Turkey Thinks They Can Moderate Hamas. Big Mistake
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spoke recently on the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.
“Enough is enough. The longer the Palestinian-Israeli issue remained unresolved, the greater the price peoples of the region, including Turkey, pay. Israelis should decide on what they want." [...] Turkey had made sincere efforts together with Egypt to facilitate a national reconciliation in Palestine between Hamas and Al Fatah, Davutoğlu said, adding that the agreement between the two Palestinian groups needed to be supported.
Turkey has been engaging and sponsoring Hamas repeatedly - even while both the US and the EU recognize Hamas as a terrorist group. Nonetheless, Turkey´s ties with Hamas are getting warmer and warmer.
Hamas has stated again and again that they will never ever give up armed struggle (rocket terror against civilians) until their beloved homeland is theirs again (so they can keep killing Jews as they please). Fatah abandoned the negotiation table because they obviously see Jew-hating fanatics as a better partner than elected democrats. Weren´t the constantly quoted (anti-Israel) international agreements based on the premise of mutual recognition and negotiations? (No wait. It is all because of Israel´s right-wing policies´ stubbornness! Right.)
Can anyone make sense of it? Here is a thought:
"There has to be a new approach, a fresh initiative to resolve this problem in this new era, I hope everyone will understand the new logic of the new era and act properly, in line with a solution based on two states."
A "new era"? What is that supposed to mean?
Can Turkey be the mediator between the East and the West – a genuine face of reason and moderation, the model role model for the coexistence of Islam and democracy, as the Western media likes to portray AKP Turkey without a second thought? In reality, Turkey has shown two faces: they are both a pragmatic calculating Western NATO ally and an ideologically driven, power-gripping pariah state. Davutoglu genuinely believes in the sacredly inscribed superiority of Islam:
“All religions and civilizations before Islamic civilization had established a demigod category between god and man. In fact, civilizations except the Islamic civilization always regarded god, man, and nature on the same ontological level. I named this "ontological proximity."… Islam, on the other hand, rejects ontological proximity between god, nature and man and establishes an ontological hierarchy of Allah, man, and nature.”
Does that mean in other words, Muslims are “ontologically” better than others? Call it naivety, Davutoglu really thinks that he can moderate Hamas. Certainly, Davutoglu and Erdogan are Israel-haters but they have no interest in promoting militancy in the region because things would totally get out of their hands. The explanation is that they really can´t imagine Islamist Hamas as having inherently bad intentions and are therefore turning a blind eye to Hamas atrocities.
"It is not possible for those who belong to the Muslim faith to carry out genocide."
Remember, Erdogan on a visit to the Sudanese lunatic-on-killing-spree Omar al-Bashir.
Maybe they want a new caliphate, an Ottoman revival and a more Islamized society - but that is not the point. Erdogan and Davutoglu have an “ontological proximity” to backward-minded megalomania, that´s all. A de facto one-party rule, deterioration of democratic balances, the rule of law under siege in Turkey adds to the power in the hand of few with a totally crooked view of reality.
Niklas Anzinger is a Contributing Writer for the Propagandist
