Turkey claimed the moral high ground last year in actively supporting the Mavi Marmara flotilla aimed to break Israel’s “siege” of Gaza. Truth be told the siege was in fact shared with Egypt and relates primarily to armaments, rockets and related war-faring materials (Israel itself transferred about 1 million tons of aid, 137 million liters of fuel and 50,000 tons of cooking gas last year across its borders with Gaza, an effective Hamas dictatorship in which free elections were held one time, and one time only).
The Marmara flotilla ended up with 9 activists dead and a public relations disaster for Israel, when the soldiers initially rappelled from a helicopter onto the ship armed naively with paintball guns only to be attacked with knives, lead pipes and hand guns. Turkey now plans support for many more and larger flotillas.
Turkey saw this incident as their opportunistic goose laying the golden egg of Turkish pre-eminence in the Middle East, a new world Ottoman Sultanate as it were. Yet hypocrisy drips deep from its own poisoned well. The Armenian genocide is still “persona non grata” and its Kurdish population, now at 18% is still largely disenfranchised. An estimated 30-40,000 Kurdish lives have been lost in the last 3 decades, during the Kurd’s attempt to achieve a nominal degree of autonomy, including political and language rights. Turkey has already disqualified a number of candidates for the June parliamentary elections, most from the Kurdish Peace and Democracy party.
Yet Turkey sees fit to wax eloquent about the Gazan’s rights to open borders, yet nary a word is said about the more than 15,000 rockets and mortars fired on Israeli civilians from Gaza since Hamas took power.
I would heartily support, and so should the relevant democratic countries and associations in the area, a flotilla sailing from Tel Aviv or Cyprus to Istanbul, with Kurdish and Armenian protestors on board, carrying Kurdish and Armenian books, cultural objects, accompanied by reporters and banned political candidates. I would not hold my breath waiting for the premier human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and others to join the flotilla – once Israel is removed as their “Cause Celebre”, motivations droop dramatically.
Let Turkey show the world their real taste for free expression, for democracy at work, for open borders. Then on arrival in Istanbul, the intended capital of any future Turkish Caliphate, the flotilla should disembark and a caravan of participants and good should wend their way through Anatolia to Eastern Turkey, to the centers of Kurdish and Armenian culture.
If the flotilla and caravan proceed unhindered, I and most of the world will publicly laud Turkey for their tolerance and democratic ideals. I somehow doubt, however, that the demand that Turkey made on the Israeli Navy, namely to allow unhindered access to all imports including armaments for Gaza, that this same access will be violently refused, for a peaceful flotilla of bibles and free speechers, from outside the controlled and sanctioned politics of Turkey.
My $10,000 seed money is ready and waiting, for just such a flotilla. Any takers?
Published on SlantRight
