Some people may wonder why I blog about Turkey. Simple. It's Islamist drift spells major effects on Europe and Israel and the Middle East. Daniel Pipes, an astute observer of issues Islamic and of the Middle East writes:
“There is no doubt he is our friend,” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, says of Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These outrageous assertions point to the profound change of orientation by Turkey’s government, for six decades the West’s closest Muslim ally, since Erdoğan’s AK party came to power in 2002.
Three events this past month reveal the extent of that change. The first came on October 11 with the news that the Turkish military – a long-time bastion of secularism and advocate of cooperation
with Israel
– abruptly asked Israeli forces not to participate in the annual “Anatolian Eagle” air force exercise. . .
As for the Israelis, this “sudden and unexpected” shift shook to the core their military alignment with Turkey, in place since 1996. Former air force chief Eytan Ben-Eliyahu, for example, called the cancelation “a seriously worrying development.” Jerusalem immediately responded by reviewing Israel’s practice of supplying Turkey with advanced weapons, such as the recent $140 million sale to the Turkish Air Force of targeting pods. The idea also arose to stop helping the Turks defeat the Armenian genocide resolutions that regularly appear before the U.S. Congress.
Barry Rubin
of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya not only argues that “The
Israel-Turkey alliance is over” but concludes that Turkey’s armed
forces no longer guard the secular republic and can no longer intervene
when the government becomes too Islamist. . .