Who can take Turkey seriously when it accuses Israel of crimes against humanity and then lays out a red-carpet state reception for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court?

Or let’s put it another way: Can the Turkey that couldn’t settle the accounts of its massive human rights violations against the Kurds in the past and couldn’t even apologize for what happened to the Armenians in 1915, place Israel’s crimes against humanity on the world's agenda?

Turkey’s problematic past not only impedes its efforts to call attention to Israel’s inhuman practices against the Palestinians, but also prevents it from holding violators of the rights of Turkish citizens accountable. For example, look at what transpired after the Israeli military attack on the Mavi Marmara flotilla in 2010.

Nine Turkish nationals lost their lives in the Israeli attack against the flotilla. The Israeli operation against the ship, from beginning to end, was an array of violations of international law. For an account of the terrifying actions of Israeli soldiers in that operation, one need only look at the report of the UN Human Rights Council dated Sept. 22, 2010 [A/HRC/15/21]. The UN report clearly says that contrary to Israeli allegations, nobody had fired on the Israeli soldiers. The Israeli soldiers had fired on civilians on board from close range, and even after the wounded civilians had fallen to the ground. The conclusions of the UN report clearly explain the human tragedy on Mavi Marmara that day: