Re: [Marxism] Gaza war shakes Israel's relations with Turkey

["Emrah Goker" <antidoxic@xxxxxxxxx>]

Just wanted to add my two cents from Ankara, regarding the Juan Cole
comment 
(http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/gaza-war-sours-turkey-israel-relations.html):

Cole fails to mention the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP)
quite successful propaganda and cooptation move, carefully coordinated
for the purposes of securing the party's hold in the upcoming March
2009 Municipal Elections. It's not that the AKP rank-and-file are
faking it about Gaza. Though highly pragmatic, they are faithful
Muslims and most of them have been politically socialized within the
1970s' and 80's antisemitic Islamist movement, the so-called "National
Outlook" tradition. They are well aware that their constituencies,
dominated by religious conservatism and the decades-old nationalist
conspiracies about "crypto-Jews ruling Turkey", demand action against
Israel. On the other hand, during its 6 years of rule, AKP has
facilitated the renewal and strengthening of commercial, financial,
military-industrial relations with the Israeli state. Neither the
Turkish Armed Forces, nor the government would want to severe those
ties quickly.

So AKP is playing the PR game, and from the perspective of constructed
"domestic public opinion", winning it. The government wants to replace
the discredited Egyptian government for the role of the "Muslim
negotiator" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is not likely to
accomplish anything more than the collaborationists in Egypt. The
Foreign Ministry is trying to spin the latest attrocities in Gaza in a
balanced way: While Turkey, as a "country of faithful Muslims",
appears to take a critical stance against Israel, satisfies and
contains the domestic right-wing outrage, it will also push Egypt
aside and try to convince Israel to take Turkey more seriously.

It is yet to be seen whether AKP can truly contain the domestic
outrage (at the moment the police lets people vent out their rage),
whether any substantial damage can be done on economic relations with
Israel. For now, many people applaud the government, mainstream media
spins that "in the whole Muslim world, only Turkey condemned Israel
strongly". Yet nothing substantial, diplomatically speaking, has been
accomplished yet, other than the organization of PR events and Prime
Minister Erdogan and his wife shedding tears for Palestinian children
in front of cameras. I think that the government is waiting for the
Israeli government to play along and be convinced that Turkey can be
the new Egypt. Even though AKP gets slapped diplomatically by the
Israeli regime, AKP's electoral campaign strategy will have worked:
they can spin it too, saying to their reactionary constituencies, "the
Jew does not listen to reason".

Either way AKP wins, in terms of the upcoming elections. There is no
political sign that the protests against Israel (overwhelming majority
of which are organized by right-wing reactionary groups) will need to
be violently suppressed, as happened in Egypt before. With respect to
responding to Israel, AKP has already stolen the acts of its two
domestic rivals, the Republican People's Party (right-wing Kemalists)
and the Nationalist Action Party ("reformed" fascists).

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