(Ha'aretz) Ely Karmon - If it was thought that an official Israeli apology to Turkey over the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, accompanied by the payment of damages to the victims, would end the hostilities between the two countries, we now have clear proof that this is simply impossible under the current Turkish administration of Prime Minister Erdogan. Erdogan this week described the bombing of a convoy of advanced ground-to-air missiles from Syria to Hizbullah in Lebanon as "another reflection of Israeli state terror." Turkey is acting to strengthen the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in the hope of having a firm foothold in the future Syria. Erdogan sees himself as a kind of neo-Ottoman sultan as he seeks to become the leader of the Sunni Muslim bloc in its struggle with the Shia bloc led by Iran. The writer is the Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya.
2013-02-07 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive