Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Turkey: Erdogan's Obsession to Take Jerusalem

By Burak Bekdil

  • Simply put, Jerusalem's Judaic history dates back to thousands of years before the birth of Islam, only in the seventh century CE.
  • As an American friend delicately asked: "Isn't Turkey supposed to be investing millions to help rebuild Gaza?"
  • Not, it seems, when Islamist ideology is involved.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan giving a speech in Ankara on April 17, 2017. (Image source: Getty Images)
Less than a year ago, Turkey and Israel agreed to end their six-year-long diplomatic stand-off and officially "normalized" their relations. They appointed ambassadors Kemal Okem to Israel and Eitan Na'eh to Turkey, two prominent career diplomats, who, since then, have been struggling actually to normalize formally normalized ties. As some observers, including your humble correspondent, cautioned in 2016:
"Erdogan had pragmatically agreed to shake hands with Israel, but his ideological hostility to the Jewish state and his ideological love affair with Hamas have not disappeared; so the Turkish-Israeli 'peace' would not be easy to sustain".

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