Erdoğan's Turkey: Unwanted in Arab Lands
by Burak Bekdil • July 23rd
- "[Erdogan] does not even understand that Turks are not Arabs and Arabs have no intention go back to Ottoman rule." — Arab attaché.
- Erdoğan in fact has succeeded in a rare achievement: making his country equally unloved by Muslim nations and Israel at the same time.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at an anti-Israel rally in Istanbul, Turkey on May 18, 2018. (Photo by Getty Images)
"We remain most curious," an Arab defense attaché told this author one evening, "how an intelligent man like [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan stubbornly fails to understand that his services are simply unwanted in the Arab world ... How he does not even understand that Turks are not Arabs and Arabs have no intention [to] go back to Ottoman rule." The Arab smiled and added: "Just because he champions the Palestinian cause does not make him a friend of Arabs."
In addition to his ideological kinship with Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups, Erdoğan has been more Arab than the Arabs when it comes to the Arab-Israeli dispute. Erdoğan has apparently been hoping to win allies in the anti-Israeli bloc and votes at home where Palestine is a "holy cause." He has repeatedly called on the Muslim world to unite against Israel.
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