Kurdish commentators went ballistic over Turkey's behaviour towards Israel:
Mr. Erdogan cunningly and with malice endeavored to portray himself and his country as guardians for the Palestinian liberation cause and as holy angels whom heaven has sent to work on lifting the sea blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza strip.
In his hysterical anti-Israel rampage he did not only viciously attack Israel and defend the Palestinians, but he also boldly and stupidly humiliated and insulted the Arabs when he said in one of his fiery bragging statements: “Israel must know that Turkey is not like other countries, and definitely not a tribe”. What he was saying loudly and clearly is that he is not an Arab, but Turkish and Turkey is not like the Arab countries”.
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The whole world by now knows for a fact that the so called “Freedom Fleet” was a mere jihadist mission and not a mission of peace. It was fully orchestrated jointly by Turkey and Iran in a bid to serve their anti-Arab and anti-Israel plots and plans. Both countries couldn’t care less about the Palestinians and about their cause, but they are deviously abusing them as a mere vehicle of deception and camouflage.
Unfortunately, the Arabs love day dreaming and imaginary heroism. Without a doubt, the Flotilla confrontation played on the Arabs’ wishful thinking and blurred their vision to see the actual hidden Turkish and Iranian agenda of hostility and expansionism.
http://medyanews.com/english/?p=2417
(The author of the above is Lebanese.)
In recent years the Turkish state’s relations with Israel have seen a gradual decline since the ascendency to power of the Islamist rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP Turkish acronym) in 2004. Alongside this deterioration of relations has arisen a bias in Turkey, both from the state and the media, in their approach to dealing with two militant groups that most countries recognize as terrorist organizations.
Hamas on the one hand, opposed to the existence of Israel, has fought a bloody war with that country since the 1990s, whilst the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been fighting Turkey since 1984, initially demanding a separate state for Turkey’s Kurds, but later changing their demands, calling instead for cultural and political rights for Kurds.
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Taking Erdogan’s logic on why Hamas should be recognized on the grounds of winning the 2006 elections, it is possible to see a double standard in his argument. During the 2009 Turkish local elections the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) put on a strong showing, gaining large support in the predominantly Kurdish areas of the country, only narrowly coming second to the AKP. Yet Erdogan and the AKP run government banned that party for being a “focal point of terrorism”, imprisoning dozens of its members and banning from politics for 5 years its top brass.
Erdogan had arrogantly hoped to win over most of the Kurdish areas after introducing cosmetic reforms, vowing that he would “take that castle” in reference to the largest Kurdish dominated city of Diyarbakir. AKP even went as far as to hand out free electronic appliances to Kurds to gain their votes. But once the DTP showed its strength, the state resorted to banning them. Incidentally the Kurds kept the castle with over 66% of the vote.
The DTP quickly reorganized under a new name, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and again the Turkish state, and in some cases, ordinary Turks, have been hard at work harassing, intimidating and imprisoning its members, as well as trying to outlaw the BDP.
What is interesting to note in this parallel is how Israel did not intervene to prevent Hamas taking part in the 2006 PA elections, leaving the Palestinians instead to choose their own representatives. However, Israel had set conditions for holding peace talks with the Palestinians. One of them being, understandably, that Hamas cease aggression towards Israel as well as recognize Israel’s right to exist; something that Hamas has yet to agree to. Meanwhile, Turkey has, to date, refused to accept the PKK as a key player in solving the Kurdish question and has moved to ban any pro-Kurdish political party that shows any sign of factoring the PKK into a Kurdish solution.
http://kurdistancommentary.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/turkey%E2%80%99s-terrorist-bias-part-1/
(Follow link for cartoon.)