Erdogan makes up his own “Arab spring”
Il Giornale, September 15, 2011
At this moment, Israel’s best friend seems to be Hamas: the
Palestinian terrorist group is against the unilateral declaration of a
Palestinian State to be discussed at the UN general Assembly soon. It
openly says it is a waste of time since its real aim is the destruction
of the Sate of Israel. So, for Hamas it is sincerely better to invest on
terrorists and missiles, and they affirm that. On the other side, Abu
Mazen can be defined as a hesitant enemy: the Americans are against the
unilateral declaration of the Palestinians, while the Europeans try to
avoid the rejection of the principle of negotiations. They know that a
unilateral declaration will not bring to any peace and will be instead a
tornado in the Arab world. But even in his confusion, Abu Mazen is
going on straight fro a victory at the UN.
So we have a best friend, a hesitant enemy and here it is the worst
enemy: Tayyp Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister who wants to have his
own Arab spring, in his own image, likeness and interest, with his tour
in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya. He wants to be the new patron of the new
Islamic world. The Muslim Brothers do not like the Egyptian crowd to
applaud the descendant of the Ottoman Empire who dominated the Arab
world for centuries. They prefer caliphate to sultanate. But Erdogan is
shrewd and he knows that not the historical but rather the religion of
our time is the most important sub context and it is the hatred against
Israel that in Egypt propagated in the squares, at the Arab League, in
the media… Erdogan waved this as his flag. He says that the UN
Palestinian State, declared without a negotiation, without trade-offs,
is “an obligation, not an option”. The Palestinian initiative at the UN
is therefore an invitation to unite the entire world with the goal of
“punishing Israel”. Peace is not the game. He does not even mention it.
But didn’t the Arab springs start against those dictators who used the
hatred against Israel as an alibi to subject their people while starving
them? Is this, therefore, Erdogan’s spring?