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Turkey in Crisis

(Hudson Institute-New York) Harold Rhode - Events in Turkey indicate that much of the Turkish public increasingly believes that their Prime Minister blundered by unnecessarily provoking a crisis with Israel. It now appears that the average Turk now understands that this crisis has hurt Turkey internationally and politically and that there was no reason for Turkey to provoke Israel. Last week, there was an attack on a Turkish naval installation in the port of Iskenderun on Turkey's southern coast. Erdogan blamed this attack on the PKK (a Kurdish terrorist organization), and insinuated that Israel was behind this attack. The military launched an investigation of the attack, and issued a statement on June 20 that there had been no foreign involvement whatever in that incident. Until this announcement, the Turkish military had been notably silent about the flotilla incident. The public, however, interpreted the military's silence as disapproval of the government's having created the crisis. By issuing the statement that there had been no foreign involvement, the military showed it felt confident that the Turkish public was holding Erdogan, Davutoglu, and their cronies responsible for the flotilla blunder: The military was indirectly accusing the government of lying to the people about the facts. The writer served in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment from 1994 until his recent retirement.
2010-06-25 09:39:12
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