|
Trending Topics
|
Israeli Professor: Turkish-Israeli Relations Hurt by Erdogan's Hate Speech, Not Mavi Marmara
(Zaman-Turkey) Arif Tekdal - When Turkish President Erdogan was the head of the youth commission of the Beyoglu branch of the National Salvation Party (MSP) in the 1970s, he wrote a play titled "Maskoya," an acronym of "Mason" (Freemason), "Komunist" (Communist) and "Yahudi" (Jew), Israeli Professor Raphael Israeli of Hebrew University reminded a conference in Ankara on Monday. Israeli said that Erdogan wanted to show, "as Hitler did in Mein Kampf, that communists and Jews were the two great evils in the world." "That play was shown to the public and Erdogan participated in it. I cannot believe someone who writes something...so horrible about Jews can suddenly, after he becomes prime minister and then president, forget all that and decide that his policy [regarding Israel] takes into consideration strategic or logical reasoning." "Hatred by necessity creates lies, because when you have hatred you have to justify it; to yourself, to your people and to the world. Why do you hate so deeply? And when you don't have facts to sustain your stories, then you create them and those are the lies I am talking about." "That is the reason why I believe that rather than the stories about the Mavi Marmara that you hear about the deterioration [in relations between Israel] and Turkey, I think that [the Mavi Marmara incident] was an outcome, not the reason, and not even the trigger of it." Replying to a question about why Turkish-Israeli relations were better in the first half of the 13-year rule of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Israeli said, "In 2002, after Erdogan came to power...the army was still strong. In the next period, he reinforced his position. He Islamized Turkish society. He put his people in charge of the army and then only when he knew he was strong enough - that the army could not interfere, that it could not reverse his steps - he moved very directly and very openly against Israel and the Jews."