Rhetoric over flotilla has gone overboard

Listening to Prime Minister Erdogan’s amped-up rhetoric against the United States and Israel makes me genuinely scared for my country. I believe that people should be able to think for themselves, and to assess a situation based on the facts, not based on someone trying to make them afraid or blame some outside “bogeyman” for what’s going wrong with their lives or their country. It’s time to see those tactics for what they are: popular demagogy is a manipulative act that requires close scrutiny as people are looking toward the future to what they could become.

Look, for example, at how Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan reacted to the recent attack by the separatist Kurdish terrorist organization, PKK, near the Iraqi border, which killed nine soldiers. That attack coincided with Israel’s disastrous military operation on a Turkish flagged ship bound for Gaza with a clear anti-Israel stand and a dubious humanitarian purpose. “My beloved people know well whose subcontractor PKK is,” Erdogan said in the immediate aftermath of this heinous attack implying that Israel was behind it—an accusation that Maj. Gen. Fahri Kır, the head of the Turkish military’s internal security operations, debunked as untrue.

It is not only about Israel. Turks are suspicious of the United States, too—skeptical about the U.S. upholding their 2007 pledge to share “actionable intelligence.” Many have claimed that if the U.S. shared the intelligence in a timely way, the Turkish military would have stopped the PKK terrorists either on the Iraqi side or the border or when they crossed into Turkey. “We want to know all they have,” said Cemil Cicek, the Turkish government’s spokesman, when asked whether the U.S. was sharing intelligence—denying to clear the doubt on the cooperation. While Turkey is gathering intelligence against the PKK with the help of the U.S. and Israel, Ilker Basbug, Turkey’s Chief of General Staff, offered a very clear message this week. “The border region between Turkey and Iraq is one of the most difficult geographies in the world,” he said prior to Cicek’s comment. “I do not agree with those statements that there was a lack of intelligence before the attack in Hakkari.”

Clearly, many Turks are comfortable blaming the U.S. and Israel for every negative thing that happens to them. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates added fuel to the fire by offering a reminder that Turkey has long been disappointed at not being able to become a full member of the European Union. “I personally think that if there is anything to the notion that Turkey is, if you will, moving eastward, it is, in my view, in no small part because it was pushed—and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought,” he said.

Turks—and everyone else, it seems—are divided over the notion that their country is turning away from the West toward East. Both sides of the argument claim they know better and that their vision for Turkey is much clearer on the “big picture.” The debates go on and on, and while they argue, these “big thinkers” are running a very big risk of getting today right.

That is to say, I disagree with Gates. Turks are surely puzzled about the EU’s intentions. But what is the point of tirelessly arguing as to whether the country has shifted sides? The issue to me is that the country is recklessly selling out its friends for popular demagogy. In recent times, Turkey has accomplished to offend almost all of its special friends. And without those long time hardly won friends, Turkey may walk to its isolation and get lonely when faced with hardships.