TURKISH FOREIGN POLICYMAKER: IRAN POSES THREAT TO TURKEY
By Zvi Bar’el

Ha’aretz
Dec 10 2008
Israel

"I don’t think that a military option against Iran will work," visiting
Turkish politician, Murat Mercan, told Haaretz on Sunday. "Sanctions
against Iran will be effective if they are applied efficiently. But
the truth is, I don’t know whether it is realistic to expect full
sanctions when countries are still prepared to veto these sanctions."

Mercan is visiting Israel, not for the first time, as a guest
of the Shalem Center’s Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies,
headed by former minister, Natan Sharansky. Mercan, a member of the
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), is one of Turkey’s most
influential foreign policymakers. He chairs the Turkish Parliament’s
Foreign Affairs Committee, is a close adviser of Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and served in the past as AKP deputy chairman.

He said on Sunday that Turkey believes the entire region should be
free of nuclear weapons.

"Israel too?" he was asked.

"I wish Israel would not feel threatened; then it, too, could disarm
from nuclear weapons," was his circuitous answer, which allowed him to
refrain from commenting directly on whether Israel should disarm. He
immediately added that Israel was not the only country that felt
threatened by Iran’s nuclear plans. "Iran is first and foremost a
threat to us," he said. But the feeling of being vulnerable did not
prevent Turkey from recently signing a memorandum of understanding
with Iran to develop gas fields in southern Iran, not to mention that
it still maintains its extensive commercial ties to Tehran.

"We are not diverging from the policy of sanctions," Mercan explained,
"because a memorandum of understanding does not mean that anything has
actually been done. In general, Turkey will not deviate from any policy
that is accepted by the United Nations Security Council with regard to
Iran." After a short pause, he added: "You can’t expect Turkey to do
more than other countries with regard to cooperation with Iran." These
remarks were directed primarily at Germany and Switzerland, which have
signed major trade agreements with Iran. Two weeks ago, Turkey offered
to serve as a mediator between Iran and the new U.S. administration;
the Iranian response to the proposal was favorable. "But now we are
awaiting Obama’s entry to the White House," he said. "Before that,
I don’t think there is anything that can, or should, be done."

Turkish President Abdullah Gul is due in Israel in January for a
three-day state visit. Several joint policies regarding Iran and Syria
are expected to be proposed, despite the fact that it is not clear who
the Israeli decision makers will be after the elections. With regard
to Syria, Mercan believes that until Obama takes over and until the
results of the Israeli elections become clear, any indirect talks with
Syria, that were promoted by Turkey, should not be expected. "The
next stage is direct dialogue between the sides and that is what we
are working on," he said. "But a dialogue of this kind will have to
wait until after the elections."

"Dialogue" is the key word defining the fronts in which Turkey is
involved – whether Iran, Syria or Hamas. Turkey received Hamas with
open arms, but was harshly criticized for its actions; as such,
Mercan now employs diplomatic caution regarding the group.

"Yes, any attack on civilians is terror," he said with regard to the
attacks from the Gaza Strip on Sderot. "I visited Sderot, and I saw
how its residents were being attacked, but I also know the tragedy
and sorrow in Gaza well. I advise Hamas to stop attacking civilians
and propose that Israel stop imposing sanctions on Gaza. After all,
how is it possible to imagine the two nations living side by side if
each causes the other to suffer tragedies?"

A few weeks ago, Hamas considered turning to Turkey to mediate with
Israel over abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier, Gilad Shalit,
the release of Palestinian prisoners and the opening of the border
crossings, but it seems that Turkey has decided to leave this work
in the hands of the Egyptians.

Nevertheless, there is one subject about which Mercan is prepared
to speak directly and without diplomatic lingo. "It is forbidden to
endanger the ties with Turkey on a subject that should not be discussed
by the parliaments but by the historians," he said. He is referring
to the definition of the deaths of the Armenians in 1915 as a genocide.

Custom or law?

Mercan was personally in touch at the time with Knesset members to
persuade them to abandon the issue. Now he is waiting to see what
President Barack Obama’s position will be; Obama promised to recognize
the event as genocide of the Armenians.

The veil worn by observant Muslim women is once again stirring anger
in Egypt over its religious function. Is it a duty or an option? The
radical organizations offer all the suitable quotations from the Koran
and the important adjudicators to "prove" that Mohammed literally meant
for every woman to hide her face and hands, and not to make do merely
with a head covering. They believe that the eyes are the gate to the
woman’s soul and therefore need to be hidden. On the other hand, the
sages belonging to the centrist stream of Islam believe that the veil
does not appear in any of the precepts of Islam and that, at most,
this is a custom which must be permitted. But of course, as usual,
this is not a purely religious-legal argument aimed at fixing the way
in which Muslim must women appear in public. The argument is political.

At a time when the Egyptian government is investing vast efforts to
uproot religious fanaticism and is not merely making do with the
arrests of members of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, but is
banning women with veils from appearing as announcers on TV programs
and postponing the appointment of women as religious instructors
because they wear veils, the following initiative is merely the next
obvious step on the way to the religious de-legitimization of the veil.

With this, I refer to a new book being published by Egypt’s Wakf
Ministry, written by cabinet minister, Mohammed Hamdi, who is a
religious sage and religious law analyst. In the book, he "proves"
through signs and omens that wearing a veil is not a religious edict
but rather a custom, and as such it enjoys a lower status; with
this, it will soon be possible to call for the custom to be uprooted
altogether. The co-authors of the book, which will be distributed
to all the imams in Egypt’s 140,000 mosques, include the head of the
Al-Azhar Mosque, the most important religious institution in Egypt,
and the mufti of Egypt. Hamdi explained that the veil is not merely
the result of a radical religious point of view, it even creates it.