I have been sounding the warning siren about Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for years.
His mask of moderation has been slipping steadily, if it ever was there.
He has engaged in repeated rants against Israel, and now he has gone the full distance reviving the vile and rebuked Zionism is Racism narrative made infamous in the 1975 UN Resolution, which subsequently was rescinded.
Via Times of Israel, Erdogan calls Zionism a ‘crime against humanity’:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday described Zionism as a “crime against humanity” on par with anti-Semitism and fascism.
Speaking in Vienna at a United Nations event devoted to dialogue between the West and Islam, Erdogan decried rising racism in Europe and the fact that many Muslims “who live in countries other than their own” often face harsh discrimination.
“We should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, but instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them,” Erdogan said, according to a simultaneous translation provided by the UN. “And that is why it is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”
The Turkish leader’s comments, made at the official opening of the fifth UN Alliance of Civilizations Global Forum, drew harsh criticism from UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group monitoring anti-Israel bias and human rights abuses at the organization.
“Erdogan’s misuse of this global podium to incite hatred, and his resort to Ahmadinejad-style pronouncements appealing to the lowest common denominator in the Muslim world, will only strengthen the belief that his government is hewing to a confrontational stance, and fundamentally unwilling to end its four-year-old feud with Israel,” UN Watch said in a statement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Twitter:
I strongly condemn the remarks made by Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, comparing Zionism to Fascism.This is a dark and false statement,
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) February 28, 2013
This guy Erdogan is the real deal, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
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Comments
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk must be rolling in his grave right about now.
For Turkey to blindly slide from a secular republic to its current Islamist-leaning government would have been anathma to the man seeking to divorce his country from theocratic rule.
Maybe Dennis Rodman can make a pit stop in Turkey on his way back from North Korea. There is full-blown epidemic of crimes against sanity this week.
I have posted here on former threads that Erdogan is a dangerous Trojan Horse. Both to the west & to Islam.
It is too easy to give him an Otoman revivalist cloak or a Saladanist sword. He sees himself as Alexandar The Great .
His wife is modelled on Roxana not a concubine.
“Mustafa Kemal Ataturk must be rolling in his grave right about now.”
I’d like to think so but still want to believe that the Turkish Military will step in before too much longer. That’s been one role of the military, to help guide that country from its darkness into a modern state in spite of the Islamists, Just before I got there in 1958, there was a bloody riot in Istanbul, at least 6-Greek priests were burned to death downtown. A year or so after returning to CONUS, a PM was overthrown and if memory serves me correctly, hung in its notorious prison island in the Sea of Marmara.
Ataturk was revered back then but I do wonder about now. One factor that seemed to mitigate against Turkey really becoming a modern state was the backwardness of the rural areas back then. However some areas since then have changed greatly, expanded beyond expectations and with some semblance of a civilized life in some of those then rural towns.
Ataturk built up the military as the supposed guarantor of the Turkish constitution that he’d had drafted. That’s what Erdogan is trying to tear down, bit by bit so that no one shall notice before it’s too late.
One last comment: While back in 1958-59 Turks couldn’t be said to be strongly religious in many ways, it was not then safe to talk against Islam, especially in the countryside, nor to talk against the mores of a small town, or to then cause harm or severe damage in such rural areas. Erdogan has built on that nature of many Turks and is becoming what the Professor has so well described.
Ataturk was a man far ahead of his time and place. Revered as he was, his teachings could not ultimately overcome the tribalism that has existed there for centuries.
Clues to this could be found in Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds, who fared barely better under Turkish rule than they did under Saddam Hussein’s genocidal watch.
The Kurds were a nasty bunch also. They used to / still do scam back over the border to refuge in Iraq.
At one time & no doubt still on the books , Kurds were Europe’s most wanted terrorists& murderers. Honour killings are common.
Never forget the Armenians also.
Unfortunately, one of Erdogan’s top priorities since he first came to power has been marginalizing the military leadership, retiring/imprisoning those who might oppose him and proceeding with the islamification of the officer corps.
It is similar to what Morsi is trying to do in Egypt, but Erdogan has had ten years and an unquestioned parliamentary majority to get it done.
Erdogan:
“And that is why it is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism … — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”
Isn’t that Zionismophobia?
Turkey is a member of NATO.
Don’t worry. I’m sure Secretary of State John Kerry is on top of this.
And the insane, regressive commie koranimal in the WH looks to this guy for tips on raising “his” daughters. I wonder if those kids still have their clitoris.
That’s the best Netanyahu could do? Strongly condemn? Why not ask Erdogan “then what is Islamism?”
I’ve long wondered if Erdogan is distantly related to the late Ahmet Ertegun. When Ahmet died a few years ago, I watched several tributes to him and I know he immigrated to the U.S. as the son of a Turkish diplomat and that his family had long been part of what we’d call the Turkish “ruling class”. So maybe Erdogan and Ertegun are Anglicized variations of the same name.
How ironic if the guy who founded Atlantic Records and signed the leading musicians associated with America’s cultural revolution such as Led Zeppelin, Clapton, Rolling Stones, etc. is a distant cousin of the current Turkish leader who is causing his country to regress backward culturally.