Erdogan plays to base by slighting Armenians
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's history of anti-Semitic remarks and a recent insult directed at Armenians are a tactic to draw votes.
Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations with a reputation for expertise on Turkey and Egypt, wrote an article for Politico Aug. 5 headlined, “What a Turkey! Has the Turkish leader lost his head?” The article discussed the alleged anti-Semitism of the Turkish prime minister, currently running for the presidency.
Cook’s article begins, “If Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were an American politician, he would be an excellent candidate for one of Chris Cillizza’s 'Worst Week in Washington' features. First, on Friday, July 19, a day after the State Department spokesperson criticized him for his frequent invocation of the Nazis to describe Israel’s behavior, Erdogan asked, 'What do Americans know about Hitler?' Given that almost 200,000 young Americans died fighting in Europe during WWII, quite a lot, actually.”
In the article, Cook refers to Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column about “Erdogan’s 'Hitler fetish,'" in which Cohen questioned whether Erdogan had lost his mind.
Cook gave his personal opinion of Erdogan, writing, “Having an over-inflated sense of self comes with being a world leader, and he’s has been in the bubble for almost 12 years. And for all of Erdogan’s seeming public decomposition, there is actually a perfectly rational and sane politician astutely advancing his agenda, which at the moment is focused on becoming Turkey’s next president. … When it comes to anti-Semitism, Erdogan is guilty as charged, but sadly so are large numbers of Turks. It is true that Jews found refuge in Turkey during the Inquisition and have lived and prospered there ever since, but that does not mean that anti-Semitism is alien to Turkish culture."
