Erdoğan between politics and diplomacy

The stance Prime Minister Erdoğan displayed at the Gaza panel in Davos showed in a striking way how close to a person, right within reach, lies the key to overcoming, demolishing and toppling certain dungeons built by human hands, walls thought to be unbreakable, and idols thought to be impossible to topple.

Yet in Davos that night everything could have unfolded very differently. Just as the messieurs put it... That is, it could have gone on just as it had come... Against Peres's outbursts, both guilty and insolent, a Turkish prime minister, for the sake of a "country's interest" the size of a grain, which he had built up into a dome in his eye, could have backed down, on the calculation "let friends see it in the marketplace", and, if absolutely necessary, contented himself with one or two feeble criticisms... In that case perhaps everyone would have recorded the Davos incident among the routine activities of Turkish diplomacy and moved on. Routine activities... That is, characterless, spineless foreign relations that in no way strain the established protocol codes with Israel, or with countries that Turkey has coded as "superior" to itself, whatever happens.

From the minutes the incident hit the entire world media, the only thing the monsieur commentators, who rushed straight to duty, kept in view was these protocol codes. Looking at the fears and anxieties they describe as analysis, you can get a real impression of where Israel actually draws its strength. These fears sufficiently explain how Israel, which recognizes no moral or legal limit, can be so powerful while being so guilty and so in the wrong.

Do those who ignore the insult their own prime minister suffered and set about calculating the cost of his response realize that they themselves have become the very power Israel needs?

Do those who point to the emotional side of defying Israel claim that their own reservations are rational in a way that has nothing to do with emotionality? Do these reservations have nothing at all to do with emotionalities such as cowardice, superstitious anxiety, material greed, inferiority complexes, and lack of self-confidence?

Israel is a propaganda machine. Let us admit that with a propaganda apparatus spread across the whole world, it can prevent even its most unjust position from being criticized in ostensibly ethical media outlets. A media organization like the BBC, let alone criticizing Israel, can refuse, despite all the criticism, to broadcast even the clip of an aid campaign for the victims of Israel's massacre, a clip that carefully avoids even a single accusation against Israel. It bows, perhaps willingly, perhaps unwillingly, to an Israel-linked scheme of threat and blackmail. These schemes exemplify the working methods of the Israeli propaganda machine. Thanks to this, Israel's attacks, which strike, hurt and wound the whole Islamic world to the core, can still insolently find themselves advocates in the world media in spite of everything. The advocates of baby massacres can shamelessly make their appearance.

In such a mechanism, the Prime Minister turns one of the most important propaganda forums that Israel can use to its advantage into the vehicle of the opposite message, with a move that is seemingly very simple but at heart full of courage. This was the most effective language that Israel, which heeds neither UN resolutions nor protest demonstrations against it nor the feeble condemnations or warnings of some countries, could understand. Since the beginning of the Gaza attack, the Israeli media had not received criticism this intense and this impactful. The force of the criticism undoubtedly comes from the prime minister's sincere and manly style, but also from the fact that this setting, which is not always granted, happened to coincide.

The answer Erdoğan himself gave to those who did not find what he did diplomatic was that he came from politics, not from diplomacy. And politics is the art of expressing one's rightness most clearly and securing one's right, once one dares to. This can indeed be an option that has become difficult enough to require daring, just as is Turkey's chronic situation vis-à-vis Israel.

In this respect the Prime Minister's political style will not only constitute a turning point for Turkish-Israeli relations, but will also exemplify the new and original concept in Turkish foreign policy, and will be regarded as a striking model to be taught in courses in terms of political science or the form of political action.

Especially when the US, the West and Israel are concerned, to become aware of one's own power and importance and to use this as a trump card on the political ground was a form of politics hitherto foreign to Turkey. When Turkey becomes aware of this power, when it realizes that it does not need these countries but that, on the contrary, these countries need it, it has reached the line of its real national liberation.

To imagine that every time Turkey goes into seclusion with these countries it will inevitably have to follow in their wake can no longer depict the limits of Turkey's political power. Turkey has its own politics, and in order to convey it may, when necessary, have to be a little hurtful.