OPINION:
“Israel is now a baby-killer country,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Nov. 12. Three days later, he told his party conference, “I say with a clear conscience that Israel is a terrorist state.”
That Israel is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians is a near staple of Mr. Erdogan’s rhetoric. To avoid any doubt, the comments are a repeat of accusations Mr. Erdogan has made in the past, labeling Israel a “terrorist state” in 2017 and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “baby killer” in 2018.
While Mr. Erdogan condemns Israel, he lauds Hamas. “You label Hamas as a terrorist organization,” he complained to the West. “Hamas is a political party that participated in elections to win in Palestine,” omitting that Hamas seized power in Gaza in a coup.
What Israel describes as counterterrorism, Mr. Erdogan calls the most “treacherous attacks” in the history of humanity.
“All concepts, including war, are insufficient to describe what we have witnessed in Gaza … because even war has its ethics, manners, laws, and limits,” he explained, promising to send Israeli leaders to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for their actions.
If Mr. Erdogan sounds unhinged, it is because he is. Mr. Erdogan encourages antisemitism. Early in his reign, mysterious subsidies helped a Turkish translation of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” become a national bestseller, and in 2016, The Guardian reported that Mr. Erdogan cited Nazi Germany as an effective executive presidential system.
According to a 2012 Fox News report, Mr. Erdogan’s wife, Emine, endorsed “Valley of the Wolves,” a Turkish film that theorized that Jewish organ trafficking in part motivated the Iraq War. Egemen Bagis, a top Erdogan adviser, once suggested the Bulgarian foreign minister did not support Turkey’s European Union accession because he had Jewish blood.
The irony, of course, is that while Israel is guilty of none of the charges Mr. Erdogan makes, Turkey is. While the Israel Defense Forces put their own lives at risk to warn Palestinian civilians of impending military operations and expose themselves to enemy fire as they help evacuate them, the Turkish military runs roughshod over Kurdish villages and towns, not only in Turkey but also across the border in Syria and Iraq.
Turkish drones spare no one. By Turkey’s own count, they have “neutralized” several thousand Kurdish terrorists since 2016. While Israel targets Hamas terrorists, Turkey fails to differentiate between Kurdish terrorists and civilians. Yezidi farmers in Sinjar describe regular Turkish bombardments. Baghdad erupted after a Turkish drone killed a young Arab family following a false tip from the owner of a rival resort. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees security acknowledged fear that Turkish drones might even target their convoys should they be on the road after dark.
After Syria erupted into civil war, local Kurds established their own autonomous administration. They elected representatives and included both men and women as well as members of every ethnic and religious group in the region. I have visited northern Syria repeatedly. In Kobani, a Kurdish town and site of an unsuccessful Islamic State siege that marked the turning point in the war, Kurds have reconstructed their town.
Children run around an amusement park while men and women keep a watchful eye on the numerous restaurants and food stands. Girls window shop in the market as they walk home unescorted from school. In the university, students study English, Arabic and Kurdish, as well as sociology, math and history.
They all have one thing in common: Turkey labels each one of them a terrorist simply because they live under Kurdish self-rule. In Afrin, a Syrian district that Turkey seized and then ethnically cleansed, Turkish forces dug up Kurdish graveyards, destroyed Kurdish statues and closed Kurdish-language schools.
Turkey, meanwhile, has failed to provide evidence that any recent terrorist attacks in Turkey originated with Kurds in Syria or Iraq. Both regions, however, suffered several thousand attacks from the Turkish army and air force.
While Turkey and the State Department have designated the Kurdistan Workers’ Party as terrorists, some European courts, such as Belgium’s Court of Cassation, have found otherwise. In a report that I authored for the American Enterprise Institute in July 2016, I explained that the group abandoned its separatism decades ago.
Turkish hypocrisy goes further. Political parties seeking peace with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party regularly win elections, only to have Turkey imprison their leaders or void their elections and impose an Erdogan functionary in place of an elected leader.
And while Kurds protest peacefully around the world for the release of political prisoners and for a political settlement, such a demonstration in Istanbul or Ankara would bring a life sentence.
Mr. Erdogan is right on only one point. The violations of international humanitarian law he describes should land perpetrators in prison. Perhaps if he is sincere, he should begin planning his own trip to The Hague.
• Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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