MR
31.01.09
Erdoğan Does Davos:
Turkish Nation Unified . . . for Now
by Cem Ryan


His face the color of the Turkish flag, his right arm pinning the panel moderator to his seat, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan preferred not to listen to any more Israeli bullshit about Gaza.  With finger-wagging Israeli president Peres regurgitating the usual self-serving argument of self-defense to justify the criminal acts of his state, Erdoğan let him have it with both barrels.

At long last a head of state has taken a stand against the war criminal behavior of the government of Israel, as aided and abetted by the power and money of the inglorious United States of America.  It is no longer enough to say that Israel has the right to self-defense.  It is like coming in the middle of the movie and deciding who committed the crime.  The full story of the theft of Palestinian lands and the Israeli policy of grinding the Palestinian people into “human dust” goes back to the birth of the Zionist movement.1  BRAVO ERDOĞAN!!!

Erdoğan has defended his right to disagree.  And he has brought great credit to Turkey for standing up and defending the human rights of an oppressed people, in this case, the Palestinians.  May Erdoğan similarly defend the rights of his fellow Turks.  Just because they disagree with him and his domestic policies is no reason for arrests, police beatings, and their indictment as traitors.

By his courageous stand Erdoğan has unified a badly divided nation.  We shall soon see the degree to which he is an equally passionate advocate for human rights in his own country.

 

1  "Some of them would die and most of them would turn into human dust and the waste of society, and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab countries," said Israeli government analysts dealing with the Palestinian ‘problem’ back in 1948 (Israeli State Archives regarding Palestinian refugees in 1948, as cited by Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan, Columbia, 1988).  See, also, "Human Dust: The Palestinian Genocide," For Reasons Unknown, 30 December 2008.

Cem Ryan, Ph.D., lives in Istanbul, Turkey.  Read his blog For Reasons Unknown at <forreasonsunknown-cem.blogspot.com/>.
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