{"id":2172,"date":"2017-06-20T08:47:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T08:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/new\/?p=2172"},"modified":"2017-07-13T09:50:05","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T09:50:05","slug":"turkeys-good-and-bad-terrorists-by-burak-bekdil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/20\/turkeys-good-and-bad-terrorists-by-burak-bekdil\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey&#8217;s &#8216;Good&#8217; and &#8216;Bad&#8217; Terrorists  by Burak Bekdil"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"content_preface_bullets\" style=\"list-style-type: square; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: #da0026; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;\">\n<li style=\"font-size: 16px; font-family: Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; color: #da0026;\">\n<p style=\"color: #000000; text-align: justify;\">&#8220;This is jihad tourism, and people do not understand this is a one-way tour. You cannot say &#8216;IS is terrorist but Hamas and Hizballah are not.&#8217; Hizballah is the Shia version of IS. Hamas, IS and others are the Sunni branches of the same tree.&#8221; \u2013 High-level foreign diplomat.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<hr id=\"system-readmore\" class=\"mceItemReadMore\" \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In a high-level meeting about fifteen years ago, a young official accompanied the visiting Turkish land forces commander and his wife. The official, now a high-level foreign diplomat, still recalls the good memories from that visit, including the Turkish coffee cup they brought as a gift &#8212; a fine coffee cup still used every morning. &#8220;Daesh [Islamic State] will commit more and more acts of terror against Turkey and the West,&#8221; the diplomat says today. &#8220;Salafist ideology lures people &#8212; people with a worm in their brains. It offers adventures for young people. This is jihad tourism, and people do not understand this is a one-way tour.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We recently met again, a month after an Islamic State (IS) suicide bomber killed 33 pro-Kurdish activists in a small Turkish town on Turkey&#8217;s border with Syria. &#8220;IS&#8217;s war is not about Israel or anything else,&#8221; said the diplomat. &#8220;All suicide bombings combined in the Middle East are smaller in number than those in Iraq only. It&#8217;s all about the Sunni-Shia divide.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Anyone honest can only agree with what came next: &#8220;You cannot say &#8216;IS is terrorist but Hamas and Hizballah are not.&#8217; Hizballah is the Shia version of IS. Hamas, IS and others are the Sunni branches of the same tree.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Those words forcefully remind one of the gigantic Western hypocrisy that justifies Hamas.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;They will understand Hamas better when they will see jihadist bombs exploding in their cities,&#8221; the diplomat went on. &#8220;The terrorists are already targeting Jews on Saturdays, and the differing Islamist sects and on Fridays. Soon they will start coming on Sundays for everyone else.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Coincidentally, about a week after our meeting, Turkey\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #da5724;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hurriyetdailynews.com\/turkish-jets-join-anti-isil-coalition-hit-targets-in-syria.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=87699&amp;NewsCatID=510\">joined the anti-IS coalition forces<\/a>\u00a0and started to bomb IS targets in Syria. Too little, too late&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Meanwhile Turkish security forces are hastily trying to crack down on potential Islamic State terror cells inside Turkey; they fear bomb attacks in their own country, and especially at a time when the country goes to renewed parliamentary elections (on November 1).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After several months of reluctance, Turkey parted ways with IS because &#8220;they are terrorists.&#8221; But it remains loyal, though less supportive, to &#8220;the other, Sunni, branch of the same tree,&#8221; Hamas. Turkey&#8217;s Islamists, who now view IS&#8217;s Islamists as terrorists, view Hamas&#8217;s Islamists as perfectly legitimate ideological allies.<\/p>\n<table class=\"mceItemTable\" style=\"margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top; max-width: 600px; border: 1px solid black;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/pics\/large\/826.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"383\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 11.4799995422363px; margin: 4px 6px;\">Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meeting with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and Ismail Haniyeh on June 18, 2013, in Ankara, Turkey. (Image source: Turkey Prime Minister&#8217;s Press Office)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #da5724;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.milliyet.com.tr\/operasyonlar-devam-edecek\/siyaset\/detay\/2095142\/default.htm\">scolded<\/a>\u00a0the leader of a pro-Kurdish political party because the Kurdish man would not label the Kurdistan Workers&#8217; Party (PKK) a terrorist organization, &#8220;although they are on EU&#8217;s and U.S. terror list.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It sounded as if Erdogan was not even aware of what he was saying: Hamas, which he supports, is on the same EU and U.S. terror lists as is the PKK.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Erdogan is trying to cut one branch of the tree while trying to grow the other &#8212; knowing all too well that they belong to the same tree.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the H\u00fcrriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;This is jihad tourism, and people do not understand this is a one-way tour. You cannot say &#8216;IS is terrorist but Hamas and Hizballah are not.&#8217; Hizballah is the Shia version of IS. Hamas, IS and others are the Sunni branches of the same tree.&#8221; \u2013 High-level foreign diplomat. In a high-level meeting about fifteen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions\/2173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}