In the war between Israel and Hamas, Turkey picked the losing card.

In the war between Israel and Hamas, Turkey picked the losing card.
© EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN   |   People shout slogans and hold banners reading 'Hamas is the will of the Palestinian people, it cannot be surrendered' during a protest against the US secretary of state's visit to Turkey and Israel's attacks in the Gaza Strip, in Istanbul, Turkey, 04 November 2023.

The media in the predominantly Muslim countries, and in particular the media in the Arab countries of the Middle East, covered the attack launched by Hamas on Israel on October 7 very briefly. Governments, politicians and opinion leaders in those countries quickly focused their discourse on Israel's military response. The result is that the Muslim-dominated region is now also dominated by an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-Western discourse. Accusations abound that the United States and Europe unilaterally support Israel, this support being condemned as immoral and disqualifying. The West has thus lost all credibility in the eyes and minds of Muslims in the Middle East and, of course, around the world.

Whoever expected Ankara to strike a discordant note against this essentially Islamist (political Islam) and anti-Western chorus, in the name of membership of the NATO alliance or for other reasons, was mistaken from the very beginning.

From Atatürk’s secular Turkey to the present-day Islamists’ Turkey

The Republic of Turkey celebrated on October 29 the centenary of its founding   as a republican and secular political system by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This legendary hero of the Turkish nation, a genius general and politician, was also the first president of the new state, until his demise on November 10, 1938. After defeating the European invaders in both World War I (the  most resounding being the victory at Gallipoli/Çanakkale in 1915), as well as in the War of Independence (1919-1922), Mustafa Kemal Pasha also won the diplomatic battle, through the Lausanne Treaty of July 1923.

He then proceeded to invent and institutionalize a republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. The empire had already gone through centuries of decay. Atatürk's solution was a state that would mean a radical abandonment of Ottoman and Muslim traditions by embracing the values ​​of secular European democracy. He invented and established a nation, an official language, a state ideology (republican nationalism), an electoral system in which women could vote, while abolishing the caliphate, the structure of religious sects or religious education. And many, many other reforms.

Eighty years later, in January 2003, the first AKP government, a descendant of the conservative political movement led by Necmettin Erbakan, came to power in Ankara. Among the ideas propagated by that movement were anti-Western Islamist nationalism and the values ​​of traditional Islam, that is, an ideology directed radically against the Kemalist political ideal itself. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, along with many of his allies, "grew up" as politicians within that movement, known to this day as Milli Görüş (National Vision). That group, loyal to Erdoğan, has ruled Turkey without interruption from January 2003 until today, and its leader has become increasingly authoritarian.

Under Erdogan, Turkey has become a supporter of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas

On October 28, 2023, one day before the centenary of the secular republic founded by Atatürk, a rally was held in the former Atatürk Airport, now decommissioned and replaced by the new and huge Istanbul Airport. The event was named by the presidential administration the "Great Palestine Rally" (tr. Büyük Filistin Mitingi), being designed as a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. But the real message was given explicitly by President Erdoğan, who unequivocally declared (for the second time in two days) his support for Hamas and against Israel. He threatened to do everything in his power to bring Israel to international justice as a "criminal state". Erdoğan called the Hamas fighters not terrorists, but freedom fighters, or more precisely "mujahedin", meaning fighters for the law and justice of Allah against the infidels. The speech was laced with vitriolic references to the "West" (tr. Batı), which the Turkish leader accused of hypocrisy and insensitivity to the Palestinians’ sacrifices. Not a word about the Hamas attack on Israel, which killed 1,400 innocent people, nor about the founder of the Republic of Turkey, just a day before its centenary.

Erdoğan's October 28 speech actually comes after about a decade of Ankara lending support to several radical groups involved in the war in northern Syria and the ongoing unrest in northern Iraq. In addition, the Turkish army has been fighting side by side with those groups against the Kurds for years. The fact is already widely documented by the independent media, by various organizations that monitor the region, but also by the respective governments. The protests in Baghdad and Damascus condemning the Turkish "military occupation" of the Syrian  and Iraqi  territories are well-known. Egypt and  other states in the region , as well as their global allies, have also expressed their agreement with those official protests.

Recently, after the Turkish president's pro-Hamas and anti-Israel statements, a group of US senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, drawing his attention to details that make it clear how old and resilient the Ankara regime's ties are with Hamas, but also with other extremist anti-Western organizations. A common factor of all is the ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. Analysts specializing in Hamas know very well that this organization is actually an offshoot, even an important one, of the Brotherhood, born in the context of the first "intifada" (1987-1993). It is, therefore, no coincidence that President Erdoğan intensely showed the Rabaa sign, in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, at the massive rally on October 28. He had done so many times before, and Hamas continues to operate also from Turkish territory, especially from Istanbul, as do other representatives of the Brotherhood. One notorious member, Ali Muhyiddin al-Qaradaghi, who appears on the  Counter Extremism Project list  detailing his anti-Western activity, was received in August by the Turkish president    in his official capacity as secretary general of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, based in Qatar.

The war in Gaza and the positioning towards Israel and Hamas will have a negative impact on Turkey

Beyond the statements, Turkey's first concrete action was to recall the ambassador from Tel Aviv (Israel had done the same with its ambassador to Ankara), but there was no formal interruption of diplomatic relations, which had only been resumed after years of freezing.  Erdoğan has also confirmed through public statements that he will in no case break off diplomatic ties with Israel, but he said that he has nothing left to share with Prime Minister Netanyahu and that he must step down, because he no longer has the support of the population  . In the same speech, Erdoğan also insisted on his earlier offer that the head of Turkey's only intelligence service (MIT), Ibrahim Kalin, mediate between Israel, Palestine and Hamas "to end the war".

But Ankara has little chance of being accepted as part of the negotiations, if they ever take place with the explicit aim of ending the war. If, as Ankara and the Arab world accuse, the West is no longer a credible partner in this matter, neither is Ankara. The military involvement and de facto occupation of territories in Iraq and Syria, as well as the involvement in Libya and other areas of Africa, in close collaboration with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, represent only one of the problems of the AKP-Erdoğan regime in this regard. Added to this is the explicit state support given publicly to the Hamas position, which has been avoided in other capitals in the region, which have also refrained from condemning the West.

And we should not forget that the aggression carried out by Hamas took even the governments of the Arab states in the region by surprise, seriously affecting the global cooperation plans in which they were engaged, both with powerful partners from the east (China, India) and and with those from the West (EU, USA). If Chinese investments in the region already have some history and a fairly clear logic, recently a very interesting project also appeared from the west: the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor  (IMEC). It benefits from the support of the states that the corridor crosses, as well as that of the European Union and the USA. Although it looks like a far too complicated and expensive project, experts point out that since it spans long distances by sea, it could actually be simpler and cheaper than China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) project. And the initiators of IMEC insist on the fact that this is not a competitor for the BRI, but a complementary project, which would benefit the states involved in both projects. The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, however, caused all initiatives in the Middle East region to be stopped or at least slowed down, with many important negotiations being postponed.

Against this background, Turkey can only lose. Its economy has been in decline for several years, despite official figures published by the Turkish Statistical Institute (Türkiye Istatistik Kuruku, TÜIK). The credibility of this institute has been suffering for many years, especially since it started publishing erroneous data about inflation, which were also categorically contradicted by a group of academic analysts, ENAG. The latest conflicting  assessments   are telling. While TÜIK reported an annual inflation rate of 61.5% in September, the figure provided by ENAG was 130%. After several such episodes, ENAG's credibility is now so solid that many important contracts have been signed in Turkey lately, based on an average of the annual inflation rates provided by TÜIK and ENAG. It is certain that Turkey is facing the most serious economic crisis in the last three decades, against the background of inflation and large deficits, against the background of accelerating emigration of professionals to the West. Added to this is the decline in agriculture and the goods-producing industry, with the regime in Ankara preferring to continue supporting the construction and defense industry as a priority, as well as exports, while discouraging imports on which, in fact, the entire economy depends.

With such conflicting policies, Turkey is expected to suffer even more than other countries in the region from the protracted conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. By provoking the latter, Hamas dealt a blow that Israel is already punishing, but the countries of the region and Turkey in particular will be affected perhaps even more deeply than expected. The effects that the conflict in Israel will certainly have on the energy market, added to those already felt following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, should not be overlooked.

Support for Hamas, an election strategy

However, old illusions remain alive in Ankara. The Palestinian news agency Ma'an, but also the Israeli publications Haaretz and Israel Hayom, have announced that an important delegation of the political wing of Hamas, led by the leader himself Ismail Haniyeh, would have been in Turkey recently after a visit to Tehran. The  sources state  that Haniyeh and Erdoğan also had a phone conversation just over two weeks ago. It seems that the regime in Ankara remains somewhat indifferent to the risks and focuses, as always in the last two decades, on its own electoral performances. The local elections, scheduled for March 31, 2024, seem to dominate the agenda of President Erdoğan and, implicitly, that of the government he leads. It is no longer a secret to anyone that the main objective is to regain control of the two major cities, the capital Ankara and, above all, the huge Istanbul.

In this context, considering what also happened in the previous electoral episodes after 2013, it is expected that the nationalist-Islamist discourse will continue to be heard from the regime to an electorate willing to receive it. And the anti-Western note will also remain strident. But will Turkey get more involved on the side of Hamas and the Palestinian cause against Israel? It's hard to believe. Its economy is in dire need of investment to overcome the deep crisis it is now struggling with. And those investments must come from the West that supports Israel, because so far too little money has come from the East, with too high financial and political costs. In any case, the escalation of the Palestinian crisis will represent a very serious stress test for the regime in Ankara. Preoccupied too much with electoral success, he may have lost sight, now definitively, of the risks he exposes himself to by violating, so many times, that dictum that guided the foreign policy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and most of his successors : Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh (Peace at home, peace in the world).

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