Sorry for the bad pun. But it's 1:30 a.m. Monday morning.
Turkish political culture is now in tatters. Or, rather, its sensible political culture is in tatters. But the sensible Kemalists were no longer so sensible. They were corrupt, they were very authoritarian, they exported what some of them explicitly called their "surplus population" to Europe. These were mostly Kurds with Turkish passports. Now, some of them are called "Germans." But the reality is that many of them are internal Kurdish exiles. This is not a stable situation.
The Ankara government now affects an Islamist disposition towards the West and the rest of the world. This means it has to lie about terror, about the organic relationship between the regime and the Turkish brigands on the Mediterranean and about the sudden discovery of Palestinian aspirations about which hitherto it didn't care a fig.
The Israelis were also taken in by Erdogan's flimflam about Turkey's alliance with Israel. It is over.
Obama may still think that he has Turkey in the Western camp. If, that is, he cares abut something called the Western camp. Which he probably doesn't, as you can see from his address in the Turkish capital last year.
Does the president think that the U.S. can somehow convince Turkey to absent itself from the religious wars when Iran gets its nukes? Or that Lebanon and Syria will also be open to America and the West once the struggle for Tehran's atomic arsenal is won?
If you believe that you are as silly as...well, let's leave it there.
Turkish Columnist Ridicules Turkish PM Erdogan's Claim That There Is No Islamic Terror, Says 'There Is No Connection Between [Gaza Flotilla] Activists And [Turkish] Government – And Yes, I Am a Ballerina,' Asks 'Why Do The Turks Have the Palestine Fetish Even Though Most Of Them Can't Point the Palestinian Territories Out on a Map
In his June 17, 2010 column in the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News, titled "With Love from Hamas," Burak Bekdil writes that when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that "those who support terror are collaborators of terrorists'... of course, he was referring to the PKK," and goes on to ridicule Erdogan's claim that "there is no Islamic terror." In his June 8 column, titled "Enjoy 'The Bridge!'" he skewers the claim by the "Islamist propaganda machine" that under the AKP, Turkey is developing into a "spectacular bridge between the West and East," saying that it is a "Muslim bridge between the East and the East" and noting "Of course, there is no connection between the [Gaza flotilla] 'activists' and the [Turkish] government – And yes, I am a ballerina."' In his June 3 column, titled "Why is Palestine 'A Second Cyprus' for Turks?" he mocks Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whom he terms "Mr. Strategic Depth," for calling the May 31 Gaza flotilla events "Turkey's 9/11," asks "Why do the Turks have the 'Palestine fetish' even though most of them can't point the Palestinian territories out on a map?" and states that "the Muslim-Turkish thinking... is programmed to turn the world upside down when Jews kill Muslims."
MEMRI has the full three columns, in the original English.