Tweet
GAZA'S WAVES WILL CRASH ON TURKEY'S SHORE
David Aaronovitch
Times Online
June 3, 2010
UK
If the flotilla incident turns Turks against Israel and towards the
east, it should fill us with fear for the future
Somewhere, in some coastal briefing room, some Israeli officer must
have told his colleagues of his plan for having commandos slide
slowly, one at a time, on to the deck of a ship partially peopled
- as Israeli sources had already warned - by fanatics who welcomed
victory or martyrdom without discrimination. And somehow - intellects
suspended - they must have agreed to what the novelist David Grossman,
writing in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, described as the "insane
operation" that left ten flotillistas dead.
If only (and it would be bad enough) the harm done was limited to the
families of the killed and the bodies of the injured. And if only
the question didn't matter so much, so disproportionately, to take
a vogue word, to so many people. Gaza and Israel are small places,
the annual casualties in their various incursions, rocketing and
bombings would fill a Darfuri week. I have yet to see a figure given
to the Pakistan-Taleban war, but I would think it dwarfs the victims
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And yet people care more about what happens here, per square inch,
than anywhere else outside their own lands or seas. When North Korea
decided to send a torpedo into a South Korean corvette, the governments
were grave but the campaigners were silent. When the Mavi Marmara was
"stormed" by Israeli troops three nights ago, the carescape lit up
with a zillion outraged tweets.
Me, I felt fear. The Marmara, which hosted the clubbings and then
the shootings, was a Turkish boat, and it followed that many of the
dead would probably be Turks. If so, the reaction in Turkey to this
one incident could help to determine all our futures.
For many years, to say that Turkey was an ally of the West was not to
claim any great pleasure in the association. Turkey was intermittently
run by military juntas, and even civilian governments lived under
the perpetual threat of a coup.
With a name like mine the assumption is often made that I must be an
Israelophile. In fact I am much more of a Turkey-lover. I can see
well the mistakes and crimes committed by Turkish governments over
the years, and yet I love the country and have watched with pleasure
its evolution from a Republic of Fear to a disputatious democracy
that really does, in a way no other country can, span the chasm
between worlds. Again, I have no liking for religion in politics,
but the Justice and Development Party of the Prime Minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, has been pragmatic and moderate, though Islamist,
since first elected eight years ago.
But there are problems, as the world discovered at Davos last year. On
stage with the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, shortly after the
rocket war in Gaza that left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead,
Mr Erdogan became very angry, accused Mr Peres of lying and stormed
off the stage. Not long afterwards there was a troubling sequence
of events sparked by the transmission of Turkish TV programmes in
which Israelis were shown committing a variety of crimes, including
kidnapping Turkish babies.
Such fare is commonplace in Syria and on Hezbollah TV in Lebanon,
but seemed ominous screened in Izmir and Kayseri.
In an extraordinary piece of diplomatic cack-handedness the Israeli
Foreign Minister invited the Turkish Ambassador in to complain about
the shows, pointing out to the Israeli media that he had placed the
envoy in a lower seat and banished the Turkish flag. The Turkish
media were outraged at the snub and Mr Peres had to apologise. "We
must learn not to do this again," he said.
Of course, the relatively new-found interest of Muslim Turkey in the
humanitarian condition of the Palestinians has its ironies, as Kurds,
Armenians and Cypriots could all confirm. But throwing that back
in Ankara's face, as though engaging in a debate that can be won on
points, would be utterly counter-productive. Far-sighted politicians
in the West have long understood the need to have Turkey take its
place at the European table, before it sought an alternative and -
to us - less palatable way of expressing its identity.
For the past 20 years the strategy for cementing Turkey into a real
alliance of interests and values was to hold out the prospect of EU
membership. And at first the question was how to find a way to get
rid of the various obstacles to Turkish accession. But gradually,
especially in Paris and Berlin, as enlargement lost popularity, the
issue became how the obstacles could be used to deny Turkey full entry.
Nicolas Sarkozy famously said that Turkey could not be in Europe
because it was "in Asia Minor" (though, mon cher, Guadeloupe remains
a departement of France). Britain, Spain and Italy took the contrary
view. Only last November David Miliband, then Foreign Secretary,
reiterated our strategic desire for Turkey to join the EU.
The Turks have noticed the snubs and Turkey has tired of waiting. More
recently there has been talk of "neo-Ottomanism" - of Turkey creating
an orientation towards the Orient. This might suggest rapprochement
with countries such as Syria and Iran and a weakening of alliances
with the West, whereas we have wanted to see a democratic Turkey,
leading by example in the region to its east and southeast.
This is high politics, but in democracies high and low meet.
Democratic Turkey is a young nation and still a touchy one. Even
acknowledging that there was a genocide of Armenians in Turkey in
1915-16 has been enough, until recently, to earn the acknowledger a
spell in the Turkish slammer, or a bullet from an ultra-nationalist
"militant". In such a country a mass movement centred on hostility
to Israel could do immense damage. With Gaza such a movement has
its potential unifier and, in the events of the Mavi Marmara, it has
gained its first Turkish martyrs.
In this, yet again, the issue of Gaza shows its capacity to cause
polarisation and violence well beyond the land itself. The wealthy
Turkish backers of the first boats are now putting together the money
for another flotilla. And what will our clever Israeli commander
do then?
The risking of the relationship with Turkey symbolises the
impossibility of current Israeli policy towards the strip. This
blockade must be lifted and some way of having a dialogue with those
who run Gaza must somehow be established. Time to brandish the carrot
and to hide the stick. The stick is broken in any case.
From: A. Papazian
David Aaronovitch
Times Online
June 3, 2010
UK
If the flotilla incident turns Turks against Israel and towards the
east, it should fill us with fear for the future
Somewhere, in some coastal briefing room, some Israeli officer must
have told his colleagues of his plan for having commandos slide
slowly, one at a time, on to the deck of a ship partially peopled
- as Israeli sources had already warned - by fanatics who welcomed
victory or martyrdom without discrimination. And somehow - intellects
suspended - they must have agreed to what the novelist David Grossman,
writing in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, described as the "insane
operation" that left ten flotillistas dead.
If only (and it would be bad enough) the harm done was limited to the
families of the killed and the bodies of the injured. And if only
the question didn't matter so much, so disproportionately, to take
a vogue word, to so many people. Gaza and Israel are small places,
the annual casualties in their various incursions, rocketing and
bombings would fill a Darfuri week. I have yet to see a figure given
to the Pakistan-Taleban war, but I would think it dwarfs the victims
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And yet people care more about what happens here, per square inch,
than anywhere else outside their own lands or seas. When North Korea
decided to send a torpedo into a South Korean corvette, the governments
were grave but the campaigners were silent. When the Mavi Marmara was
"stormed" by Israeli troops three nights ago, the carescape lit up
with a zillion outraged tweets.
Me, I felt fear. The Marmara, which hosted the clubbings and then
the shootings, was a Turkish boat, and it followed that many of the
dead would probably be Turks. If so, the reaction in Turkey to this
one incident could help to determine all our futures.
For many years, to say that Turkey was an ally of the West was not to
claim any great pleasure in the association. Turkey was intermittently
run by military juntas, and even civilian governments lived under
the perpetual threat of a coup.
With a name like mine the assumption is often made that I must be an
Israelophile. In fact I am much more of a Turkey-lover. I can see
well the mistakes and crimes committed by Turkish governments over
the years, and yet I love the country and have watched with pleasure
its evolution from a Republic of Fear to a disputatious democracy
that really does, in a way no other country can, span the chasm
between worlds. Again, I have no liking for religion in politics,
but the Justice and Development Party of the Prime Minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, has been pragmatic and moderate, though Islamist,
since first elected eight years ago.
But there are problems, as the world discovered at Davos last year. On
stage with the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, shortly after the
rocket war in Gaza that left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead,
Mr Erdogan became very angry, accused Mr Peres of lying and stormed
off the stage. Not long afterwards there was a troubling sequence
of events sparked by the transmission of Turkish TV programmes in
which Israelis were shown committing a variety of crimes, including
kidnapping Turkish babies.
Such fare is commonplace in Syria and on Hezbollah TV in Lebanon,
but seemed ominous screened in Izmir and Kayseri.
In an extraordinary piece of diplomatic cack-handedness the Israeli
Foreign Minister invited the Turkish Ambassador in to complain about
the shows, pointing out to the Israeli media that he had placed the
envoy in a lower seat and banished the Turkish flag. The Turkish
media were outraged at the snub and Mr Peres had to apologise. "We
must learn not to do this again," he said.
Of course, the relatively new-found interest of Muslim Turkey in the
humanitarian condition of the Palestinians has its ironies, as Kurds,
Armenians and Cypriots could all confirm. But throwing that back
in Ankara's face, as though engaging in a debate that can be won on
points, would be utterly counter-productive. Far-sighted politicians
in the West have long understood the need to have Turkey take its
place at the European table, before it sought an alternative and -
to us - less palatable way of expressing its identity.
For the past 20 years the strategy for cementing Turkey into a real
alliance of interests and values was to hold out the prospect of EU
membership. And at first the question was how to find a way to get
rid of the various obstacles to Turkish accession. But gradually,
especially in Paris and Berlin, as enlargement lost popularity, the
issue became how the obstacles could be used to deny Turkey full entry.
Nicolas Sarkozy famously said that Turkey could not be in Europe
because it was "in Asia Minor" (though, mon cher, Guadeloupe remains
a departement of France). Britain, Spain and Italy took the contrary
view. Only last November David Miliband, then Foreign Secretary,
reiterated our strategic desire for Turkey to join the EU.
The Turks have noticed the snubs and Turkey has tired of waiting. More
recently there has been talk of "neo-Ottomanism" - of Turkey creating
an orientation towards the Orient. This might suggest rapprochement
with countries such as Syria and Iran and a weakening of alliances
with the West, whereas we have wanted to see a democratic Turkey,
leading by example in the region to its east and southeast.
This is high politics, but in democracies high and low meet.
Democratic Turkey is a young nation and still a touchy one. Even
acknowledging that there was a genocide of Armenians in Turkey in
1915-16 has been enough, until recently, to earn the acknowledger a
spell in the Turkish slammer, or a bullet from an ultra-nationalist
"militant". In such a country a mass movement centred on hostility
to Israel could do immense damage. With Gaza such a movement has
its potential unifier and, in the events of the Mavi Marmara, it has
gained its first Turkish martyrs.
In this, yet again, the issue of Gaza shows its capacity to cause
polarisation and violence well beyond the land itself. The wealthy
Turkish backers of the first boats are now putting together the money
for another flotilla. And what will our clever Israeli commander
do then?
The risking of the relationship with Turkey symbolises the
impossibility of current Israeli policy towards the strip. This
blockade must be lifted and some way of having a dialogue with those
who run Gaza must somehow be established. Time to brandish the carrot
and to hide the stick. The stick is broken in any case.
From: A. Papazian