Turkey: NATO's Pro-Putin Ally

In this mailing: - Burak Bekdil: Turkey: NATO's Pro-Putin Ally - Guy Millière: Israel Needs a Statesman – Now [] [Turkey: NATO's Pro-Putin Ally]( by Burak Bekdil • May 4, 2022 at 5:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - Western leaders shrugged it off when, in 2016, Erdoğan said in plain language that Turkey did not need to join the European Union "at all costs" and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations. - Erdoğan's popularity, since he came to power in 2002, has worked as a self-poisoning instrument in the Turkish society, increasingly fuelling anti-Western sentiment, particularly anti-Americanism. - The... poll also indicated that 48% of the Turkish public think that the U.S. and NATO are responsible for the situation in Ukraine. Turks also think that Russia is their country's third most important partner. - Nearly six out of 10 Turks (58.3%), according to the GMFUS poll, see the U.S. as the country's biggest threat, while 31% said Russia and 29% said Israel. The percentage of Turks who say the U.S. should help solve global problems stands at just 6%. - While sending smiley messages of reconciliation to the West and the West's partners in the Middle East, including Israel, Erdoğan keeps fuelling anti-Western sentiments in Turkey. - When they are not reading pro-Erdoğan newspapers, Turks are watching pro-Erdoğan television channels featuring commentators who blame the war on Washington and NATO's eastward expansion. - Turkey... dismissed the idea of send its S-400 missiles to Ukraine to help Kyiv resist Russian troops. - ""The Russians are buying houses and other properties in Turkey, taking advantage of the law that allows foreigners to become Turkish citizens if they invest at least $250,000. Many Russians are able to circumvent Western sanctions by transferring their money from Russian to Turkish banks and converting their rubles to Turkish liras or other currencies. All NATO member countries, with the exception of Turkey, have imposed strict sanctions on Russia..." — Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2022. - "Turkey's central bank took in about $3 billion in just two days in mid-March... That money was likely largely composed of deposits from Russians." — Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2022 - This is how NATO ally Turkey is "fighting" the Western battle against Russian aggression. In return, the Biden administration seems to be rewarding Erdoğan. - The Biden administration, evidently, at the behest of Turkey, has tried to kill the EastMed gas pipeline project, which could supply gas from Cyprus and Israel, via Greece, to Europe. - Worse, the US State Department, in a March 17 letter to Congress, said that a potential sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey would be "in line with U.S. national security interests" and would also "serve NATO's long-term unity." - Greece, which recently has experienced countless illegal Turkish overflights, not to mention the last few years, must be thrilled. - Turkey needs to start acting like an ally; not a deceitful, pro-Putin ally. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's popularity, since he came to power in 2002, has worked as a self-poisoning instrument in the Turkish society, increasingly fuelling anti-Western sentiment, particularly anti-Americanism. Turkey needs to start acting like an ally; not a deceitful, pro-Putin ally. Pictured: Erdoğan meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on March 10, 2017. (Image source: kremlin.ru) Turkey's "balancing act" during the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the result of the country's Islamist leader's two-decade long indoctrination of a generation of Turks to make them "pious." President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may or may not have raised pious generations, as he declared was his political mission, but he has definitely raised an anti-Western generation. That anti-Western sentiment once again makes Turkey the odd-man-out in NATO. Western leaders shrugged it off when, in 2016, Erdoğan said in plain language that Turkey did not need to join the European Union "at all costs" and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations. Earlier, in 2013, Turkey had signed up as a "dialogue partner" saying it shared "the same destiny" as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) -- which was formed in 2001 as a regional security bloc. [Continue Reading Article]( [] [Israel Needs a Statesman – Now]( by Guy Millière • May 4, 2022 at 4:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - The years before 2021 had brought relative calm and improvements. The United States had cut much of its funding for the Palestinian Authority, which had been used for terrorism. As a result, terrorism had substantially decreased. When the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and drastically sanctioned Iran, the mullahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had less money to finance and arm Hamas. ISIS was crushed. A rapprochement began between Israel and the Arab world and led to the Abraham Accords, signed between the United States, Israel, and five Muslim countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Kosovo and Sudan. For the first time in decades in the Middle East, "peace, security and prosperity" held sway. - The election of US President Joe Biden, however, quickly revealed that better lives for people in the region, including the Palestinians, were about to end. The Biden administration immediately returned to the policies of the Obama years. It restored the funding that Palestinian leaders use for terrorism, without first stipulating that the terrorism had to stop. The Biden administration resumed nuclear negotiations with Iran -- through an intermediary from, of all places Russia. (Iran did not allow the US officials in the room.) The US government itself had named Iran "the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism;" now the Biden administration was again enabling the ruling mullahs -- who call for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" -- soon to have an unlimited number of nuclear weapons, the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them, and billions of dollars for terrorism and resuming their efforts to take over the oil-rich Middle East. Meanwhile, America's interlocutor, Russia, has been working with Iran on how it can evade US sanctions for invading Ukraine so that both countries may further enrich themselves by Iran selling Russia's oil. - When "settlement expansion" is made to sound as grave a transgression as murder, terrorism will resume. - Since June 2021, for the first time in 12 years, Israel seems to have a weak prime minister, Naftali Bennett. He has evidently promised to work in "quiet coordination" with the Biden administration and never criticizes the administration's anti-Israel policies. - The leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas see that an anti-Israel administration is in place in Washington and draw their own conclusions. - Sunni Arab leaders are currently "trying to decide whether to grovel to Iran, or stand with Israel... Israel has but one option – to become the strong tribe of the Middle East". — Caroline Glick, Israel Hayom, March 25, 2022. - Israel needs its strong tribe status. Israel needs a statesman. Now. Since June 2021, for the first time in 12 years, Israel seems to have a weak prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Israel needs its strong tribe status. Israel needs a statesman. Now. Pictured: Bennett (right) and his foreign minister, Yair Lapid, on June 13, 2021. (Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images) Beersheba, Israel. March 22. Mohammed Abu al-Kiyan rams his car into a rabbi riding a bicycle, killing him, then drives to a gas station and stabs a woman to death there, and then drives to a shopping mall and stabs two more people to death. After fleeing the mall, he crashed his car into another vehicle and was finally shot and killed by armed civilians as he charged at one of them with a knife. On March 27, Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbarieh open fire at people standing at a bus stop in Hadera, kill two Border Police officers and wound ten more people before they, too, are shot and killed by off-duty police officers who were eating nearby. March 29, in Bnei Brak, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Diaa Hamarsheh, murders five people in a shooting spree before being shot dead by policemen, one of whom Hamarsheh had mortally wounded. [Continue Reading Article]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [RSS]( [Donate]( Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved. You are subscribed to this list as {EMAIL} You can change how you receive these emails: [Update your subscription preferences]( or [Unsubscribe from this list]( [Gatestone Institute]( 14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022