Last week, during a visit to Vienna, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initiated an international controversy by condemning “Zionism,” albeit in passing. "As is the case for Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism,” he said, “it is inevitable that Islamophobia be considered a crime against humanity.”See? Erdogan didn't mean he was against Israel at all - he was just invoking a keyword that every Turk would understand as an anti-semitic conspiracy theory!
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But why did Erdoğan create such a fuss? And what did he really mean?
As a longtime observer of the Turkish prime minister, here is my humble advice for anyone who would like to find an answer to such questions: Erdoğan is a very Turkish politician. He, in other words, thinks and speaks in very local terms, not international ones. Therefore when he speaks of “Zionism,” what he has in mind is what most Turks have in mind, rather than what Ban Ki-moon, Netanyahu and Kerry have in theirs.
And there is a big gap between these two. Zionism, by international definitions, is a form of Jewish nationalism that is focused on founding and securing a Jewish state in what Jewish sources call “the Land of Israel.” ....
In Turkey, however, the term “Zionism” is almost always taken as synonymous with its most radical version, and is perceived as the plan to permanently occupy the whole “the Land of Israel,” while suppressing or destroying the native Arab population. In this sense, Zionism only implies humiliation, death and destruction of the Palestinians, a people for whom the overwhelming majority of the Turks have genuine sympathy.
Moreover, in the common Turkish mind, the term Zionism even evokes extravagant conspiracy theories against Turkey itself. For years, popular writers have claimed that Israel’s ultimate “Promised Land” is much bigger than Palestine, consisting much of the central Middle East, including Turkey’s restless southeast region...
It is notable that the very second result of a Google search for “Siyonizm” (the Turkish version of the word) presents such a Super-Greater-Israel theory, with references to the infamous hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The same article also includes a map showing a large part of Turkey to be the target of “Zionism.”
How dare the US and UN complain about something so innocuous!