Killings Deepen Rift as Turks Accuse Netanyahu of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’
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Version 0 of 1. BAGHDAD — If the Paris attacks unleashed a powerful demonstration of unity, with world leaders gathering to denounce terrorism, they also touched off a divisive new chapter in the war of words between Turkey and Israel, once stalwart allies but now bitter rivals. The latest exchange came on Thursday when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey said both the Paris gunmen who attacked a French newspaper and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, were guilty of “crimes against humanity.” The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had already criticized Mr. Netanyahu for participating in the march of solidarity with other world leaders in Paris on Sunday, saying that Israel had been “waging state terror” in Gaza. A top Israeli official fired back, calling Mr. Erdogan an “anti-Semitic bully.” Turkey’s prime minister then equated Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza with the actions of the gunmen who killed 17 people last week in Paris. “If Israel is looking for a bully,” he added in a televised news conference on Thursday, “it needs to look in the mirror.” This most recent exchange of barbs between Turkey and Israel continues a pattern of animosity between the onetime allies that has escalated in recent years. As Mr. Erdogan’s power has grown, he has further distanced himself from Turkey’s secular past, seeking to burnish his Islamist credentials and put Turkey forward as an exemplar for the Muslim world. He has increasingly cast Turkey as a defender of the Palestinians and a supporter of Hamas, the militant Islamist group in the Gaza Strip that fought a 50-day war with Israel last year. Mr. Erdogan, appearing this week with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara, the Turkish capital, set off the latest dispute with Israel, criticizing Mr. Netanyahu for appearing at the rally in Paris, which was also attended by Mr. Davutoglu. “What do you think of Netanyahu, who has been waging state terror by massacring 2,500 people in Gaza, waving hands?” Mr. Erdogan said, referring to the Israeli prime minister waving at the rally. “He waves as if people in a grandstand have been waiting to accept him in excitement. I, of course, find it hard to understand how he dared to go there. First, give an account of the children, the women that you have massacred.” In a meeting on Wednesday with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac, Mr. Netanyahu responded: “He 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.” As the feud continued Thursday, Mr. Erdogan’s chief foreign policy adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, said in a statement, “the Israeli prime minister’s manipulation of the rally against terror in Paris for his own political interests is not only disrespectful towards the memory of innocent civilians who lost their lives in Gaza but also nothing more than a poor desire to stage a political show for international public opinion.” Turkey, a member of NATO, has also become increasingly estranged from the United States and other Western allies, particularly over the civil war in Syria. The United States and others have criticized Turkey for not doing more in the war against the Islamic State, the extremist group that controls portions of Iraq and Syria. They have blamed Turkey’s lax policing of its borders for helping lead to the rise of the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The reaction inside Turkey to the attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris for its cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the escalating vitriol between Turkey and Israel, highlights both the increasing divergence between Turkey and the West and the growing role of religion in Turkish public life. Turkish leaders across the board have condemned the violence, but in many cases they have couched their criticism with defenses of Islam and have not rallied to the cause of freedom of expression in the same way that Western leaders have. Mr. Davutoglu, for instance, said on Thursday that freedom of the press did not mean the freedom to insult religious values. “Publishing insults against a prophet who has been sent as a mercy to mankind is not freedom of expression,” he said at the news conference. Other Turkish officials have singled out what they see as rising Islamophobia in Europe and the West, and some have said that even mentioning Islam in the context of the attack on the newspaper is a message of bigotry. “Labeling this attack as an ‘attack on the magazine which published the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad’ will only serve to contribute to the desired negative perception of Islam and Muslims in Europe,” said Turkey’s minister of culture, Omer Celik, in comments circulated by Turkey’s Office of Public Diplomacy. Less than two years ago, reconciliation between Turkey and Israel seemed at hand. In a surprise move, President Obama, on a visit to Israel in 2013, brokered a telephone conversation between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Erdogan in which Mr. Netanyahu apologized for mistakes in a deadly Israeli raid in 2010 on an aid ship that was sailing from Turkey to Gaza. That incident had led to a sharp deterioration in the countries’ relationship, which was originally damaged by the 2008 Gaza war and a quarrel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the year after that. Those promises of reconciliation, though, including the restoration of full diplomatic ties, have gone unfulfilled, even as commercial ties between the countries remain strong. |