The deep freeze in Israel’s diplomatic relations with Turkey, once its closest ally in the region, likely will continue for the next few years.

That was the essence of the message from Turkey’s new prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, the country’s former foreign minister, who follows President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his position – both diplomatically and politically. Erdogan was prime minister before being elected last month as president.

The prime minister told Turkey’s parliament on Monday that in the Middle East, he saw no hope of “normalizing” ties with Israel unless it stopped attacks on Gaza and ended its blockade, Reuters reported. Both are defensive measures designed to fend off terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

None of the English-language Turkish newspapers carried Davutoglu’s remarks in their entirety. The new prime minister is expected to continue Erdogan’s policies. He named a new cabinet last Friday but retained key members of the existing economic management team.

Turkey’s ruling AKP party — and Erdogan in particular — has long been deeply supportive of Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization, and a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood organization that spawned the terrorist group.

On May 31, 2010, Erdogan recalled Turkey’s ambassador to Israel after nine terror activists were killed when they attacked Israel Navy commandoes who boarded a flotilla ship allegedly bearing aid to Gaza. A subsequent search of the vessel found there were no humanitarian aid supplies at all in the hold.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Chile, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan said the incident represented a complete violation of international law. “This action, totally contrary to the principles of international law, is inhumane state terrorism,” he claimed at the time. He cut short an official visit to Latin America to ‘deal with the crisis.’

Erdogan has since used the incident to ramp up his anti-Semitic rhetoric and has sabotaged every effort by numerous Israeli and Turkish officials to resolve the “crisis.”

Hamas political bureau terrorist chief Khaled Mashaal spoke on Monday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu about Israel’s air strikes on Gaza’s rocket launchers.

The two men exchanged greetings for a blessed Ramadan — the Islamic holiday in which Muslims fast each day for an entire month — and then Mashaal asked Davutoglu to find a way to block Israel from attacking Gaza terrorists.

The request came on the same morning that Gaza terrorists had launched a barrage of 15 rockets at southern Israel.

Two homes were damaged and at least two local residents were treated for shock on site. Others suffered from anxiety and trauma after a 24-hour period of having to run for their shelters and safe rooms on an average of every 90 minutes due to constant rocket attacks.

All this, barely 48 hours after the Israeli city of Sderot had gone up in flames from a missile attack that struck a paint factory. The chemicals in the factory had exploded upon impact from a Qassam rocket fired by Gaza terrorists. Four residents were wounded and the factory was burned to the ground.

Israel has retaliated with surgical air strikes. Over the weekend a dozen terrorist targets were hit, including two Al Qaeda-linked members of the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (ISIL). Both terrorists were killed.

In Sunday’s vote across Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasingly Islamist and imperialistic “Justice and Development” AK party appeared to receive an overwhelming majority of the votes cast.

The elections were for heads of localities, but the party makeup of those running is seen as a referendum on the future of Turkey.

This is the first national election since the anti-regime riots last year, during which thousands of people were injured and nearly a dozen died. The vote also took place in the immediate aftermath of the government banning both Twitter and YouTube, and threats to also ban Facebook.

The two challenging parties, the center-left Kemalist Republican Party (CHP) and the right wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), were out in force across Turkey. Turkish television news, NTV, reported with 46 percent of the votes tallied, Erdogan’s Islamist AKP had won 44.9 percent of the vote, with CHP receiving 26.53 percent of the votes and MHP 15.53 percent.

Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s two largest cities, both voted for Erdoğan’s AKP, while a majority of those living in Turkey’s third largest city, Izmir, voted for the CHP.

“The Turkish People voted for Islamism, the Turkish People voted for sharia. This was nothing but a referendum for the regime. The Islamist policies will grow more than ever,” was the message received by The Jewish Press from a Turk who fled his home country to seek refuge in Europe from Turkey’s increasingly paranoid and regressive regime.

“There was no voter fraud, there was no corruption, there were CHP and MHP inspectors at all the ballot boxes,” wrote the disconsolate Turkish ex-patriot.

Term limits prevent Erdoğan from running for prime minister again, but there is widespread speculation he may run in this summer’s presidential election. Others speculate there may be an effort to overturn the limitation on the number of terms a prime minister can serve.

According to a Voice of America report, voting was generally peaceful across the country, but fights and riots broke out in two villages in the southeast of Turkey, near the border with Syria. Eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took to the airwaves on Tuesday, Oct. 22 to vociferously support his embattled (but only outside of Turkey) National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chief Hakan Fidan, and the democratization plans he announced at the end of last month.

Fidan has been the object of criticism because of a perceived shift in Turkish alliances.  In particular, a closeness to Iran and a hardened posture towards Israel are among the changes for which Fidan has been blamed.

But if anyone thought Erdoğan might use Fidan as a fall guy to retain good graces with some in the west, The Turkish leader put those thoughts to rest with a barnburner of a speech on Tuesday.

He railed on about the terror that Turkey has withstood over the past 30 years, but really began shouting when he go to casting the blame for Turkey’s problems which he blamed for trying to interrupt his countries moves towards democracy:

But while we do this there are those who wish to put our institutions under suspicion. When the time comes you now see that they’re attempting to engage our MİT undersecretary. Who is engaging our MİT undersecretary? Be careful. This is very important. There are those agitating from inside and those agitating from outside. Sorry, but we will stand behind our valued bureaucrats and technocrats and won’t take their favor from others. If there is a complaint, we will evaluate it, and then we will do what is necessary.

He continued, in what some might call a show of strength, while others speculated whether there were strains of paranoia seeping in to his rhetoric.

I want everyone to know this: Turkey is not a country to be operated on. To this day we have not allowed this, and we will never allow it in the future. They think we are unaware of their circles, special campaigns and real intentions. We know all about it. Turkey will not bow down to these campaigns, fall for these tricks or change its route. We have no interest other than securing justice, law, human rights and freedoms, whether that is in Turkey or in the wider region.

According to Turks who watched the speech, Erdoğan sounded as if he was threatening all those “sinister forces” who were trying to interfere with “his democracy plans for Turkey.”

The Turkish prime minister gave his fiery speech during an AK Party meeting.

Originally published at Gatestone Institute. 

There is no doubt that the Gezi Park demonstrations in May and June, which spread to most of Turkey, represent a seismic change in Turkish society and have opened up fault lines which earlier may not have been apparent. What began as a demonstration against the “development” of a small park in the center of Istanbul ended as a widespread protest against the AKP government — and particularly Prime Minister Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule.

The European Commission in its latest progress report on Turkey has recognized this change when it writes of “the emergence of vibrant, active citizenry;” and according to Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül, who in the report is praised for his conciliatory role, this development is “a new manifestation of our democratic maturity.” The Turkish government, however, has chosen to see these demonstrations as a challenge to its authority and has reacted accordingly.

The report mentions various repressive measures taken by the government, including the excessive use of force by the police, columnists and journalists being fired or forced to resign after criticizing the government, television stations being fined for transmitting live coverage of the protests and the round-up by the police of those suspected of taking part in the demonstrations.

However, there is, in the EU report, no mention of the campaign of vilification led by the Prime Minister against the protesters, or reprisals against public employees who supported or took part in the protests; also, measures taken to prevent the recurrence of mass protests, such as tightened security on university campuses, no education loans for students who take part in demonstrations and a ban on chanting political slogans at football matches.

Not only the demonstrators themselves have been targeted but also the international media, which Prime Minister Erdoğan has accused of being part of an international conspiracy to destabilize Turkey. The “interest rate lobby” and “the Jewish diaspora” have also been blamed. As the Commission notes, the Turkish Capital Markets Board has launched an investigation into foreign transactions to account for the 20% drop on the Istanbul Stock Exchange between May 20 and June 19, which had more to do with the U.S. Federal Reserve’s tapering than the Gezi Park protests.

In August, however, a report on the Gezi Park protests by the Eurasia Global Research Center (AGAM), and chaired by an AKP deputy, called the government’s handling of the situation “a strategic mistake” and pointed out that democracy-valuing societies require polls and dialogue between people and the local authorities.

Polarization

The Commission is correct, therefore, when it concludes that a divisive political climate prevails, including a polarizing tone towards citizens, civil society organizations and businesses. This conclusion is reinforced by the observation that work on political reform is hampered by a persistent lack of dialogue and spirit of compromise among political parties. Furthermore, the report emphasizes the need for systematic consultation in law-making with civil society and other stakeholders.

This division was underlined by Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek in June, when, at a conference, he deplored the lack of a spirit of compromise in intellectual or political circles. This lack is not only illustrated by the occasional fistfight between parliamentary deputies, but also when the AKP government in July voted against its own proposal in the mistaken belief that it had been submitted by the opposition. Or when the opposition two days later passed its own bill while the government majority had gone off to prayers.

President Gül, in a message of unity to mark the start of Eid al-Fitr (in August, at the end of Ramadan), had called on Turkey to leave polarization behind and unite for the European Union membership bid. But to create a united Turkey will be difficult, given the attitude of the present government. Even the democratization package presented by Prime Minister Erdoğan at the end of September does not indicate any substantive change in the government’s majoritarian approach to democracy.

Irrespective of the Prime Minister’s reference to international human rights and the EU acquis [legislation], both lifting the headscarf ban for most public employees and a number of concessions to the Kurdish minority can be seen as a move to boost Erdoğan’s popularity ahead of the local elections in March.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel was behind last month’s military coup in Egypt.

Erdogan told a meeting of the provincial chairs of his ruling Justice and Development, or AKP, party that he has evidence that Israel was involved in the July 3 overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Turkish Hurriyet news service reported.

“Who is behind this? Israel. We have evidence,” the prime minister said, according to Hurriyet.

He cited as proof a statement by a French intellectual he identified as Jewish, who told the Israeli justice minister during a visit to France before Egypt’s 2011 elections, “The Muslim Brotherhood will not be in power even if they win the elections. Because democracy is not the ballot box,” Hurriyet reported.

The White House condemned Erdogan’s remarks.

“Suggesting that Israel is somehow responsible for recent events in Egypt is offensive, unsubstantiated and wrong,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters later Tuesday.

Turkey downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and later expelled Israel’s ambassador following the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in May 2010 that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals in a confrontation with Israeli Navy commandos. The ship was trying to evade Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Erdogan in March for the incident, and representatives of the countries have met for reconciliation talks. The talks reportedly are held up over the amount of compensation that Israel is to pay to the families of the Turkish casualties and how the payments are to be characterized.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party vowed to annihilate Tweeter “slander” that “is much more dangerous that a vehicle loaded with a bomb.”

Ali Sahin, the vice chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was quoted by Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper as saying, “People must be held responsible for the content they write. If as a result of a tweet they write, people loot shops and burn vehicles, the one who wrote it must bear its costs.

“A tweet containing lies and slander is much more dangerous that a vehicle loaded with a bomb. The explosion of a vehicle loaded with a bomb would be limited, but a tweet filled with lies and slander can lead to a climate of conflict.”

The party took the cue from Erdogan, who has blamed the Twitter social network for the success of opposition elements to stage mass protests that are well into their second week.

Isn’t censoring Twitter a violation of rights?

Not at all. The opposite is true, according to the party’s logic.

“Sahin said people’s personal rights, legal personalities of companies and public institutions were being attacked while commercial activities were harmed due to news spreading on social media,” Hurriyet reported.

Sahin added, “The elected government is being conspired against, there is an intention to topple the government through social media and people are being sworn at. All these things should have a cost, a sanction. Cursing at people is not freedom… Social media must be brought under order and regularity. Such a draft law can be considered.”

Now it all makes sense.

Anyone wanting to topple Erdogan’s government and cursing it  through social media is violating the freedom of others, especially that of Erdogan to remain at the helm. Got it?

Erdogan is doing his best to prove to the world that he is an ego-centric power seeker.

An article for CBS Marketwatch by freelance journalist Craig Mellow described Erdogan as a prisoner of his own desires. “Like other transformational leaders who came before him, Prime Minister Erdogan in his third term now looks more like a captive of power than an agent wielding it for the nation’s good,” Mellow wrote.

With one speech one day last week, Erdogan managed to sink the country’s stock market by 5 percent. That’s pretty good work for one day.

As the Jewish Press reported on Sunday, Erdogan might have been able to let the protest movement die from lack of oxygen had he talked them eye-to-eye, as he finally plans to do on Tuesday, instead of calling them vandals and terrorists.

“Erdogan decried what he called the ’interest rate lobby,’ which ‘thinks they can threaten us with speculation on the stock exchange,” Mellow wrote. “That lobby duly dumped more Turkish shares, bringing the decline in the benchmark Istanbul Stock Exchange National 100 Index to 15% since the protests began.

Mellow praised Erdogan for his first years in office, when he turned Turkey around and created one of the world’s healthiest baking systems and ushered in a period of tremendous economic growth.

“Along the way, Erdogan laid down what looked like a promising blueprint for a modern Islamic state that honored its own traditions without sending secret police house-to-house to enforce them,” Mellow continued. “Turkey’s reputation changed. No longer the butt of Europe, Turkey became its vibrant oasis….

“But… Erdogan in his third term now looks more like a captive of power than an agent wielding it for the nation’s good. A la Putin, he is constructing an end-run around term limits that would allow him to stay in charge of Turkey by being elected president….

Recep Erdogan is teetering on the edge of a classic tragedy, wherein a powerful and potentially positive character is done in by a moral flaw that is revealed by extraordinary events.”

But at least Erdogan will make sure to make Turkey safe from those awful Tweets that can cause car bomb explosions.