* “Why should Israelis, or Americans for that matter, believe Palestinian President Abbas’ commitment to peace in English, when in Arabic he consistently treats war as an acceptable option?”
* “The critical insight achieved by the Bush administration was that the character of that state, and of Palestinian society, are more important than final borders in achieving and maintaining peace.”
* “If the Obama administration is dedicated to a major peace effort in the coming year, the incitement issue should be at the top of its agenda. Because when direct negotiations do finally begin, the key test of Palestinian commitment to peace will not be what Abbas and his colleagues say to Americans in English, but what they say in Arabic to Palestinians.”
* Before Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan came to power, Turkey had never hosted a Hamas conference. But in the last three years, there have been seven Hamas conferences and fundraisers in Istanbul alone.
* The Madrid gay parade bans participants from Israel – the only Mideast country that respects homosexual rights. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia beheads gays. Syria arrests them in sting operations. Iran hangs them from cranes in public squares – after first denying they exist.
CONTENTS
1. The two-faced stance of Mahmoud Abbas
2. Saudi Arabia beheads gays. Iran hangs them. But Spain targets Israeli gays.
3. Erdogan turns up the volume of his demagoguery
4. Erdogan poisons the minds of a generation of Turks
5. “The two faces of Mahmoud Abbas” (By Elliott Abrams, Daily News, July 14, 2010)
6. “Spanish Inquisition, Part II” (By James Kirchick, Wall St. Journal Europe, July 11, 2010)
7. “Erdogan fans anti-Israeli sentiments for political gain” (By Semih Idiz, Hurriyet)
8. “The AKP’s Hamas policy” (By Soner Cagaptay, Hurriyet, Turkey, July 5, 2010)
[Note by Tom Gross]
This dispatch is split into two for space reasons. I attach four recent articles below, with summaries first for those who don’t have time to read them in full, and the other six articles can be read here: Al-Qaeda has its eyes set on Gaza (& Why Egypt fears the Palestinians).
All the writers of these articles (other than Semih Idiz and Soner Cagaptay) are longtime subscribers to this email list:
* Elliott Abrams was the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor handling Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush administration. He is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
* James Kirchick is a writer at large with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and a contributing editor to The New Republic, and The Advocate.
* Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, in Herzliya, Israel.
* Moshe Arens is the former foreign minister and defense minister of Israel.
* Khaled Abu Toameh is a prominent Palestinian journalist.
* Abby Wisse Schachter is a comment and books editor at The New York Post.
* Robin Shepherd was formerly a fellow of the Chatham House think tank in London.
* The anonymous editorial writer at The Wall Street Journal.
(The editors and senior staff at the publications in which these articles appear – The New York Daily News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Europe, Ha’aretz, The Jerusalem Post, and The Hudson Institute Journal – are also all subscribers to this email list.)
ARTICLE SUMMARIES
THE TWO-FACED STANCE OF MAHMOUD ABBAS
In the first article, Elliott Abrams writes in The New York Daily News on the crucial yet gravely overlooked issue of Palestinian incitement to kill Israelis, and the challenge it presents to peacemakers.
Abrams points out that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says one thing to the Palestinians in Arabic, another to Obama and the West in English.
“I say in front of you, Mr. President, that we have nothing to do with incitement against Israel, and we’re not doing that,” Abbas claimed during his visit to the White House last month.
Yet a few days later (as I pointed out on this email list at the time), Abbas publicly mourned the death of Mohammed Oudeh, mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre: “The deceased was one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement and lived a life filled with the struggle, devoted effort, and the enormous sacrifice of the deceased for the sake of the legitimate problem of his people.”
Abbas also told Arab journalists in Amman, Jordan, that “We are unable to confront Israel militarily, and this point was discussed at the Arab League summit in March in Libya. There I turned to the Arab states and I said: ‘If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.’”
“Why should Israelis, or Americans for that matter, believe his commitment to peace in English, when in Arabic he treats war as an acceptable option?” asks Abrams, who adds:
“At a dinner for Abbas during his Washington visit, I confronted him with several recent examples of incitement, as well as the denial that he made to the President. His reply was that of a bureaucrat, not a peacemaker: He did not deny the allegations, but said that if true they should be raised at a tripartite committee (the United States, the Palestinian Authority and Israel) that had been established by the Oslo Accords…
“Is terrorism defended and glorified by the top officials? Are terrorists who murder children branded as heroes whom schoolchildren should admire? Is war with Israel a tactic that must be set aside only for pragmatic reasons, and even then only as a short-term strategy? …
“If the Obama administration is dedicated to a major peace effort in the coming year, the incitement issue should be at the top of its agenda. Because when direct negotiations do finally begin, the key test of Palestinian commitment to peace will not be what Abbas and his colleagues say to Americans in English, but what they say in Arabic to Palestinians – about Israel, about terrorism and about real peace.”
***
Tom Gross adds: As I have pointed out on many occasions in the past, Western journalists should of course report on Israeli transgressions and abuses, but by one-sidedly ignoring or downplaying Palestinian ones, including the consistent Palestinian incitement to kill, these journalists are doing a disservice to their readers, to Western policymakers, to Palestinian democrats, and to the cause of peace.
SAUDI ARABIA BEHEADS GAYS. IRAN HANGS THEM. BUT SPAIN TARGETS ISRAELI GAYS.
In the second article below, James Kirchick writes in The Wall Street Journal Europe (extracts):
Earlier this month Madrid celebrated its annual gay pride festival, reputed to be the largest in Europe. It featured the usual mixture of calls for tolerance, righteous political speechifying, and raucous display of sexuality. But the Spanish capital also earned a dubious distinction this year not for anything it included, but for what it excluded: Israel.
The municipality of Tel Aviv had originally planned to sponsor a float in the Madrid parade. But Spain’s Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders and Bisexuals revoked the invitation….
By joining the international campaign to delegitimize Israel, Spain’s leading gay organization undermined its purported mission: the furtherance of gay rights. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that even has gay pride parades, never mind respects the dignity of homosexuals. Saudi Arabia beheads gays. Syria arrests them in sting operations. Iran hangs them from cranes in public squares. (Speaking at Columbia University in 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that there are no homosexuals in his country, an absurd assertion nonetheless portentous for its murderous aspirations). As for Gaza, one of Hamas’s leaders has referred to gays as ‘a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick.’ …”
Like so many other democratic values, when it comes to gay rights Israel is an oasis in a sea of state-sanctioned repression… Gays serve openly in the Israeli military… the government grants gay couples many of the same rights as heterosexual ones and recognizes same-sex unions performed abroad. Many Palestinian gays seek asylum in Israel…
One would be hard-pressed to find a country that oppresses its gays and treats its Jews well, or vice versa. From Nazi Germany to the modern Middle East, societies that persecute Jews will get to homosexuals eventually – if they haven’t been dispensed with already. This is a lesson that gays ignore at their peril.
ERDOGAN TURNS UP THE VOLUME OF HIS DEMAGOGUERY
In the third article below, Semih Idiz writes in Hurriyet Daily News, a leading Turkish paper:
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears set to milk the popularity he gained in the streets of Turkey and the Middle East after the Marmara crisis in which nine Turks were killed by Israeli forces in a seriously botched up military operation.
It is almost as if he was waiting for a new crisis with Israel to be able to work the streets in order to regain some of the political ground his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has been losing over bread and butter issues at home.
He and his party executives are clearly worried that the reinvigorated Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, may make headway given the successful manner in which its new leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been hitting at the government over topics that really matter for the average man on the street…
Turks are fickle though, and easily swayed emotionally even if this means that the bread and butter issues of vital importance to them are pushed to the background…
So we see him increasingly turning up the volume of his demagoguery, and hitting at Israel and the United States at every opportunity that presents itself. No doubt he is keeping a close eye on the “political rating meter” as he sends his crowds to paroxysms of delirious applause with his remarks, some of which smack openly of anti-Semitism and reflect a growing anti-Western tendency…
ERDOGAN POISONS THE MINDS OF A GENERATION OF TURKS
Another columnist for Hurriyet Daily News, Soner Cagaptay, writes:
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has promoted the Islamist mindset of “us Muslims” in conflict with “the bad others” through the media and also by spreading Hamas’ views throughout Turkey, whether through official Hamas visits to Turkey or through AKP-supported conferences and fundraisers.
Recent changes in media ownership in Turkey under the AKP are closely related to the spread of anti-Western sentiments in the country. Media independence in Turkey is increasingly under threat…
The AKP took over the Sabah-ATV conglomerate, which represents around 20% of the Turkish media market, selling this conglomerate to a media company of which Prime Minister Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak is the CEO.
The AKP has also brought a $3.2 billion tax fine against Dogan Yayin, a conglomerate that owns around 50 percent of the Turkish media. This excessive fine exceeds Dogan’s total net worth – is political, because Dogan’s news outlets promote secular, liberal and nationalist views that often criticize of the AKP.
The transformation of the Turkish media is not an esoteric issue, for it affects the future of Turkish democracy and also has a bearing on Turkish views of the world…
A recent show on Turkey’s publicly-funded Turkish Radio Television, whose head is appointed by the AKP, and which is entirely funded by Turkish taxpayer money, ran “Ayrilik,” a show with an anti-Israeli stance, including one which depicts an imagined situation in the Palestinian territories where a newborn baby is intentionally killed by Israeli soldiers.
What do 18-year-old Turks think of Israel now? They hate it, and they will do so because of images depicted in shows like “Ayrilik.” …
Before the AKP came to power, Turkey had never hosted a Hamas conference. But in the last three years alone, there have been seven Hamas conferences and fundraisers in Istanbul…
[All summaries above by Tom Gross]
FULL ARTICLES
THE CRUCIAL ISSUE OF PALESTINIAN INCITEMENT TO KILL
The two faces of Mahmoud Abbas: He says one thing to the Palestinians, another to Obama
By Elliott Abrams
New York Daily News
July 14, 2010
“I say in front of you, Mr. President, that we have nothing to do with incitement against Israel, and we’re not doing that,” claimed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to the White House in June.
It is unfortunate for the prospects of Middle East peace that this denial by Abbas (who is also head of the PLO and Fatah) was just plain untrue. In fact, this two-faced stance of Abbas and his cronies – proclaiming peaceful intentions to the international community while inciting their population to hatred of Israel – is one of the primary impediments to any sort of solution to the longstanding crisis.
And yet there are countless examples of pronouncements or actions by Abbas and other Palestinian leaders that suggest a glorification of violence and terrorism and undermine the belief that they seek peace. This very month, for example, Abbas publicly mourned the death of Mohammed Oudeh, mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre: “The deceased was one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement and lived a life filled with the struggle, devoted effort, and the enormous sacrifice of the deceased for the sake of the legitimate problem of his people.”
Abbas also told Arab journalists in Amman, Jordan, that “We are unable to confront Israel militarily, and this point was discussed at the Arab League summit in March in [Libya]. There I turned to the Arab states and I said: ‘If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.’ “
Why should Israelis, or Americans for that matter, believe his commitment to peace in English, when in Arabic he treats war as an acceptable option?
President Obama is well aware that popular incitement remains a thorn in the side of serious talks. In May, the President said that he had “mentioned to President Abbas in a frank exchange that it was very important to continue to make progress in reducing the incitement and anti-Israel sentiments that are sometimes expressed in schools and mosques and in the public square, because all those things are impediments to peace.”
At a dinner for Abbas during his Washington visit, I confronted him with several recent examples of incitement, as well as the denial that he made to the President. His reply was that of a bureaucrat, not a peacemaker: He did not deny the allegations, but said that if true they should be raised at a tripartite committee (the United States, the Palestinian Authority and Israel) that had been established by the Oslo Accords.
If peace is our goal, such a response is deeply inadequate. Abbas should handle incitement by stopping it, not seeking committee meetings – and especially not by denying that incitement occurs in the first place. Of course, it’s easy to see why, politically, Abbas and others in the PLO and Fatah leadership avoid confronting these organizations’ long involvement in terrorism, but if they cannot do so, the chances for real peace are slim. A leadership whose maps do not even show an entity called Israel is unlikely to tell Palestinian refugees that it has given up their “right of return” or that their long-hoped-for Palestinian state within the 1967 borders will not include control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
In fact, the critical insight achieved by the Bush administration was that the character of that state, and of Palestinian society, are more important than final borders in achieving and maintaining peace.
Is terrorism defended and glorified by the top officials? Are terrorists who murder children branded as heroes whom schoolchildren should admire? Is war with Israel a tactic that must be set aside only for pragmatic reasons, and even then only as a short-term strategy?
Obama is right to keep raising this subject with Abbas, but Presidents have been raising it for years. As the Palestinian leadership never seems to pay any penalty for its words, America’s seriousness about the peace process is in doubt.
If the Obama administration is dedicated to a major peace effort in the coming year, the incitement issue should be at the top of its agenda. Because when direct negotiations do finally begin, the key test of Palestinian commitment to peace will not be what Abbas and his colleagues say to Americans in English, but what they say in Arabic to Palestinians – about Israel, about terrorism and about real peace.
SPANISH ORGANIZERS EXCLUDE ONLY ONE COUNTRY: ISRAEL
Spanish Inquisition, Part II
The Madrid gay parade bans participants from Israel – the only Mideast country that respects homosexual rights.
By James Kirchick
Wall Street Journal Europe
July 11, 2010
MADRID -- Earlier this month Madrid celebrated its annual gay pride festival, reputed to be the largest in Europe. It featured the usual mixture of calls for tolerance, righteous political speechifying, and raucous display of sexuality. But the Spanish capital also earned a dubious distinction this year not for anything it included, but for what it excluded: Israel.
The municipality of Tel Aviv had originally planned to sponsor a float in the Madrid parade. But Spain’s Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders and Bisexuals revoked the invitation following Israel’s raid on the Gaza flotilla that ended with nine dead pro-Hamas activists.
“After what has happened, and as human rights campaigners, it seemed barbaric to us to have them taking part,” the Federation’s president, Antonio Poveda, explained. “We don’t just defend our own little patch.”
Mr. Poveda chose to ignore the video evidence supporting Israel’s account of self defense. But even if Israeli soldiers were at fault, why Israeli gays should be made to answer for the actions of their government was something that Mr. Poveda never bothered to explain. His justification rings of the “collective responsibility” trope that critics of the Jewish state often invoke to attack its security measures, especially the Gaza blockade, which they claim unfairly punishes ordinary Palestinians rather than Hamas.
By joining the international campaign to delegitimize Israel, Spain’s leading gay organization undermined its purported mission: the furtherance of gay rights. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that even has gay pride parades, never mind respects the dignity of homosexuals. Saudi Arabia beheads gays. Syria arrests them in sting operations. Iran hangs them from cranes in public squares. (Speaking at Columbia University in 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that there are no homosexuals in his country, an absurd assertion nonetheless portentous for its murderous aspirations). As for Gaza, one of Hamas’s leaders has referred to gays as “a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick.”
Like so many other democratic values, when it comes to gay rights Israel is an oasis in a sea of state-sanctioned repression, a “little patch,” to use Mr. Poveda’s words, that he and his comrades ought to defend. Gays serve openly in the Israeli military. While gay marriages can’t be legally performed in Israel, the government grants gay couples many of the same rights as heterosexual ones and recognizes same-sex unions performed abroad. Many Palestinian gays seek asylum in Israel. And like most aspects of Israeli life, the gay scene is disputatious. This year there was not one gay pride parade but three, including one that rejected the implicitly Zionist message of the municipally-sponsored parade. As one Israeli friend joked to me, “Two gay Jews, three parades.”
The decision by Spain’s leading gay group is part of an international trend that has seen far left elements hijack what ought to be a non-partisan movement to promote individual liberty. Earlier this year, for instance, organizers in Toronto allowed an organization called “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” to march in its parade. When I suggested to a Spanish friend that I might bring a small Israeli flag to the parade route, he wrote back, “Are you out of your mind? It’s dangerous.” Instead, I lodged my personal protest by sporting an Israeli Defense Forces t-shirt. To my pleasant surprise, no one raised a fuss.
Whatever the injustice of the Spanish Gay Federation’s behavior, it had little bearing on parade-goers, who partied as if the event they were celebrating had not been blackened by the organizers’ shameful boycott of Israel. Such passivity means that actions intended to isolate the small democracy will continue. Yesterday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki – one of the key figures behind the regime’s support for international Holocaust denial – arrived in Spain for a two-day visit to meet with Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The irony in welcoming a top official from a regime that murders gays while banning the only country in the region that treats homosexuals humanely seems to have been lost on Madrid.
This boycott will divide two minority communities that ought to be allies. One would be hard-pressed to find a country that oppresses its gays and treats its Jews well, or vice versa. From Nazi Germany to the modern Middle East, societies that persecute Jews will get to homosexuals eventually – if they haven’t been dispensed with already. This is a lesson that gays ignore at their peril.
ERDOGAN FANS THE FLAMES
Erdogan fans anti-Israeli, Anti-American sentiments for political gain
By Semih Idiz
Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey)
June 14, 2010
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears set to milk the popularity he gained in the streets of Turkey and the Middle East after the Marmara crisis in which nine Turks were killed by Israeli forces in a seriously botched up military operation.
It is almost as if he was waiting for a new crisis with Israel to be able to work the streets in order to regain some of the political ground his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has been loosing over bread and butter issues at home.
He and his party executives are clearly worried that the reinvigorated Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, may make headway given the successful manner in which its new leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been hitting at the government over topics that really matter for the average man on the street. He is also concerned that the Saadet (Felicity) Party, the other Islamist party, may steal votes from the AKP given the rising dissatisfaction among the public.
Turks are fickle though, and easily swayed emotionally even if this means that the bread and butter issues of vital importance to them are pushed to the background. It is clear that there is great public animosity towards Israel today. As for the almost endemic anti-Americanism among Turks, this is also adding grist to Erdogan’s populist mill.
So we see him increasingly turning up the volume of his demagoguery, and hitting at Israel and the United States at every opportunity that presents itself. No doubt he is keeping a close eye on the “political rating meter” as he sends his crowds to paroxysms of delirious applause with his remarks, some of which smack openly of anti-Semitism and reflect a growing anti-Western tendency.
After the Marmara incident he was not only quick to use the harshest and most insulting adjectives when referring to Israel, but also had thinly veiled warnings to Washington, suggesting openly that those who stood behind Israel were also culpable in the crimes committed by that country.
Over the weekend he went further and openly named the U.S. this time, thus revealing what lies in his heart-of-hearts. This is what he had to say while addressing an adoring crowd in Rize, on the Black Sea coast, where people are not only religious but also ultra-nationalist.
“They are asking us what Turkey is doing in the Middle East, in Palestine. Why is Turkey bothered about Gaza? But could they not be asked in return what America is doing in Iraq? What is it doing in Palestine? Could it not be asked what is it doing in Afghanistan? What are France, Britain, and Holland, and so on, doing in these places?”
Erdogan went on threateningly to say, “I am calling on the Israeli supported international media and their subcontractors at home: Turkey is not like other countries.” His only tribute to sophistication during this show of demagoguery was his reference to “the Israeli supported international media.”
Previously he had made references to the “Jewish controlled international media” but must have been warned by his advisors that this was too overtly “anti-Semitic,” and thus politically incorrect. This no doubt forced him to make a slight modification in his nevertheless anti-Semitic reference to the international media.
What is worse, however, is that Erdogan is set to raise the volume of his bellicosity in coming weeks and months, given that Turkey will, for all intents and purposes, be moving into “election mode.” We had an opportunity to talk to Hikmet Cetin, a highly respected veteran politician and former Foreign Minister, the other day.
He too expressed serious concerns that Erdogan and the AKP would make anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric the centerpiece of his political campaign in the lead-up to the elections in 2011. Mr. Cetin is right to be concerned of course.
Erdogan is, after all, utilizing the least sophisticated of political tools to increase support for the AKP at home, and totally disregarding what harm he may be doing to Turkey’s well established links with the West in general and the U.S. in particular – regardless of the periodic turbulence in these ties over specific issues.
There are those who say that he is in fact doing all of this intentionally, because he is trying to turn Turkey’s direction from the West to the Islamic East. We personally believe that whatever his ultimate aim and intentions may be in this respect, Mr. Erdogan will find that it is much harder to turn Turkey’s direction than he thinks.
But it cannot be denied that he and his government are providing material for those in the West who feel Turkey is in fact “drifting away.” There is truth, of course, in the contention being also put forward by some in the West today that certain countries and leaders in Europe have made it easier for the AKP to hit at the West. This is highly apparent from Erdogan’s lambasting Europe while also pursuing his populist line of demagoguery.
Some in Europe have been clinging to Mr. Erdogan and his party as the only viable reformist force in Turkey and providing him with a benefit of the doubt way beyond what is justified (even as he feeds the anti-western undercurrents in this country.) Less admiration and more attention on their part to what he is actually saying and doing at this stage should provide a wake-up call, as his latest actions and remarks appear to have done in Washington.
The bottom line is that while some may be worrying that Mr. Erdogan and the AKP are changing Turkey’s course, the truth is that it is not clear what they are trying to do, or if they even have a viable master plan for a modern Westward looking Turkey at this stage. As matters stand it appears that Mr. Erdogan is simply riding the crest of a populist conservative and Islamist wave – with nationalist overtones – which enables him to fog some seminal questions about where he is taking the country.
As for the great strides his party made over the past eight years, this may be true to an extent but it must not be forgotten that the road had already been laid for the AKP government to move on in terms of much of what they achieved over these years.
For example Turkey’s EU orientation – which Mr. Erdogan never referred to in a positive light while in the opposition – is something that was well underway. He simply went along with it continuing a reform process that had been started under the previous Ecevit government.
The much touted “zero problems with neighbors” policy, on the other hand, was always there but was called “a policy of good neighborliness.” As for the much lauded “opening up to the Middle East” this was the pet project of a host of former Turkish politicians ranging from Suleyman Demirel to Bulent Ecevit and Erdal Inonu, and not exclusive to the AKP.
It may appear to some that nothing was achieved in this country prior to the AKP. Mr. Erdogan and his party executives are working overtime to spread that impression, of course. But it is wrong and misrepresents the facts. Mr. Erdogan’s vitriolic and bellicose attitude both in domestic and in foreign policy should help open many eyes on this score too in the coming period.
TAKING OVER THE MEDIA
The AKP’s Hamas policy: “us vs. them”
By Soner Cagaptay
Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey)
July 5, 2010
www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=the-akp8217s-hamas-policy-8220us-vs.-them-2010-07-02
At home, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has promoted the Islamist mindset of “us Muslims” in conflict with “the bad others” through the media and also by spreading Hamas’ views throughout Turkey, whether through official Hamas visits to Turkey or through AKP-supported conferences and fundraisers.
Recent changes in media ownership in Turkey under the AKP are closely related to the spread of anti-Western sentiments in the country. Turkey is a country with free media. Media independence in Turkey, however, is increasingly under threat.
The Turkish media remains free (in that it is not illegal to produce journalism), but the AKP is trying to curb media freedoms by transforming media ownership through legal loopholes. Such was the case in December 2005 when the AKP took over the Sabah-ATV conglomerate, which represents around 20% of the Turkish media market, selling this conglomerate to a media company of which Turkish Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak is the CEO.
The AKP has also brought a $3.2 billion tax fine against Dogan Yayin, a conglomerate that owns around 50 percent of the Turkish media. This excessive fine exceeds Dogan’s total net worth—is political, because Dogan’s news outlets promote secular, liberal and nationalist views that often criticize of the AKP.
The transformation of the Turkish media is not an esoteric issue, for it affects the future of Turkish democracy and also has a bearing on Turkish views of the world.
Where there is no independent media – as in Russia – there is simply no viable opposition to government. Whenever Turkey goes through a political spasm, analysts warn of the collapse of Turkey’s democracy. Despite this, Turkey has survived numerous crises in the past thanks to the balancing power of its fourth pillar.
As Turkish media becomes less free, there is a higher likelihood that it will become a tool for the government with which to shape an anti-Western public opinion. What is bad for secular liberal western Turks is bad for the West. Turkey’s free media needs to remain free because if it is all either state-owned or owned by pro-AKP businesses, anti-Western and anti-Israeli viewpoints will spread through the media, which we have been witnessing since 2002.
A recent show on Turkey’s publicly-funded Turkish Radio Television, or TRT, network is a perfect example. The debut of the series, entitled “Ayrilik” (Separation), came on the heels of Turkey’s cancellation of Israeli participation in the Anatolian Eagle exercises. TRT, whose head is appointed by the AKP, and which is entirely funded by Turkish taxpayer money, ran “Ayrilik,” a show with an anti-Israeli stance, including one which depicts an imagined situation in the Palestinian territories where a newborn baby is intentionally killed by Israeli soldiers.
What do 18-year-old Turks think of Israel now? They hate it, and they will do so because of images depicted in shows like “Ayrilik.” These are the images they have been seeing for the last seven years and this is what they’ll continue seeing. A Turk who has come of age under the AKP is now more likely than not to hate Israel and the West after seven years of such propaganda. Unlike Turks now in their forties or older who came of political age in a different Turkey, younger Turks in their twenties and thirties have more radical and negative views of the West as a result of what they see in government-controlled media as well as media owned by pro-government businesses.
THROUGH CONFERENCES
While government-controlled media promotes an evil image of the Israelis, international Hamas conferences in Turkey build legitimacy for Hamas and other extensions of the International Muslim Brotherhood movement. Before the AKP came to power, Turkey had never hosted a Hamas conference. Now, such conferences render the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood agenda more accessible to Turks, making Hamas’ violent struggle against Israel a part of daily political debate in Turkey.
In the last three years alone, there have been seven Hamas conferences and fundraisers in Istanbul. The first one of these, held in July 2006 and attended by one of the spiritual leaders of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, was given the title “Muslims in Europe.” Qaradawi’s visit was funded by the British Foreign Office, and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood came to talk about Muslims in Europe, exposing Turks and European Muslims to Hamas and its ideology.
The list continues: other Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood conferences in Turkey include a November, 2007 conference called “Jerusalem Day,” co-organized by nongovernmental organization the Association of Turkish Volunteer Organizations, or TGTV, close to the AKP and Islamic Association of Muslim World Nongovernmental Organizations, or IDSB. This conference, entitled “Jerusalem Day,” called for “liberating Jerusalem through jihad from the Zionists.”
Other conferences followed in February 2009, April 2009, May 2009, and July 2009. What is interesting is that the frequency of these conferences has been steadily increasing, with four such meetings alone held in 2009.
Moreover, these meetings have started to espouse a violent agenda. For instance, at the February 2009 conference, Hamas members called for a jihad centered on Gaza. The April 2009 meeting was a “Masjid al-Aqsa symposium” which called to “liberate Masjid al-Aqsa” and it was organized by the Istanbul Peace Platform, or IBP, which includes a number of NGOs close to the AKP. The symposium called on all Muslims to liberate al-Aqsa through violence, if necessary, and also claimed that Israel has plans to demolish it. The “Palestine Collaboration Conference” in May 2009 called for “continued resistance to liberate Palestine.” Conference participants included former Sudanese President Mushir Sivar Ez-Zeheb, President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars Yousef al-Qaradawi, and Hamas Representative and Spokesman in Lebanon Usame Hamdan. In his speech at this conference, AKP deputy Zeyd Aslan said that Israel “commits genocide in Palestine.”
On the other hand, the “Environment Conference” in July 2009 was organized by the Earth Centre of Dialogue Partners in cooperation with the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the city of Istanbul, and the Fatih University in Istanbul. The conference, attended by al-Qaradawi, concluded with the declaration of a seven-year-action plan on climate change. The conference also served as platform to bring Hamas and MB members to Istanbul.
These conferences are organized by NGOs close to the AKP government. Although they appear to be civil society initiatives, the meetings are held in city halls of Istanbul or convention centers under the control of the AKP city government, which in essence means that taxpayer funds help pay for these events.