With love from Hamas

With love from Hamas

Thursday, June 17, 2010

BURAK BEKDİL

Since 2001, between 8,000 and 12,000 rockets which future Nobel Peace Prize winner Khaled Mashal once described as “modest, home-made rockets,” have been fired. The first casualties were reported in 2004 when two civilians were killed by a “modest, home-made” Qassam rocket, including the four-year-old Afik Zahavi. Afik’s 28-year-old mother was critically injured and nine others were wounded. Hamas claimed responsibility.

“Those who support terror are collaborators of terrorists,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan very rightfully asserted a few days ago. Of course, he was referring to the PKK. In the past Mr. Erdoğan’s main reference point about Operation Cast Lead, in which the Israeli Defense Forces killed hundreds of civilians in the Gaza Strip, was the famous Goldstone Report.

Last September, Mr. Erdoğan’s principal reference point on Israel’s Gaza offensive found out that: “…they (Hamas’ activities) constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population. These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity…The rocket and mortar attacks launched by armed Palestinian groups have caused terror.”

Another finding: “Hamas continues to view all armed activity directed against Israel as… a legitimate right of the Palestinian people.”

The Goldstone Report, also accusing Israel for war crimes and other offenses, further found out that: “…security services under the control of the Gaza authorities carried out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, detentions and ill treatment of people…”

No doubt, Mr. Erdoğan is right: supporting terrorists is tantamount to collaborating with them. Last week, Mr. Erdoğan made it clear that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and he even said that to President Barack Obama,” although Hamas is listed as such by the United States. Good… We can now expect Washington to drop Hamas from its list of terrorist entities.

What makes Mr. Erdoğan think that the Hamas chaps are as remote to terror as U.S. congressmen or members of the European Parliament?

One of Mr. Erdoğan’s favorite statements is his famous line, “There is no Islamic terror.” Recently online humor “daily” Zaytung fabricated a story whose lead paragraph read: “Erdoğan’s claims that ‘there is no Islamic terror’ have left several Islamic terror organizations heart-broken. A press release from al-Qaeda’s press section read: ‘The prime minister’s remarks are very discouraging. We are doing our best!’”

Last month, at the Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Erdoğan reiterated that “there is no Islamic terror” and that “the words Islam and terror could never come together.” I tried, and Google gave me 9,510,000 entries when I typed ‘Islam’ and ‘terror.’ It’s bizarre that a significantly large crowd all over the world has been producing texts on something that does not exist.

According to Wikipedia, “Islamic terrorism is terrorism committed by Muslims, and aimed at achieving various political ends like Osama bin Ladin’s stated goal of ending American presence in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, overthrowing “infidel regimes” and stopping American support for Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

I have no idea if there can be such things as ‘Christian terrorism’ or ‘Jewish terrorism.’ Mr Erdogan did not tell. But he did tell us more than once that Israel committed “state terror.” So, there is Israeli state terror, PKK terror and Ergenekon terror, but there isn’t Islamic terror. Since Mr. Erdoğan invariably singles out Islam as one religion that cannot be associated with terrorism, he must be thinking that other religions (or atheism) can be.

Too bad, I have never been privileged enough to be physically close to the prime minister and ask him if there could be Christian or Jewish or atheist terror. I might also be curious and ask him what kind of terrorism NATO has been fighting in Afghanistan, with the non-combat from the Turkish military supporting that fight.

Really, why does Turkey maintain a military presence in Afghanistan? What does a multinational NATO task force do in Afghan lands? Fighting insects? Corruption? Having vacation in the Talibanland?

What kind of terror was it, really, which targeted a British bank and two synagogues in Istanbul in 2003, killing over 50 people? Red Army Brigades? The PKK? The Ergenekon?

Mr. Erdoğan’s rhetoric on what is and what isn’t terror as well as who is and who isn’t a terrorist is more than problematic, especially for a prime minister whose country is fighting terrorists who, for some, are ‘freedom fighters.’ It must be a bad irony that it was the Turks who complained for decades about other nations’ double standards on labeling some terrorists as terrorists and some as freedom fighters. Who would know one day…