Turkey, Champion of Human Rights

"Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target. They kill women so that they will not give birth to Palestinians; they kill babies so that they won't grow up; they kill men so they can't defend their country; ... they will drown in the blood they shed."
"[Israel has been engaged in a campaign of] systematic genocide every day and every month [since its creation]. They curse Hitler day and night, but they have surpassed Hitler in barbarism."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Anti-Israel protesters burn an Israeli flag in Turkey on July 17, 2014. Photo: Algemeiner.

Mr. Erdogan and most Turks know about genocide and atrocities. The modern world's first genocide occurred under Turkish rule when Armenians were led to their deaths during the Ottoman Empire's 1915 effort to destroy the Turkish-Armenian population under their rule, under the pretense that they constituted a threat to the longevity of their empire. Denial is the specialty of the Turkish government heeding the temper of Islamists to redefine history.

Nor does Turkey care to linger overmuch over its treatment of Turkish Kurds agitating for autonomy and relief from the repressive hand of Turkey when tens of thousands of Kurds died for their insufferable campaigns for recognition as a distinct people with its own traditions, language, ethnic origin and aspirations of becoming a nation, as the world's largest ethnic group denied their own. Turkey's infamous human rights abuses are constantly cited as the reason it is not welcomed as a member of the European Union whose door it has been knocking at for decades.

But Turkey knows humanitarian relief when it sees the need to, and it has engaged in such by its unquestioning support of Hamas. While a member of NATO, nothing appears to have stopped Turkey in its newer incarnation from Ataturk's sectarian, Western-values-oriented governance transitioning to Islamist political ideology supporting jihadists and terrorists as its duty as an Islamist entity respectful of the pillar of Islam demanding jihad of its faithful.

"Turkey is the home [to] Hamas leader Saleh Al-Arouri, founder of the West Bank branch of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing. [Mr.] Arouri has become an increasingly important figure for the group in recent years. One Israeli security official recently went so far as to say that '[Mr.] Arouri was connected to the act' of kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June", writes Jonathan Schanzer in Foreign Policy magazine.

The co-chairs of the US. Congressional Caucus on U.S.-Turkish Relations and Turkish Americans sent a letter to Prime Minister Erdogan, objecting to his "historically inaccurate and provocative" statements relating to Israel's defensive Operation Protective Edge, stating that his "inflammatory rhetoric" could impact negatively on their work to strengthen the U.S.-Turkey relationship.

"It has come to our attention that remarks you have recently made have been widely viewed as anti-Semitic and are most definitely anti-Israel. Your remarks, already reviled as 'offensive and wrong' by the U.S. State Department, make it increasingly difficult to communicate in a positive way about Turkey when interacting with our colleagues", they wrote. "Your recent comments, however, do nothing to end violence but rather could serve to instigate further violence."

Turkish Ambassador Volkan Bozkir, Chairman of the Turkey-USA Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Caucus and the Foreign Affairs Committee took great exception to this letter, denying the charges of anti-Semitism, arguing that his prime minister's anti-Israel position was separate, based on the actions in Gaza of the Israeli government "The assertion in your letter that some remarks of our Prime Minister are 'anti-Israel' and 'can be viewed as anti-Semitic' is completely baseless.

"[Erdogan] has publicly denounced anti-Semitism as a crime against humanity. Your characterization of the legitimate criticisms leveled by our Prime Minister at the Israeli government's policies of terror and destruction as anti-Semitism constitutes a distortion of facts and a cover-up of Israel's violation of law, and possibly, its war crimes."


Turkey knows all about violations of laws and war crimes. It is an expert on the subjects.