AEIdeas
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted with outrage at reports Israel might target Hamas leaders on Turkish soil. On November 3, Israeli public broadcaster Kan aired recordings in which Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s external security agency Shin Bet said, “The cabinet set a goal for us, to take out Hamas. And we are determined to do it, this is our Munich,” a reference to Israel’s assassination campaign against the terrorists involved in the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympians.
Erdogan warned of “consequences [that] can be extremely serious.” should Israel conduct any operation on Turkish soil. In another recent speeches, the Turkish leader demanded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu face an international tribunal in The Hague for supposed war crimes. “Beyond being a war criminal, Netanyahu, who is the butcher of Gaza right now, will be tried as the butcher of Gaza, just as [Serbian nationalist Slobodan] Milosevic was tried,” Erdogan declared.
On both counts, Erdogan secures the title as the world’s greatest hypocrite.
Under Erdogan’s direction and through the efforts of former intelligence chief (and current Foreign Minister) Hakan Fidan, Turkey dispatched assassins and kidnap squads across the globe. He murdered many Kurds and sought to kill other dissidents. Turkey’s intelligence service even spied upon Kurds and Turkish dissidents in the United States. Turkish agents not only kidnapped dissidents in Kenya, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan among many other countries, but also openly bragged about their operations, distributing photographs and videos of the prisoners in handcuffs or chains, or forcing the dissidents to submit to perp walks.
After Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Erdogan has been among Hamas’ greatest cheerleaders and supporters. He has given Hamas leaders Turkish passports to ease travel, worked to undermine international pressure to force them to foreswear terrorism and recognize Israel, and even supplied weapons, explosives, and training. By any objective standard, under Erdogan Turkey has become a state sponsor of terrorism.
When Erdogan refuses to condemn Hamas’ mass rape and mutilation of Jewish women and girls, its torture of Israeli children, or its slaughter of babies, it is not only because Erdogan lionizes Hamas, but also because Turkish forces have acted similarly against Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds.
Put aside the Armenian Genocide from a century ago, or the ethnic cleansing of Cyprus that nears its 50th anniversary. Under Erdogan, Turks have killed far more Kurds than have Israelis killed Palestinians. Whereas Israel targets terrorists and gives civilians fair warning to evacuate, Turkish drones regularly target civilians, especially those who come from ethnic or religious minorities. And while Israel has no desire to govern Gaza, colonialism and racism drive Turkey’s actions against the Kurds. There is simply no other way to explain Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Afrin, for example, or Turkey’s establishment of Turkish post offices and other elements of the Turkish state into the Turkish-occupied territories.
Erdogan’s bluster may play well among rejectionist Arab states and in Iran, but the West should not be cowed. Rather, the proper response from Washington and Brussels would be to tell Erdogan that he has now acknowledged the criminality of his own policies. If anyone spends his final years in The Hague, it should be Erdogan himself.