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"We gave our warnings to Israel. This is the reason for war ... Israel cannot be trusted." - Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan in a CNN Interview during the 66th UN General Assembly, September, 2011
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In America and Israel, Turkey was always viewed as a loyal NATO ally, an anti-terrorist partner of the U.S., and a friend of the Jewish State. Turkey, with its Muslim majority, and Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors, had always had a strong alliance dating back to 1949 when Turkey became the first Muslim country to recognize the new Jewish State.
However, relations between Israel and Turkey have seriously deteriorated in the last five years, much of it due to Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdoğan who has accused Israel of being the “nuclear threat” against which Turkey is deploying NATO anti-missile defenses, has charged that Israel is “hiding behind the Holocaust” as it kills “tens of thousands” of Palestinians, and has even hinted at a military confrontation with Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The SWC’s newest report, written by Wiesenthal Center historical consultant Dr. Harold Brackman, From Ally to Nemesis: How Erdoğan’s Islamists Hijacked Atatürk’s Nation and Put It on A Collision Course with Israel and the U.S., details how the political rise of anti-American, anti-Israel Turkish Islamists—not the U.S. decision to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 nor Israel’s decision to defend its naval blockade against the so-called “Free Gaza Flotilla” in 2010 (pictured)—is chiefly responsible for derailing the historic U.S.-Turkish and Israeli-Turkish alliances.
From Ally to Nemesis also focuses on both the positives and negatives of Turkey’s relationship with the Jewish people and Israel—from the acceptance of Jewish refugees from Spain after the 1492 expulsion, to the Turkish Republic’s treatment of Jews before and during the Nazi Holocaust, to the rise of Turkey’s Islamists. The report also traces political Islam’s derailment of Turkey’s dual alliances with Tel Aviv and Washington.
Read Dr. Harold Brackman timely and insightful analysis.
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