US policy should be altered for the sake of “the perception of Israel’s strength in the region?”
I don’t want to put that much into subsidizing a global empire given that the US is headed toward bankruptcy anyhow; good relations with emerging powers like Turkey are more important than the maintenance of the absolute military superiority of developed nations.
July 17th, 2010 | 5:34 am
Steve,
By “moving East” I wanted to say that the EU members would shift its interest and foreign policy opinion to countries like Russia and Turkey. As Turkey would be forced to keep good relationships with its neighbours and will perhaps enter the EU in 10 or 20 years, the Middle East would get a lot more attention in Brussels, which is not necessarily a good thing.
I would not say, that the USA are really an empire. An empire would be much more about really controlling countries which is only the case in Iraq in Afghanistan. Beyond this, the USA is just exercising its influence in my opinion like France does it still in some of its former colonies.
Until now the USA was seen as they would surely intervene, if an ally was in danger. This seems not true for Turkey any more in the current constellation.
The perception of Israel’s strength in the region could make the difference, how its adversaries estimate the outcome of a war, so is important, in my opinion.
Of course, you’re right that the Americans have to avoid to high spending and rebalance their economy. But this will be not eased by disclaiming the managing role the US has in Middle East or by changing the foreign diplomacy. What is really expensive, are the two wars, which do not improve but rather worsen the stand of the US (and the EU) has in the region.
July 17th, 2010 | 11:53 am
Windhorst,
I’m completely agreed about the two wars, which have me soured on US intervention in the Middle East in general. I wouldn’t be so opposed to US involvement in the region if it wasn’t centered on two likely futile wars and was instead focused on diplomacy and perhaps some military pressure.
July 17th, 2010 | 9:39 pm
Just for fun, from a Doug Saunders dispatch in the Toronto Globe and Mail:
Estudias o trabajas?” When young Spaniards gather around the bars and patios, that’s their traditional icebreaker line: “You study or work?” In the past year, it’s become almost mandatory to answer, with a self-effacing smirk: “Nini.”
It is half a joke, for nini is a way of saying “neither-nor,” and NINI is the Spanish government acronym for “Not in education or employment” – that is, lost to the economy.
But it’s not really a joke, because now almost everyone is NINI. The under-30 unemployment rate in Spain has just hit 44 per cent, twice the adult rate. Italy also has passed the 40 per cent mark, and Greece has gone even further. If you count all the people who’ve given up looking, it means the number of people between 20 and 30 who have any form of employment in these countries is something like one in five.
An entire European generation is leaving school to discover they have no place in the economy.
July 17th, 2010 | 10:13 pm
Windhorst,
Your Israel-baiting is ill-informed: the biggest losers in the Gaza flotilla affair were America’s Arab allies, starting with Egypt, whom Turkey is trying to replace as the hegemonic Sunni power. Egypt after all keeps the Gaza blockade in place, and Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to overthrow Mubarak’s quasi-secular government.
I don’t expect the EU to move East. I expect Germany to point East and ditch the Welschen (not the Welsh, for Anglophones listening in).
July 18th, 2010 | 3:01 pm
Mr Goldman,
Pardon me, but I don’t see the “baiting” you accuse me. I don’t think, that I wrote anything against Israel; I just stated, that the current split between Israel and Turkey is a worsening for Israel. Or do you mean something different?
BTW the situation in Spain is extraordinary bad and worst throughout the EU. The situation in the more northern located European countries isn’t that bad. I am currently in the end of my studies and all of my friends, who finished already, got a job within one quarter year. It is the Club Med who is really hit hard.
Your expectations about Germany’s future are of course a frightening realistic scenario, which I hope and pray, will not turn real, as the Celts on the Continent were not the most successful people in history.
July 18th, 2010 | 3:06 pm
[...] Some flotilla backfiring, David Goldman (First Things) Categories: Uncategorized Tags: aid Gaza, Allah, anti-semitism, anti-swemitism, Archangel Gabriel, blockade, FLOTILLA, Free Gaza, gaza, gaza flotilla, humanitarian aid, IDF, Islamist Turkey, israel, Israel Defense Force, Issrael, jew hatred, jihad, Judea, Muhammad, Muhammad Painting, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama and Jews, President Obama are you an islamist?, President Obama did anhyone in the White House help plan the Gaza Flotilla?, President Obama do you care that Turkey has gone islamist?, President Obama how deep was the Whitew House involved in the Gaza Flotilla?, President Obama why do you hate Israel?, President Obama why do you hate Jews?, Samaria, sharia, TUrkey, war on Gaza, war on Israel Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback [...]
July 18th, 2010 | 4:10 pm
My goodness it’s getting harder and harder to figure out where your writings are going to pop up next. Is there a reason these are not cataloged on the Spengler forum?
July 19th, 2010 | 10:33 pm
Netanyahu bragged how he undercut the peace process when he was prime minister during the Clinton administration. In December of 2008, Z-Big called Joe Scarborough ‘stunningly superficial’, on the show, as Joe revealed his stunningly superficial understanding of the peace process when Clinton left office. All that over a trifling piece of paper such as a peace agreement.
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