How the Paris attacks turned into a war of words between Israel and Turkey
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Version 0 of 1. The two nations were once allies, but things have rarely been warm between Turkey and Israel since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power in 2003. Things took a marked turn for the worse after the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, which Turkey's foreign minister once described as "like 9/11" for his country. In the past week, however, after terror attacks in Paris have dragged the two nations into a new war of words, it looks like something remarkable has happened: Relations have gotten even worse. The problem was sparked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to travel to France in the wake of Friday's attack on a Kosher supermarket that left four people dead. Netanyahu participated in a march in Paris on Sunday, offering support for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and free speech. He made some provocative statements, including a call for French Jews to emigrate to Israel. The Israeli leader's time in Paris prompted some criticism at home and abroad, but Netanyahu's presence seems to have caused exceptional offense to Erdoğan. At a news conference on Monday, he said that Netanyahu should not have attended Sunday's march when Israel had committed "state terrorism by massacring 2,500 people in Gaza." The attack on the Israeli prime minister didn't go unanswered. "Civilized, politically correct Europe's silence over a anti-Semitic, neighborhood bully like Erdogan and his gang takes us back to the 1930s," Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, said Wednesday. Netanyahu himself also responded through his press office. "I believe his shameful remarks must be repudiated by the international community, because the war against terror will only succeed if it's guided by moral clarity," he was quoted as saying to members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Wednesday. "[Erdoğan] said that Israel should not have been represented in the march in Paris, and the reason he gave, was our actions to defend our citizens against the thousands of rockets hurled at our cities by the terrorists of Hamas." On Thursday things went even further, with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu comparing Netanyahu to the Paris attackers. “Netanyahu, as the head of a government that massacred children playing on a beach in Gaza through aerial bombing, that destroyed thousands of houses, that made the killing of Palestinians routine on all occasions, that killed our citizens on board a humanitarian aid ship in international waters, committed crimes against humanity just like those terrorists who carried out the Paris massacre,” Davutoglu said to reporters. “He can’t escape this.” Erdoğan often makes fiery comments about Israel, but the circumstances of the Paris shooting seem to have inflamed the situation further. While both countries have condemned the attack and both suffer similar threats from Islamist extremism, their leaders view the situation in France very differently. For Israel, the Paris attacks are partly a result of how anti-Israeli sentiment in Europe has blurred the lines into violent anti-Semitism, but for Turkey (which has banned the publication of the latest Charlie Hebdo cover) the presence of Netanyahu at the rally ignored what it saw as Israel's crimes against Muslims in Gaza. |