Respected NATO Nation

"In addition to providing cover for Hamas financial transfers, some of the funds transferred by the Union of Good have compensated Hamas terrorists by providing payments to the families of suicide bombers."
U.S. Treasury news release

Brutally sending in the military to break up peaceful demonstrations by Turkish civilians in city parks. A relentless reputation for squandering the opportunity to make Turkish Kurds feel at home in their own country so they would not be so dedicated to demanding a geography of their own by outlawing their language, by refusing them citizenship and equality. Threatening journalists and imprisoning journalistic critics of the government.

Not quite the picture of a Western power entitled to membership in NATO. Nor representing the qualities of a liberal democracy with a robust respect for and practise of human rights that membership in the European Union holds as a pre-requisite. Often enough, with very good reason, the quality of integrity and values can be judged by the company kept by those espousing those ideals but failing to practise them.

Turkey's burgeoning friendship with the terrorist group Hamas, which Turkey's Justice and Development Party under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, characterized by him admiringly, as an excellent government gives pause for sober thought. But Turkey has committed itself to funding the Hamas government in Gaza setting aside $300-million for its use. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal is a welcome presence in Ankara.

Turkey has permitted Hamas to establish operational headquarters in the country for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas). And the founder of the Brigades, Saleh al-Arouri, has kindly permission by the Turkish government to rebuild the West Bank terror infrastructure of Hamas. Imagine; Turkey, a member of NATO, aspiring to EU membership, supporting terrorism.

But it most certainly does. It does so in its friendship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. These are issues and actions that would have been anathema to previous Turkish governments. But the current Islamist government exemplified by the Justice and Development Party is another kettle of stinking fish altogether. The military, which had sworn to uphold Kamal Ataturk's secular Western-oriented and -valued Turkey has been effectively castrated by Mr. Erdogan.

Iran, the very country that is supporting and arming and offering the aid of its Republican Guard al-Quds division to, in battling a rebellion of Sunni Muslims, and whose president, Bashar al-Assad, President Erdogan himself is blisteringly hostile toward, has become Turkey's bosom-buddy. A member of NATO countenances brutal human rights violations in Iran, and its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

And while the UN- and US-imposed sanctions against Iran have cut deeply into the financial stability of Iran because of its intransigence over its nuclear program feared by the international community as a ruse to create an arsenal of nuclear warheads, Turkey has been quietly aiding Iran with "gas-for-gold" transactions. An estimated $2.5-billion in gold was received by Iran from Turkey.

And then there is the association of the Erdogan government with the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a member of the Union of Good (nomenclature bizarrely Orwellian in context) an umbrella organization of over 50 Islamic funds and foundations banned by the U.S. Treasury in 2008 for transferring funds to Hamas.

Darn right we know them by the company they keep.