U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Turkish officials that the anguish of Americans over the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon helped him understand the frustration of Turks over the death of IHH thugs who were killed in the May 2010 flotilla clash after kidnapping and seriously wounding several Navy soldiers.

Nine Turks, members of the terror-linked IHH “charity” organization, brutally clubbed and knifed the commandos who reach the deck of the Mavi Mamara by climbing down a rope from a hovering helicopter and armed with nothing more than personal pistols and paint guns.

Kerry compared the American reactions to the terrorist attack in Boston with those in Turkey to the Israeli counterterrorist attack on the IHH.

“It affects the community, it affects the country. But going forward, you know, we have to find the best way to bring people together and undo these tensions and undo these stereotypes and try to make peace,” he stated.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) criticized Kerry or his remarks. “It is never helpful when a moral equivalency is made confusing terrorists with their victims,” Danon told The Times of Israel. ”The only way to deal with the evils of terrorism it to wage an unrelenting war against its perpetrators, wherever they may be.”

Kerry visited Ankara to try to bring Turkey and Israel closer together after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s four years of snubbing Israel and falling into his own trap by embracing Iran and Syria.

The new Secretary of State, who already is a candidate to surpass his predecessor Hillary Clinton’s record for traveling around the world several times, tried to pull his diplomatic weight to convince Erdogan not to visit Hamas-controlled Gaza next month.

The trip ‘‘would be better delayed and that it shouldn’t take place at this point in time… Our sense is that it would be more helpful to wait for the right circumstances.”

Kerry met with Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu but not with Erdogan, whose ego could not possibly allow anyone less than the President of the United States to sway his plans.

President Barack Obama used his trip to Israel last month to convince Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to offer an apology to Erdogan for the outcome of the flotilla clash and even agree to compensate families of those who planned and carried out the attacks on the commandos.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry quickly replied to Kerry’s request in the negative.

It would be wrong to evaluate these [Kerry’s statements] as a ‘U.S. reaction to Erdogan’s Gaza visit,’” an official from the Turkish Foreign Ministry told daily Hürriyet, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“For now there isn’t any change in the prime minister’s Gaza schedule. The issue will be discussed during Erdogan’s visit [to the United States] on May 16. This is what Kerry says, too. After the U.S. trip, Erdogan’s Gaza trip will be realized,” he said.

Perhaps President Obama can convince Erdogan to cool off a bit, especially if Turkey wants to feel more secure against the prospect of neighboring Iran as a nuclear threat.

In return, perhaps Erdogan can convince President Obama to compensate the families of the brothers who murdered three people, wounded 200 others and threw Boston into mayhem in the Boston Marathon Massacre.

Israel is about to offer missiles and advanced technology to Turkish in exchange for Ankara’s allowing the Israeli Air Force to use a base northeast of the capital, which is approximately  1,000 miles from the border with Iran, according to the Sunday Times of London.

It said that National Security Council chairman Yaakov Amidror will visit Turkey on Monday to try to put an end to the bitter differences between Turkey and Israel over the Mavi Mamara flotilla clash three years ago.

“Until the recent crisis, Turkey was our biggest aircraft carrier,” an Israeli military source told the London newspaper. “Using the Turkish airbases could make the difference between success and failure once a showdown with Iran gets underway.”

Iran is a mutual fear for both countries, and President Barack Obama used his visit last month to Israel to put an end to the diplomatic crisis that began to develop during the Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist maneuvers against Hamas-controlled Gaza, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned Israel from a long-term friend into a new enemy. He then embraced both Syria and Iran until realizing last year he chose the wrong side.

Israel is helping him climb down from the diplomatic tree and in principle has agreed to Erdogan’s demand to compensate the families of the nine Turkish IHH members who carried out a brutal pore-mediated attack on Israeli Navy commandos who boarded their ship virtually unarmed to keep it from sailing to embargoed-Gaza. After the IHH attackers kidnapped three commandos and wounded them and several others, the Israeli force overtook them, killing nine IHH terrorists.

The London newspaper reported that Amidror’s mission is to re-open a 1996 Israeli-Turkish agreement that allows the Israel Air Force to train in Turkey’s air space and use the Akinci Air Base, northeast of Ankara. In return, Turkish pilots were allowed to train at Air Force bases in the Negev.

With the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon staring at in its face, Turkey wants Israel’s advanced technology and missiles, such as the Arrow,  to beef up its defense not only against missiles from Iran but also from Syria.

Turkey is very worried by Iran’s missile ambitions,” the Israeli source told the Sunday Times. “With Israeli know-how based on the Jericho ballistic missiles, the time frame will be cut short.”

Analysts agree that “the erosion of the Syrian regime’s capabilities is accelerating,” that step-by-step it continues to retreat, making a rebel breakthrough and an Islamist victory increasingly likely. In response, I am changing my policy recommendation from neutrality to something that causes me, as a humanitarian and decades-long foe of the Assad dynasty, to pause before writing:

Western governments should support the malign dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

Here is my logic for this reluctant suggestion: Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This (1) keeps them focused locally and it (2) prevents either one from emerging victorious (and thereby posing a yet-greater danger). Western powers should guide enemies to stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their conflict.

This policy has precedent. Through most of World War II, Nazi Germany was on the offensive against Soviet Russia and keeping German troops tied down on the Eastern Front was critical to an Allied victory. Franklin D. Roosevelt therefore helped Joseph Stalin by provisioning his forces and coordinating the war effort with him. In retrospect, this morally repugnant but strategically necessary policy succeeded. And Stalin was a far worse monster than Assad.

The Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88 created a similar situation. After mid-1982, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s forces went on the offense against those of Saddam Hussein, Western governments began supporting Iraq. Yes, the Iraqi regime had started the hostilities and was more brutal, but the Iranian one was ideologically more dangerous and on the offensive. Best was that the hostilities hobble both sides and prevent either one from merging victorious. In the apocryphal words of Henry Kissinger, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”

Applying this same logic to Syria today finds notable parallels. Assad fills the role of Saddam Hussein – the brutal Baathist dictator who began the violence. The rebel forces resemble Iran – the initial victim getting stronger over time and posing an increasing Islamist danger. Continued fighting endangers the neighborhood. Both sides engage in war crimes and pose a danger to Western interests. In this spirit, I argued then for U.S. help to the losing party, whichever that might be, as in this May 1987 analysis:

In 1980, when Iraq threatened Iran, our interests lay at least partly with Iran. But Iraq has been on the defensive since the summer of 1982, and Washington now belongs firmly on its side. … Looking to the future, should Iraq once again take the offensive, an unlikely but not impossible change, the United States should switch again and consider giving assistance to Iran.

Yes, Assad’s survival benefits Tehran, the region’s most dangerous regime. But a rebel victory, recall, would hugely boost the increasingly rogue Turkish government while empowering jihadis and replacing the Assad government with triumphant, inflamed Islamists. Continued fighting does less damage to Western interests than their taking power. There are worse prospects than Sunni and Shi’ite Islamists mixing it up, than Hamas jihadis killing Hizballah jihadis, and vice-versa. Better that neither side wins.

The Obama administration is attempting an overly ambitiously and subtle policy of simultaneously helping the good rebels with clandestine lethal arms and $114 million in aid even as it prepares for possible drone strikes on the bad rebels. Nice idea, but manipulating the rebel forces via remote control has little chance of success. Inevitably, aid will end up with the Islamists and air strikes will kill allies. Better to accept one’s limitations and aspire to the feasible: propping up the side in retreat.

At the same time, Westerners must be true to their morals and help bring an end to the warfare against civilians, the millions of innocents gratuitously suffering the horrors of civil war. Western governments should find mechanisms to compel the hostile parties to abide by the rules of war, specifically those that isolate combatants from non-combatants. This could entail pressuring the rebels’ suppliers (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) and the Syrian government’s supporters (Russia, China) to condition aid on their abiding by the rules of war; it could even involve Western use of force against violators on either side. That would fulfill the responsibility to protect.

On the happy day when Assad & Tehran fight the rebels & Ankara to mutual exhaustion, Western support then can go to non-Baathist and non-Islamist elements in Syria, helping them offer a moderate alternative to today’s wretched choices and lead to a better future.

Golda Meir once quipped that Moses could have done the Jewish people a better service. “He took us 40 years through the desert,” she said, “to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.”

Today, Golda Meir’s quip has lost its punch. Last week, natural gas began flowing out of the Tamar gas field, discovered off the coast of Israel in January 2009. Tamar and Leviathan, its neighboring gas field, discovered in June 2010, are among the world’s largest recent offshore natural gas discoveries. The Israeli companies controlling the fields are even considering exporting gas to neighboring countries.

Geologists assume that commercial oil reserves may lie beneath the gas find. Some analysts say that the Tamar and Leviathan fields might change Israel’s position in the geopolitical and energy world. But not just Israel’s.

The Israeli fields are adjacent to the Aphrodite gas field, discovered in December 2011, which lies in Cypriot territorial waters, less than 25 miles west of Leviathan. The government in Nicosia expects that the result of offshore drillings will confirm later this year that the island is sitting on vast amounts of natural gas worth billions of dollars. The recent banking crisis in Cyprus –the latest episode in the saga of the collapsing euro – came too early for the country to benefit from its future natural gas wealth. It is, however, indicative that Cyprus turned down the European Union’s demands that the gas reserves be used as collateral for the loans which the E.U. has just extended to Cyprus.

Brussels had demanded that a fund be created in which it was given a direct say over the revenues from Cypriot gas reserves, but Nicosia refused to do so. The Cypriots feel betrayed by the E.U. Hence, they are not inclined to let Europe share in the future wealth which they hope to derive from gas. Nicos Anastasiades, the president of Cyprus, said that Cyprus had no other choice than give in to the harsh demand of Brussels that it dismantle its banking sector. He, however, promised that savers who lost money in the Cypriotic banks would be compensated by being given shares in banks guaranteed by the future natural gas revenues.

Today, Cyprus is paying a very heavy price for its membership of the E.U.’s common currency, the euro. When by 2019 the gas proceeds are expected to start flowing, the tables will be turned. Then Cyprus will be in a position to leave the euro without facing the prospect of national bankruptcy.

To begin extracting the gas from the Aphrodite field by 2019, however, the virtually bankrupt Cypriot government will in the coming years need to make enormous investments. The Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, seems keen to get involved. So far, however, the Cypriots have kept the Russians at bay.

Europe is already to a large extent dependent on Russian gas, supplied by Gazprom, a company controlled by the Russian oligarchy around President Putin. A quarter of Europe’s of Europe’s entire gas consumption comes from Gazprom. As a new player in the market of gas exporters, Cyprus could reduce the European dependency on Russian gas.

What applies to Cyprus, obviously, applies to Israel as well. It, too, could use its gas exports to a political end. Bat Ye’or has argued that the pro-Palestinian positions of the European governments since the 1970s were to a large extent the result of Europe’s dependency on Arab oil. Israel has a unique chance of also using the Cypriot gas to its own geostrategic benefit. The Cypriot gas fields are located halfway between the Cypriot and Israeli coast. Israel, Cyprus and Greece are already collaborating in the EuroAsia Interconnector project, which is an undersea power cable linking Israel with Cyprus and Cyprus with Greece. A gas pipeline following the same route would balance the current pipeline on the Baltic seabed linking Russia with Germany.

Another opportunity for Israel might be the fact that some international gas companies are reluctant to get involved in the exploitation of Cypriot gas fields because they also operate in Turkey and do not want to upset the Turkish authorities who oppose the Cypriot gas extraction. Though the Aphrodite gas field lies in waters across Southern Cyprus, Turkey is demanding that all gas revenues be shared with Turkish occupied Northern Cyprus.

Originally published at Rubin Reports.

A fascinating article on Islamism in Turkey that also reflects on the situation in Arabic-speaking countries was written last month by Soner Cagaptay, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Turkish research program. I’m a fan of his analysis so nothing in the following article should be taken as criticism but rather as an exploration of his article’s themes.

There’s also a very interesting parallel here with domestic events in the United States. But first, Cagaptay’s theme is as follows:

There are strong limits on how far Islamism can go in Turkey and the Arabic-speaking states are very different from Turkey in lacking a strong secularist (or at least anti-Islamist) sector that is deeply embedded in the country’s culture and history.

I think he is right on both points but let’s look more into the details.

Cagaptay’s article was prompted by a personal experience in Istanbul. In a café he saw a group of Salafists, who had just finished prayers in a near-by mosque, interact politely with a waitress who had tattoos and wore a short-sleeved shirt. He writes that in both words and body language one could see there were no real “tensions between the two opposing visions of Turkey brought into close encounter for me to witness.”

He continues that while “Turkey’s two halves…may not blend, neither will [either one] disappear. Turkey’s Islamization is a fact, but so is secular and Westernized Turkey.” After a decade of Islamist rule—I should note here that few Western experts, journalists, or political leaders acknowledge or understand that the regime ruling Turkey is Islamist in a real sense—there has been, “a rising tide of Islamization in Turkey.” He mentions, for example, a recent law that mandates teaching Islam in public schools and a shift in Turkey’s professed identity from European to being Muslim and Middle Eastern.

But, Cagaptay adds, there are limits in a country “so thoroughly westernized that even the AKP and its Islamist elites cannot escape trappings of their Western mold.” As examples he cites the role of women and Turkey’s membership in NATO. He explains that “Turkey’s Islamization is meeting its match” because, for example, there was a consensus that Turkey deploy NATO Patriot missiles on its territory to defend itself from a possible attack by Syria. “The Turks have lived with NATO too long to think outside of its box.”

Now there is no question that in the broader sense Cagaptay is correct. Turkey is not going to be another Saudi Arabia or Iran. And yet beside that glass is half-full argument is a shocking glass is half-empty counterpart. As Cagaptay notes, Islamist or semi-Islamist parties received 65 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections. That means, he continues:

[Thirty-five] percent of the population, totaling twenty-five million people, did not vote for the [Islamist regime]. These voters stand for secularism, and they will never buy into the religious movement in Turkey. This block will constitute the domestic limitation of Turkey’s Islamization. After ten years in power, and likely to run the country for another term with a humming economy boosting its support, the AKP is making Turkey in its own image. But the new Turkey will have a uniquely distinct flavor: a bit Islamist, a bit secularist, a bit conservative, and a bit Western.

That’s absolutely true. And yet who would have believed twenty years ago that about two-thirds of the people would vote for Islamist candidates, even after a decade of Islamist rule? Will that 35 percent ever be able to get the Islamists out of power and reverse the process? And what about the process itself? Revolutions, even quiet ones, keep on going. Will 35 percent of the nine-year-olds now likely to get Islamic teaching (which may well amount to Islamist indoctrination) vote for secular parties when they grow up? And doesn’t much of Turkish foreign policy on regional issues under the AKP look like Iran or Egypt today? The attitude toward Israel, Iran (despite competition in Syria), the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hizballah are all in line with an assessment of it as a radical Islamist policy.

And how real is the current regime’s commitment to democracy? Not that much deeper than that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Prime Minister Erdogan’s latest remarks have stirred a controversy in Turkey but haven’t even been reported in the West. In a speech in Konya, Erdogan said: “Separation of powers is hindering service to the people. We have to do something about it.” In other words, having now laid the foundation for beginning the Islamizing of the courts, he’s now going to go after parliament.

Turkish IHH terrorists who were wounded in the clash with IDF Navy commandos on the Mavi Marmara in May 2010 said they will sue Israeli soldiers and their commanders despite Israel’s apology.

“We will continue with the criminal lawsuits we have opened against the Israeli soldiers and commanders, and we won’t accept dropping this suit if compensation is paid,” Musa Cogas, who was injured on the Mavi Marmara, said on Monday.

Turkey and Israel last month agreed to normalize ties after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the way in which Israel stopped the ship from trying to break the maritime embargo on Hamas-controlled Gaza.

A United Nations investigation concluded that the embargo is legal but that Israel used excessive force. Nine IHH terrorists were killed after they brutally assaulted the commandos, who boarded the ship virtually unarmed as they rappelled down a rope from a hovering helicopter.

Prime Minister Netanyahu not only has apologized but also has agreed to compensate families of those who were killed. Turkey is demanding $1 million for each family.

Israel wants Turkey to drop all lawsuits. A court case against former Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and other high-ranking Israeli military officials opened in November in Istanbul. The charges reportedly include manslaughter and attempted manslaughter, causing bodily harm, deprivation of freedom, plundering, damage to property and illegal confiscation of property.

Meanwhile, although Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants to improve relations with Israel, he has not changed his positive view of Hamas and plans to visit Gaza later this month.

Originally published at Rubin Reports.

While far too late, the Obama administration may be adopting a sensible policy on Syria. The strategy, however, is unlikely to succeed. Oh, and there is also a very important clue—I think the key to the puzzle—about what really happened in Benghazi.

Let’s begin with Syria. As U.S. officials became increasingly worried about the visible Islamist domination of the Syrian opposition—which their own policies had helped promote—they have realized the horrible situation of creating still another radical Islamist regime. (Note: This column has been warning of this very point for years.)

So the response is to try to do two things. The first is to train, with Jordanian cooperation, a more moderate force of Free Syrian Army (FSA) units. The idea is to help the non-Islamists compete more effectively with the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafist, and especially al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra group) affiliated units.

The second is supposedly to create a buffer zone along Syria’s borders with Jordan and perhaps later Israel and even Iraq in order to avoid the conflict spilling over—i.e., cross-border jihad terror attacks—to those countries. According to the Washington Post:

The last thing anyone wants to see is al-Qaeda gaining a foothold in southern Syria next to Israel. That is a doomsday scenario,” said a U.S. diplomat in Jordan who was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.

Someone has also figured out that it isn’t a great idea to have a border with Iraq controlled by Syrian Sunni Muslim terrorist Islamists allied with the Sunni terrorists in Iraq who killed so many Americans. Well, might someone not have thought about that a year or two ago? Because, while nothing could have been more obvious there was no step taken to prevent this situation happening.

I should point out an important distinction. The problem is not merely al-Qaeda gaining a foothold but also other Salafists or the Muslim Brotherhood doing so. That, however, is not how the Obama administration thinks. For it, al-Qaeda is evil; the other Salafists somewhat bad; and the Muslim Brotherhood good.

What are the problems here? As so often happens with Western-formulated clever ideas to deal with the Middle East, there are lots of them:

–The United States has stood aside or even helped arm the Islamists through Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. So now the Islamist forces are far stronger than the non-Islamists. That cannot be reversed at this point.

–Might this buffer zone plan be laying the basis for a second Syrian civil war in which the Islamists band together against the FSA? In other words, here is this buffer zone that is backed by the West (imperialism!) to “protect” Israel (the Zionists!), Jordan (traitorous Muslims!), and Iraq (Shia heretics!)

–The training is limited and the FSA is badly divided among different commanders, defected Syrian army officers, and local warlords. The Brotherhood militia is united and disciplined. The result will be worse than Afghanistan because the Islamists would have both the government and the stronger military forces.

–A situation is being set up in which a future Muslim Brotherhood regime in Syria can blackmail the United States. Either it will force Washington to accept whatever it does (including potential massacres) by threatening to unleash Salafist forces on its borders or it will actually create confrontations.

–Why isn’t the United States working full-time to stop the arms flows to the Islamists by pressuring the Saudis and Qataris (perhaps the point of Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip but hardly effective) and to rein in Turkey’s enthusiasm for a Syrian Islamist regime?

Speaking of Turkey, now we see the reason for the attempted Israel-Turkey rapprochement, because on top of everything else there will be a Kurdish-ruled zone not run by moderates but by the Syrian affiliate of the radical PKK, which is at war with Turkey.

–These proposed buffer zones would not receive Western air support or international forces. Israel has the experience of maintaining a buffer zone in southern Lebanon for years by supporting a militia group. It succeeded for a long time by sending in Israeli troops covertly and taking casualties. In the end, rightly or wrongly, the effort was given up. Now Hizballah—the equivalent though not the friend of the Syrian Salafists—is sitting on the border and already one war has been fought. It should be noted that Israel has by far the most defensible border with Syria.

Palestinian Authority and Israeli officials have immediately rejected a brainstorm announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Turkey act to reach for the forever elusive end of the rainbow and reincarnate the peace process.

Two weeks after President Barack Obama said in Israel that there is no sense in trying to bring Ramallah and Jerusalem together if both sides don’t show they want to do so, Kerry is playing the willing robot to put everything in place for instant peace.

All Israel has to day is pay off the families of Turkish terrorists as a reward for trying to kill Israeli commandos who stopped their Mavi Mamara ship from sailing to Hamas-controlled Gaza to break the maritime embargo against terrorists and arms.

One other thing, said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu: Israel must remove all “embargoes,” meaning that Hamas should be allowed to bring in whatever it wants, such as medicine, which flows by the ton every day through land crossings; and everything that can be found in any store or mall, which flows by the ton every day through land crossings; and anti-aircraft guns and explosives for suicide bombers, which do not enter through land crossings. Maybe they come though tunnels. Just maybe.

Kerry is faithfully carrying out his duties as Secretary of State, where talking is the key to the world’s woes and can fix all problems, such as the Iranian nuclear threat, a corrupt Muslim fundamentalist regime in Egypt and war crimes in Syria.

Israel and Ramallah are not biting the bait and won’t take it unless Kerry comes up with a hefty bribe, and anything is possible.

The immediate reactions before Kerry’s plane to Israel was even in the air were something like, “Are you real?”

With Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan falling over him self for winning an apology from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for Israeli commandos defending their lives, Kerry played up on his ego that makes him think everyone in the world wants to be his friend.

Someone in the State Dept. forgot one little detail: Mahmoud Abbas heads the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and is not interested in the rival Hamas terrorist organization getting support from “friends of the West,” such as Erdogan who two weeks ago announced for the ninth or tenth time he will visit Gaza.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said Turkey would be “ineffective” and that it cannot be a fair negotiator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority because it still is at odds with Israel, making it susceptible to buckle under American pressure to be nice to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

There are two other reasons he did not state: One, Erdogan is pro-Hamas. Two, if the United States support the idea, it is suspicious.

Al-Malki told Palestinian Authority radio that it prefers that any diplomatic maneuvering come from the Quartet, where the United States is only one of four players. The others are the European Union, which wants to keep its welfare payments to the PA from going up in smoke; Russia, which wants to protects its investments in Iran and Syria; and the United Nations General Assembly, which last November accepted lock, stock and barrel Abbas’ demand to recognize all of his political and territorial demands from Israel.

As for Israel, International Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz told Voice of Israel public radio that he didn’t even believe that Kerry would suggest Turkey as a peacemaker.

“I think it is a baseless report. I personally am not familiar with any such decision,” said Steinitz after the State Dept, on Friday boasted that Turkey “has the ability to encourage Palestinians of all stripes to accept Quartet principles and move forward.”

“With the Palestinian Authority, we can negotiate directly, so there is no need for mediation. If anybody does mediate it will be the International Quartet,” said Steinitz, who noted Erdogan’s fondness for Hamas.

Kerry landed in Israel Sunday evening. No one considers his visit as any more than another stage show, but no one should write him off. He has Obama’s back and Obama has money that the Palestinian Authority, and Israel, want.