Caroline Glick: Endgame for the U.S.-Turkey Relationship

On Monday, NATO ally Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Washington. The severe step is meant to punish the U.S. for opening an embassy in Jerusalem on Monday.

Also Monday, Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador to Turkey. It had already withdrawn its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

In a speech at Chatham Apartment on Monday, Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel a “terror narrate,” and accused Israel of finishing up a “genocide.”

Indicating his ogle that the U.S. is also liable for the so-called “genocide,” Erdogan said, “I condemn this humanitarian drama, this genocide, from whichever aspect it comes, Israel or The usa.”

Turning his consideration to Washington, Erdogan accused the U.S. of violating global law by recognizing Israel’s capital and transferring its embassy to Jerusalem. He insisted that following the embassy transfer, the U.S. can no longer mediate the Palestinian battle with Israel.

As Erdogan used to be condemning Israel and the U.S. in London, protesters in Ankara were burning Israeli and American flags at a mass rally. One speaker on the rally referred to the American other folks as “canine.” The rally used to be organized by Turkey’s Islamist IHH neighborhood. IHH, which is aligned with Hamas and al Qaeda, has terminate family members with the Erdogan regime.

Also Monday, Turkey called an emergency meeting of the Group of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Istanbul. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that immediately after the conference, a mass narrate in opposition to Israel would be held at Istanbul’s central thoroughfare.

It’d be easy to push aside Erdogan’s most modern strikes as simply one other expression of his hatred for Israel and Jews. By this line of pondering, the Turks are no longer antagonistic in direction of U.S. per se when Erdogan accuses the U.S. of committing genocide, and Turkish pro-regime demonstrators burn the U.S. flag. Erdogan and his followers are factual sore at Washington for siding with the Jews.

That is, Erdogan’s anti-Americanism is a feature of his anti-Jewish bigotry.

While it’s no doubt staunch that Erdogan is a raging anti-Jewish bigot and hater of Israel, antisemitism is handiest a partial clarification of his habits.

On Thursday, Israeli Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin supplied one other clarification. After calling for Israelis to forego shuttle to Turkey, Levin said that Erdogan is striking out in opposition to Israel – and presumably the U.S. – as fragment of his election marketing campaign. (Next week Turkey is maintaining parliamentary elections.)

Levin said, “Sadly, Turkey has a leader who many instances exploits Israel to impact headlines for himself and to mobilize reinforce before elections. I would ogle the steps that Turkey has taken when it involves [next week’s] elections.”

The problem with explanations care for Levin’s or the belief that Turkey’s anti-Americanism stems entirely from its hatred of Israel is that they ignore Erdogan’s ogle of elections on the one hand, and the cause of his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish policies and his anti-Americanism on the change hand.

Merely about elections, Erdogan has made certain many instances over his sixteen years in vitality that he is no longer going to permit election results to resolve Turkey’s trajectory. In June 2015 elections, Erdogan’s Islamist AKP celebration lost its parliamentary majority. In role of fetch the loss, he called for impress novel elections. These elections, held in November 2015, unsurprisingly brought the specified results.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Erdogan wouldn’t rule out — certainly he all but admitted — that he’s going to repeat the be conscious within the tournament his ruling AKP celebration fails to construct up its parliamentary majority within the arrival ballot.

So, contrary to Levin’s evaluation, Erdogan essentially doesn’t care about elections. His most modern diatribes and actions in opposition to Israel and the U.S. stay no longer stem from electoral concerns.

As for the feature his Jew-hatred performs in determining his policies in direction of Israel and the U.S., while it’s likely, certainly attainable, that some of his policies are the tip result of his vituperative hatred of all issues Jewish, the reality is that Erdogan makes spend of hatred of Jews, which is broadly shared by extra than 70 percent of Turks, to come an excellent increased goal.

To know that goal, it’s severe to survey Erdogan’s ancient past with varied U.S. administrations.

Erdogan used to be upheld by each and each the Bush and Obama administrations as a paragon of a moderate Muslim leader. To construct up U.S. reinforce, Erdogan used to be perfectly delighted to permit them to judge that. But while he used to be basking within the reinforce of the likes of Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama,(who referred to Erdogan as one of 5 international leaders with whom he had fashioned “bonds of trust”), Erdogan many instances rejected the belief that there is the sort of ingredient as moderate Islam.

Erdogan by no diagram has made his staunch goal a secret. In his sixteen years in vitality, he has enacted a leisurely spin revolution in Turkey. The Turkey he took over in 2002 used to be the secular republic fashioned by Ataturk on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire within the aftermath of World War I. Ataturk appointed the Turkish defense drive as the constitutionally-mandated guardian of Turkey’s novel secular order.

Defense drive safety of secularism used to be mandatory due to the, as Samuel Huntington explained in his e book Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Advise, Turkey used to be repeatedly a “torn” society. It used to be by no diagram ready to strike a steadiness between Islam, secularism, and Western identity.

Turkish student and outdated Pentagon legit Harold Rhode explains within the e book Ally No More: Erdogan’s Original Turkish Caliphate and the Rising Jihadist Risk to the West that Erdogan represents virtually all of Turks who by no diagram celebrated the regime’s secularism. Since entering workplace, he has musty public reinforce to boot to U.S. backing to dismantle the secular narrate over time. He replaced the secularists who managed the media, the judiciary, civil carrier, law enforcement, and education with Islamists who portion his goal of reworking Turkey into an Islamic narrate. The failed July 2016 coup gave Erdogan a pretext to purge the defense drive brutally of all pockets of secular resistance.

Erdogan’s aspirations are no longer restricted to Turkey. Certainly, Rhode explains, his targets extends a long way beyond Turkey. Erdogan intends to revive the Ottoman Empire and set up himself as the caliph, or leader of the Islamic world.

As Rhode notes, Erdogan made his aspirations certain at some level of a victory speech following his reelection to a third term as Turkish high minister in 2011. Erdogan said, “On the present time, our victory here in Turkey is to boot-known [here] as it’s in Sarajevo [the capital of Bosnia]; in Izmir [Turkey] as it’s in for Beirut, this victory is to boot-known in Ankara as it’s in Damascus…in Turkey as it’s in Ramallah, Jenin and in Jerusalem.”

Adore the Iranian regime, which shares Erdogan’s ambition to lead the Islamic world, the executive sociological obstacle Erdogan faces in reaching his goal of main the Islamic world is that Turkey is no longer an Arab narrate. To conquer this racial obstacle, Erdogan has latched onto Islamic hatred of Israel and of the Jews as a mode to show his rate.

Thus Erdogan competes with the Iranian regime for the mantle of Hamas’s chief sponsor. Hamas’s operational headquarters are in Istanbul. Loads of the lethal terror attacks the neighborhood implemented in opposition to Israelis in most modern years were directed from Hamas locations of work in Turkey. Turkey serves as a hub for monetary transfers and money laundering operations for Hamas. And Erdogan is Hamas’s chief advocate in global forums.

For Erdogan, propagating hatred for The usa is one other key feature of his efforts to construct up management of the Islamic world. Since entering vitality, he has inculcated deep-seated hatred of the West customarily, and the US particularly, into Turkish society. Tv displays, motion photography and books had been released that spew conspiracy theories demonizing Americans and The usa.

It appears to be like a day doesn’t rush by without Erdogan or one of his underlings saying or doing one thing deeply antagonistic to Israel, or a file rising about one other Turkish coverage adopted to distress the Jewish narrate. Likewise, it appears to be like a a week doesn’t rush by without Erdogan saying or doing one thing deeply antagonistic to the U.S., its residents, or its strategic pursuits.

This week, Israel’s international ministry debated whether or no longer or no longer to gash off diplomatic family members with Turkey altogether. As Deputy International Minister Tzipi Hotovely explained in a radio interview Thursday, the resolution used to be made to retain formal ties intact. Loads of the flights of Israel’s nationwide airline, El Al, overfly Turkish airspace, Israel has mighty change with Turkey, and Turkey has a critical Jewish neighborhood that is increasingly extra at risk, she explained.

While this is all staunch, given Erdogan’s desired discontinue narrate, it’s glaring that Israel must aloof hang contingency plans ready to surmount the challenges to air shuttle and change for the day Erdogan cuts off family members with Jerusalem.

Parallel to Israel’s discussions, it’s life like to steal that Erdogan’s viciously anti-American statements and actions hang provoked Washington policymakers to habits cost-revenue analyses of Turkey’s endured membership in NATO. The reasoning presumably concludes that it’s better for the U.S. to betray its Kurdish allies in Syria and Iraq and other stunning displays of Turkish treachery than lose its bases in Turkey.

While these concerns are no longer ridiculous, care for Israel’s evaluation of the desirability of endured diplomatic ties to Erdogan’s Turkey, they’re largely missing the level.

Sixteen  years ago, Erdogan launched Turkey on a trajectory that is implacably antagonistic and antithetical to the very belief of a Turkish-U.S. alliance, no longer to mention to endured Turkish membership in NATO.

Unless U.S. cost-revenue analyses are based thoroughly totally on that general reality, their conclusions are largely inappropriate to the strategic distress Erdogan’s Turkey poses to the U.S.

Caroline Glick is an global-smartly-known journalist and commentator on the Center East and U.S. international coverage, and the author of The Israeli Resolution: A One-Mumble Conception for Peace within the Center East. Learn extra at www.CarolineGlick.com.