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In this mailing:
by Burak Bekdil
• October 30, 2014 at 5:00 am
Until
Jerusalem is the capital of a Palestinian state and Israel is pushed back
to its pre-1967 borders, it will be "halal" for Erdogan to
blame Israel for global warming, the Ebola virus, starvation in Africa
and every other misfortune the world faces.
On
the press freedoms index 2014 of Reporters without Borders, Turkey ranks
an embarrassing 154th, a score worse than Burundi, Myanmar, Ethiopia,
Bangladesh, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Libya, Uganda and Kyrgyzstan, among
others. Once again, Erdogan corrupted facts and figures in order to bash
Israel.
Holy
struggle against Israel is a prerequisite for Erdogan's pro-Hamas
Islamism, and the cold war and Erdogan's explosive rhetoric around it
have yielded a treasure-trove of votes in a country that champions
anti-Semitism.
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Turkey's then Prime Minister (now President) Recep
Tayyip Erdogan at a 2009 a panel in Davos, Switzerland, tells Israel's
then President Shimon Peres, "when it comes to killing, you know
well how to kill."
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"The Jewish lobby has lost much of its mythical power. Our
prime minister's rhetoric and actions have largely caused this. The way
he [Erdogan] walked out of the Davos meeting [in 2009] has substantially
tarnished Israel's regional charisma. Despite all that, Israel has been
unable to harm Turkey." This quote was from former senior diplomat
and member of parliament Volkan Bozkir, of Turkey's ruling Justice and
Development Party [AKP], in an interview with the daily Hurriyet
on March 18, 2013. In Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's mini-cabinet
reshuffle last month, Bozkir became Turkey's European Union Minister and
chief negotiator with the club for Turkish membership.
by Malcolm Lowe
• October 30, 2014 at 4:00 am
The
depredations of the "Islamic State" have given Iranians the
opportunity to restore a dominance that they enjoyed intermittently until
the Arabs conquered them. Only the well-justified Western fear of Iranian
nuclear missiles stands in their way.
The
negotiating stance of the P5+1 should be that to grant Iran a leading
role in Iraq and Syria is to do Iran a massive favor and must presuppose
the total elimination of the centrifuges and missiles.
Any
Iranian schoolchild knows that Cyrus the Great created -- in barely a
decade -- a Persian Empire that encompassed most of the Middle East,
including present-day Turkey. His son added Egypt and part of Libya.
"What's more," the Iranian child will proudly add, "I'm
still speaking the language of Cyrus!"
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"Alexander at the Tomb of Cyrus the Great,"
oil on canvas (1796) by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. (Image source:
Wikimedia Commons)
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For many months now, the so-called P5+1 countries have been
negotiating with Iran over the latter's nuclear program. The endless
futile negotiations over how many centrifuges and how fast they should
spin and for how long – have lost their way. Maybe the P5+1 (the
permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) should try a
radically new approach.
Junk your entire nuclear program and hand over all your intercontinental
missiles, they could tell Iran. Just get rid of the lot, like Assad who
junked his chemical weapons. We were going to give him the Gaddafi
treatment, but now he sits safely in power in Damascus. So just eliminate
your foolish threat to ourselves and we shall gratefully watch from afar
while you rebuild the empire of Cyrus.
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