Mick Hartley

Back in April there was an interesting article in the Globe and Mail: Turkey, leader of the Muslim world? 

In mid-March, Turkish President Abdullah Gul travelled to Cameroon for his country’s first trade mission to a central African nation. He got a warm welcome, The Economist reported. “Turkey must reclaim its mantle,” one Islamic cleric told him, “as leader of the Islamic world.”

Well, here we are in June, and, with the Gaza flotilla episode, they've done just that. The surest way to assert leadership of the Muslim world is to challenge Israel. Whether or not they planned for events to pan out as they did, the Turkish government must be delighted with the results.

I don't particularly want to get into the rights and wrongs of Israel's actions. Clearly whatever they did, leave alone or intercept, was going to be interpreted as a victory for the "peace" activists. As it turns out we can all say, with the benefit of hindsight: well, yes, that was just precisely the wrong thing to do. Michael J Totten links to a few relevant pieces in the aftermath: here, an interview in the Jerusalem Post with one of the commandos on the Mavi Marmara raid; and here, a piece in the NYT by the Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren, and Noah Pollak's Commentary article on the familiar cycle in the media of Israel's perceived atrocities.

Now Turkey has its martyrs: "Psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey," according to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Expect these martyrs to take their place at the forefront of Turkish mythology. They're Turkey's best weapon in their new claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Iran, that other non-Arab contender for the Muslim leadership, sidelined for the moment, is staying uncharacteristically quiet.

Application for EU entry seems a distant memory now. David Aaranovitch's claim yesterday that Turkey has been more or less forced into this by European rejection and Israel's cack-handedness may have some truth, but surely it's more likely that Turkey's new alignment as part of the Muslim block is something that President Abdullah Guland and his Islamist government have been working towards for some time. Their new position as hero of the Arab world is a role they're going to relish.