01-May-15: Turkish mayor's rudeness provokes US ambassador to change hair color but the background is far uglier

Ankara's mayor, Melih Gökçek
Funny-strange more than funny-ha-ha, and a conspiracist
to boot

Reports are circulating in the media today about the long-time mayor of Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and the juvenile rudeness he has just directed against Obama administration officials in Washington. The Guardian reports it this way today:

The mayor of Turkey’s capital city has been accused of hypocrisy after tweeting a string of sexist and anti-American comments against a US official – but launching hundreds of lawsuits against people who use Twitter to criticise him. Melih Gökçek directed his remarks at Marie Harf, the acting spokeswoman for the US State Department, after a Turkish pro-government newspaper criticised her for being “silent” on unrest in Baltimore despite repeated US government criticism of Turkey during the violent crackdown on Gezi Park protestors in the summer of 2013. One of Gökçek’s tweets included pictures of Baltimore police tackling a protester, alongside an image of Harf, above the words: “Where are you stupid blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?” Above the image, Gökçek wrote: “Come on blonde, answer now!”

The Guardian's editors go on to recite some of the history of this "notoriously Ankara mayor". It also notes that he's a hypocrite and something of a coward who

"regularly lashes out at his opponents on Twitter [but] is less happy to be the subject of online criticism... Mayor of Ankara since 1994 and a veteran member of the ruling Justice and Development party (AK), Gökçek is one of the most polarising figures in Turkish politics."

US ambassador Bass and today's Instagram image
[Image Source]

An AFP report this afternoon ["US envoy hits back at Ankara mayor: ‘We’re all blonde’"] makes some similar points while reporting on a novel kind of push-back from the US ambassador to Turkey:

The US ambassador to Turkey on Friday hit back at sexist remarks by Ankara’s maverick mayor to the US State Department spokeswoman in unusual style, posting a picture of himself with blond hair. Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek, a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had on Wednesday fired off an extraordinary diatribe on Twitter over the Baltimore rioting, telling the US State Department acting spokeswoman Marie Harf to “come on blonde, answer now.”...Harf herself had refused to rise to the bait of the comments, saying in Washington: “I really don’t think I’m going to dignify them with a response.” But US ambassador to Turkey John Bass took to Instagram to make his response, posting a picture of himself with his normally brown hair turned blond. “American diplomats: we’re all blonde,” he wrote in English and Turkish. [AFP, May 1, 2015]

Trouble is, both articles fail to point out that the Turkish politician, a close ally of Turkey's rather difficult president, is a lot worse than just a fat-mouthed crank. There's considerable malevolence in the man and his career, as we wrote some months ago ["14-Jan-15: A reminder that hateful conspiracy theories are not only found in dark corners"] in a post focusing on him. 

We quoted a news report from a serious Turkish source that eventually got almost zero news coverage, though it was tied to the tragic terror killings of French Jews in Paris this past January. Here it is again:

Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek has alleged that last week's deadly attacks on a French satirical magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris that left 17 people dead are the result of France expressing support for Palestine, and that Israeli intelligence is behind the attacks, the semi-official Anadolu news agency reported... Gökçek attended the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Gölbaşı youth branch fourth ordinary district congress on Sunday and mentioned the terrorist attacks in France. He said Israel was annoyed with the lower house of French parliament for voting for the recognition of a Palestinian state and with France's vote in favor of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for the same recognition. “Israel certainly doesn't want this sentiment to expand in Europe. That's why it is certain that Mossad is behind these kinds of incidents. Mossad enflames Islamophobia by causing such incidents,” Gökçek said. He claimed that after the Paris attacks, around 50 mosques and some Muslim individuals had been targeted but such incidents were not reported on by the international media. “Palestine being recognized as a state is why these [attacks] have taken place,” he concluded. [Today's Zaman, a major Turkish newspaper, January 12, 2015 - as quoted in our earlier blog post]

Half a year earlier, in July 2014 Gökçek supported the antisemitic tweet made by Turkish singer Yıldız Tilbe: "God bless Hitler, it was even too few what he did to the Jews, he was right" and "The Jews will be destroyed by Muslims, in the name of Allah, not much time left for it be done". [Source: Wikipedia]

When public figures, especially those in ambitious, aspirational states of the Middle East, take the lead in propagating anti-Jewish conspiracies against a background of murdered Jews. we don't have much of a sense of humour. 

We wish the news-reporting industry took a little more trouble in the profiles they publish of jackasses like Gökçek. He's not a mere buffoon, and taunting him with dyed hair is missing the point: this is a rabble-rousing antisemite whose dignified public office provides him with cover to sow the seeds of anti-Jewish sentiment - as if there were not enough already - in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. 

16-Sep-06: Peace: What Will It Take?

Don't be misled by the title. The subject of what it will take to create a state of peace between the Arabs and Israel is too large, too complicated for this blog.

To be clear: this is not because we don't want peace, but because peace is a complicated thing, built on a myriad of changed relationships and conditions.

No, this blog is to briefly showcase a bleak, very black-and-white viewpoint. Not ours, but that of a noted veteran expert on Islam, Prof. Moshe Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Speaking at last week's conference on countering terrorism at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, Sharon said: "There is no possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians whatsoever - ever." He's especially troubled by the role of Mahmoud Ahmadinijad ... and throws some light on what the role of a religious lunatic at the head of a major country can mean for everyone else.

Very briefly, some other points made in Prof. Sharon's analysis:

• "The root of the problem between us and the Arab world is Islam. Islam is not only a religion. It is a culture, politics, a state. Islam is everything. It has been like this, and it will be like this for the foreseeable future. Islam is a messianic religion. From the very beginning, it talked about the end of the world."
• From his study of Iranian culture, literature, newspapers and broadcasts and from interviews with major players in the Islamic regime, Sharon concludes that a deep belief in a Shiite messiah is at the root of Iran’s nuclear project.
• “What today moves the Iranian government, its prime minister Ahmedinijad, is first and foremost the wish to bring about the Twelfth Imam, also known as the Mahdi. They truly believe that the Shiite messiah, the Twelfth Imam is here, and that he will reveal himself… What moves the Iranian government and leadership today is first and foremost the wish to bring about the Twelfth Imam."
• Western officials fail to grasp that the Arab and Islamic world truly see Israel’s establishment as a “reversal of history” and are therefore unable to ever accept peaceful relations with it.
• From Moslems’ perspective, “Islamic territory was taken away from Islam by Jews. You know by now that this can never be accepted, not even one meter. So everyone who thinks Tel Aviv is safe is making a grave mistake. Territory which at one time was dominated by Islamic rule, now has become non-Moslem. Non-Moslems are independent of Islamic rule and Jews have created their own independent state. It is anathema. Worse, Israel, a non-Moslem state, is ruling over Moslems. It is unthinkable that non-Moslems should rule over Moslems.”
• The power of the ayatollahs in Iran comes from the grassroots and popular belief that they can contact the Mahdi. Everybody believes. How will they bring him? By an apocalypse. He (the Mahdi) needs a war. He cannot come into this world without an Armageddon. He wants an Armageddon. The earlier we understand, the better. Ahmadinejad wants nuclear weapons for this.
• Israel is a side issue for Iran. Iran is using Israel as a means to enter the Islamic world, to dominate it. "But they cannot bluff the Saudis, the Wahabbis. The Shi'ites (Iran) are hated by the Sunnis. The Saudis are far more apprehensive of nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran than Israel."
• “What is the difference between Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Judaism speaks about national salvation: at the end of the story, when the world becomes a better place, Israel will be in its own land, ruled by its own king and serving G-d. Christianity speaks about the idea that every single person in the world can be saved from his sins, while Islam speaks about ruling the world. I can quote here in Arabic, but there is no point in quoting Arabic, so let me quote a verse in English: ‘Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions.’"
• "The idea, then, is not that the whole world would necessarily become Moslem at this time, but that the whole world would be subdued under the rule of Islam... This is why [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad seeks nuclear weapons,” Prof. Sharon is quoted as saying. “The faster we realize this, the better.”
• The Iranian government is seeking nuclear weapons in order to bring about an apocalypse.

We're not in favor of simplistic analysis or of paying attention to pooled ignorance. Political life in most places is filled to overflowing with both.

On the other hand, ignoring, ostrich-like, what's happening in the Islamic and Arab worlds, and in Iran, and shutting out the shrieks of hatred - the calls to wipe Israel off the map, the rising mass-hysteria for war and global domination - that emanate from those places are among the most foolish and irresponsible things that politicians can do.

Some politicians do, however, get it.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a rising Adolf Hitler with his stand on Iran's nuclear programme, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said [in April 2006]. Merkel said the threat of Iran's nuclear ambitions is similar to Germany's Nazi regime, adding that the world must act now to prevent it building an atomic bomb. "In the early 1930s when National Socialism (Nazism) was on the rise, there were many who said 'It's only rhetoric - don't get excited'," she told a forum of world leaders. Iran "has blatantly crossed the red line", she said. "We must prevent Iran from developing its nuclear programme... A president who questions Israel's right to exist, a president who denies the Holocaust cannot expect to receive any tolerance from Germany."

It's far from clear that the German leader's plain-spoken words stand a chance of being heeded. And just as doubtful that the real significance of the hateful, deadly malevolence emanating from Teheran is being understood in all the places it needs to be understood.

POSTSCRIPT:

An additional morsel of food for thought - a quotation of Adolf Hitler from 1922: "Once the hatred and the battle against the Jews have been really stirred up, their resistance will necessarily crumble in the shortest possible time. They are totally defenseless, and no one will stand up to protect them."