Turkey and Israel: What Happened?
Claire Berlinski, Ed. ·
Nov 19, 2010 at 2:11am
Last September, the Discovery Institute invited me to Seattle to talk about Turkey's relationship with Israel. For those of you who couldn't make it, here's the video.
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Jun '10
Re: Turkey and Israel: What Happened?
Claire - Thanks so much for this. Erdogan's inconsistent behavior to Israel in the last year or so has now been put into perspective. I was and am still disturbed at Turkey's complicity with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and the general hostility exhibited to Israel by the Erdogan government, so much so that I felt that Turkey's continued membership in NATO should be re-examined. Of course, the effectiveness of NATO going forward is a wholly other topic suffice to say my concern was more about Turkey's continued access to sensitive NATO intelligence that could prove harmful to Israel if somehow fallen into Iran's, Hezbollah's or Hamas' hands via Turkish contacts.
When I questioned a former U.S. intel officer on Erdogan's background (where he came from since information about him in western sources is scant), his behavior and Turkey's apparent drift to a more fundamentalist Islamist posture, he deflected answering any of this in any specificity (I believe out of ignorance) and instead prattled on about the history of the fez!!
Your talk was enlightening and I'll be scouring your other writing on Turkey going forward.
All the best.
Sep '10
Re: Turkey and Israel: What Happened?
That is a fascinating interview. So the mother of all flotilla's never or at least hasn't yet set sail. I hope tensions have eased some. No "frontline" documentaries on that radical Imam yet either...alas.