Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Elder of Ziyon
Well, you know, when your (meaning Erdogan's) shiny-new Arabist foreign policy blows itself to smithereens in the most spectacular manner possible,
And when you realize that some of the Europeans that you spurned are now voting to condemn you for the genocidal rampage that your country has always refused to acknowledge, and you've realized that threatening them just makes Europeans think that you're an idiot,
And when you realize that the Israelis whom you stabbed in the back immediately discovered the most promising energy bonanza in the eastern Mediterranean, and when this rapidly brings Israel together with Cyprus, partly because you gave up your influence with Jerusalem when you stabbed Israel in the back,
And when you realize that your "great friend" al-Assad is courting the PKK again,
And when you realize that your new buddies the Iranians are "smuggling weapons to terrorists through your soil" ... without your approval,
And when you realize that your new "friends" the Russians simply won't listen to you, and are going to protect their old friends in Damascus, the ones who are feeding the PKK,
And when you think about it honestly and realize that because you threw all of your reliable, sophisticated, influential friends under the bus, YOU HAVE NO RELIABLE AND INFLUENTIAL FRIENDS LEFT AT ALL,
Well, you really must start thinking "maybe I'd better start picking my battles." Certainly, hosting the overtly genocidal Hamas terror group would piss off not only the US but the EU. Not to mention certain Gulf Arab regimes who view anything connected with Iran, Syria OR the Muslim Brotherhood as poison.
So you (Erdogan) try to turn down the temperature on the completely unnecessary fights that you started in order to get "in" with the crowd that is now self destructing. After all, you don't need yet another diplomatic train-wreck to your credit, do you?
Maybe you (Erdogan) start courting the poor, stupid, forgiving Jews who used to stand up for you - yeah, we're very stupid and very forgiving - the Jews whom you stabbed in the back. You show "Shoah" on a TV station and hope that everyone will get all excited by this "signal" and forget about "Valley of the Wolves." You put out press about how you held Holocaust Remembrance Day events, and hope that everybody will forget about the Armenians. You say that hosting Hamas is "out of the question" and hope that everyone will forget your warm cuddles and diplomatic cover for Hamas in the very recent past. You blast Russia for its support for the Syrian regime, and hope that everyone will forget your own snuggles with al-Assad only a year before. You hem and haw after an earthquake and accept only a tiny portion of the assistance that Israel offered, and hope that your voters care more about burning Israeli flags than they care about freezing Turks.
Not to mention that you (meaning Erdogan) accepted the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize scant months before that vile dictator's people rose up and extinguished him. THAT one is a "must" for the "Most Epic Fails" album. You (Erdogan) wish that you could forget about that one yourself.
But Erdogan has not decided to make peace with Israel. He's not going to do that. Attacking Israel is too ingrained in many within his party, and his support for a bunch of psychopaths on the Mavi M. has left him no line of retreat without completely humiliating himself and his country (more than he already has, that is). The right-wing Islamist ideologues within his AKP remain vehemently anti-Semitic.
Erdogan has stopped throwing fuel on the bonfire, but he has not put it out, and I see very little likelihood that he will do so. If the Turkish people have any sense, they will evict the AKP and its disasters from office in the next elections. But I don't see that as a very likely possibility.
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