Israel said on Saturday it was recalling its diplomats from Turkey after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke out against Israel during a pro-Palestinian rally in a way that was almost interpreted as a threat of war.
While Iran had already directly announced that it would launch further war fronts against Israel through groups like Hezbollah, it was more likely that Erdogan would be bluffing with populist phrases. He needs the approval of conservative circles within Turkey and must put the country on a new economic footing in order to prevent the economy from collapsing.
In Istanbul, Erdogan called for a ceasefire in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters protesting against Israel’s actions in the war on the northern Gaza Strip, describing the country as an “occupier” in a fiery speech.
“We will tell the whole world that Israel is a war criminal,”he added.
“We are preparing for it. We will declare Israel a war criminal.”He reportedly said in the same speech that Turkey could show up “unexpectedly any night.” It’s probably just bluster to satisfy the public, but it cannot be ruled out that if the conflict escalates, Erdogan will join the Moscow-Tehran axis in the hope of furthering his own empire. The caliphate was originally Arab-led; then control passed to the Turks and finally back to the Arabs.
Israel responded on Saturday by announcing that it would reassess its diplomatic relations with Turkey and withdraw its diplomats from the country.
The 100th anniversary of modern Turkey takes place on Sunday and newspaper headlines could be dominated by news of Saturday’s rally rather than celebrations honoring the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, analysts said. Ataturk is still considered an icon, but he represented the separation of state and religion. In recent years, Erdogan has sought to enhance his own image and diminish Ataturk’s.
The gamble is extremely dangerous and could herald the end of Turkey in its current form. It seems like a hidden signal to the West to help Turkey economically or risk war. The US has been using a strategy of economic weakening against the Turks for years and there was a bizarre attempted coup against Erdogan.
Turkey’s central bank on Thursday raised its key interest rate from 30% to 35% in a bid to continue curbing inflation.
The turnaround began in June when Erdogan named former Wall Street banker Hafize Gaye Erkan as the new central bank governor. She worked as a vice president at Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
The central bank forecasts inflation will reach just over 60% by the end of 2023, while the Turkish lira has plunged, making imports more expensive.
Foreign influence
The Grand National Assembly indignantly rejected the Sèvres Peace Treaty, signed by the government in Istanbul on August 10, 1920, which stipulated extensive control by the Allies (British, French, Greeks, Russians and Italians) over a residual Ottoman state. The Treaty of Sèvres ultimately lapsed and, after negotiations with the Allied-recognized government in Ankara, it was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
On March 3, 1924, the National Assembly decided to abolish the office of caliph. The next day, all members of the Osman family had to leave Turkey. As a result, the dervish monasteries and religious courts were closed, religious schools for clergy and judges were closed, compulsory education was introduced and all schools were placed under the control of a ministry of education. Atatürk’s imperious and restlessly forward-pushing nature was committed to the model of a modern republican state based on a Western model.
The ban on religious brotherhoods and orders occurred during the same period. In eastern Anatolia, there was sometimes bitter resistance to these developments, which was met with the declaration of a state of emergency, harsh police measures and arrests. In this context, 138 death sentences were handed down by so-called independence courts. In 1934, a second clothing reform took place, which only allowed clergy to wear their robes in their work areas (mosque, funerals etc.).
Jurisprudence based on the Koran was replaced by civil law, which was adopted with only minor adjustments. The legal takeover also included modern inheritance law and family law in the Civil Code. In addition, German commercial law and Italian criminal law were adopted.
In the fall of 1929, Mustafa Kemal commented on the subject of religion in an interview with Emil Ludwig as follows:
“Are you surprised that the mosques are emptying so quickly even though no one is closing them? The Turk was not a Muslim by birth, the shepherds only know the sun, clouds and stars; Farmers all over the world understand this the same way, because the harvest depends on the weather. The Turk worships nothing but nature.”
The emerging East-West conflict and the Soviet Union’s attempts to exert influence on Turkey led to Turkey’s final abandonment of its foreign policy neutrality. In 1950, Turkey took part in the Korean War as part of a UN contingent and joined NATO in 1952.
İsmet İnönü became prime minister again and ruled from 1961 to 1965. In 1963, Turkey concluded an association agreement with the then European Economic Community. But the subsequent government was also unable to get the problems under control. Left and right-wing terrorist activities increased and the economic situation deteriorated rapidly. In 1971, the army intervened in politics again without carrying out a coup. Under military influence, more repressive measures were implemented against the population.
After the war, Inönü aligned its foreign policy with the USA, which increasingly interfered in the politics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated noticeably following the termination of the Neutrality Treaty in August 1946. In March 1947, the USA took over the British protective power role for Greece and Turkey, which also received loans to counteract the expansion of power in the wake of Soviet territorial claims in Turkey. Because of these disputes, Turkey finally gave up its neutrality and joined NATO, which had been founded three years earlier, together with Greece on February 18, 1952. On October 31, 1959, Ankara agreed to the deployment of US medium-range missiles. The USA began delivering military supplies as early as January 9, 1948. On July 14, 1948, 14 communists were convicted in a show trial. At the end of the year, Turkey joined UNESCO. General Evren, the GLADIO man
The military staged another coup on September 12, 1980. The trigger was the very unstable phase in the 1970s, which was characterized by changing political coalitions, political and economic instability and acts of terror by the extreme right and left of the political spectrum. The military under General Kenan Evren imposed martial law on the country and banned all political parties. The junta cracked down heavily on Kurdish separatists and left-wing opposition figures. On November 7, 1982, the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, which was presented by the military and is still valid today, was approved by a referendum and came into force on November 9, 1982.
Evren was the commander of the Turkish branch of NATO’s Gladio program, the so-called counter-guerrilla. He became part of the new ruling triumvirate after a coup in 1980. Parliament was dissolved. The head of the CIA’s Ankara office, Paul B. Henze, received a call from the White House Situation Room: “Paul, your guys did it.”
The CIA also maintains a number of spies in the Turkish secret service. In 1977, former intelligence deputy and CIA collaborator Sabahattin Savasman admitted this.
Erdogan’s early radical phase
In his youth, Erdoğan is said to have been a member of the “Association of Pioneers” group; a militant sub-organization of the Millî Selamet Partisi. The founding of the club was a reaction to, according to the statutes, “anarchist conditions” and competition from Gray Wolves. This National Salvation Party MSP was an Islamist-oriented political party in Turkey.
The MSP was founded on October 11, 1972 by members of the Millî Nizam Partisi (National Order Party) (MNP), which was banned after the 1971 military coup. The MNP was the first political party of the Millî Görüş movement. The National Order Party propagated Islamic moral values and nationalist sentiments and defended statist economic policies and state-led industrial development policies. Millî Görüş is, among other things, the second largest Muslim religious community in Germany. It is monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution because of radical tendencies and is based in Kerpen.
In 1970, Erdoğan was elected chairman of the youth organization of Necmettin Erbakan’s MNP for Beyoğlu district. However, the party was banned by the military in 1971. As early as October 11, 1972, Erbakan founded the National Salvation Party (MSP), which is assigned to the spectrum of the religious-conservative right and was represented on three occasions by the end of the 1970s
coalition governments was involved. Erdoğan also joined this party, where he initially had a modest career as an official and otherwise worked in smaller private companies.
In 1984 he moved up to the board of the successor party that had since been founded, the Welfare Party (RP), and became deputy chairman. After it was banned, he belonged to the next successor party, the Virtue Party (FP), until he left in 1998. During his time as mayor, Erdoğan made a much-quoted statement at a press conference: Being secular and a Muslim at the same time is not possible (Hem laik hem Müslüman olunmaz). In an interview with the newspaper Milliyet, he described himself as a follower of Sharia law. In January 1998, the Turkish Constitutional Court banned the Welfare Party. She was accused of sympathizing with jihad and the introduction of Sharia law, which contradicted the state’s basic principle of secularism.
In 2001 he founded the Party for Justice and Development (AKP) with other former members of the Virtue Party.
As a result of the ISKI scandal, Erdoğan, who was initially considered to have no chance, was given the opportunity to succeed as a candidate in the Istanbul local elections and thus began his political career.
Bildeberger Koc
In a leaked telephone conversation, Erdoğan called on the President of the Chamber of Shipping Industry to protest against the awarding of contracts to build warships to a shipyard belonging to Koç Holding. Erdoğan saw the industrialist Mustafa Koç as his opponent.
The Koç Holding supervisory board included Heinrich von Pierer and Dieter Christoph Urban, both former Siemens managers.
Mustafa Koc, Bilderberg participant and chairman of Koç Holding A.S. was well connected. In addition to the Tofa automobile factory in Bursa, its business areas included Ford Otosan, which produces automobiles for Fiat/Peugeot and Ford, household appliances (Arçelik), food (Tat Konserve, also Migros), financial services (Yapi Kredi Bankasi), energy, information technology ( Beko Electronics), Tourism and Construction. A majority of the companies are run in cooperation with foreign companies such as Ford, Unicredit, Case New Holland and others.
The Koç Holding supervisory board included Heinrich von Pierer and Dieter Christoph Urban, both former Siemens managers. Despite the corruption scandal at Siemens, the CDU and especially Angela Merkel held on to von Pierer as head of the Council for Innovation and Growth in the long term; However, on April 17, 2008, the Chancellor declared her intention to forgo Heinrich von Pierer in this role.
