Britain panders to Turkey

— Western leaders have been puzzling over how to respond to the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which in recent months has abandoned its policy of seeking integration with Europe and begun seeking to establish itself as an Islamic power-with cozy relations with Iran and Syria.

On Tuesday, Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, tried shameless pandering. In a speech delivered in Ankara, Cameron first denounced European opponents of Turkey’s membership in the European Union, saying it was motivated by protectionism or prejudice against Islam. But Erdogan lost interest in the European Union some time ago. So Cameron embraced the Turkish leader’s new favorite subject: the evils of Israel.

“The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable,” Cameron said. Then he added: “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”

A prison camp? Israel’s enemies are fond of using that term, with its implicit hint that the Jewish state has adopted the policies of Nazi Germany. But according to the BBC, no British prime minister has ever spoken so harshly of Israel’s handling of Gaza.

Asked about it later, Cameron protested that he was only repeating what he had said in a House of Commons debate several weeks ago. But the Guardian checked: In that instance, the prime minister referred to Gaza as “a giant open prison,” not a prison camp.

Erdogan, of course, was delighted to have Cameron join his anti-Israel campaign. His Islamist ruling party encouraged the Turkish ferry whose attempt to break Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza at the end of May led to a clash in which nine Turks-all of them members or supporters of a militant Islamic “charity”-died. Since then Erdogan has been using the incident in a bid to compete with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah for leadership of the Middle East’s Israel-hating “street.”

Standing alongside Cameron, Erdogan compared Israel to the “pirates of Somalia” and added that people in Gaza “are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison.” That was fairly mild stuff for the Turkish prime minister, who regularly accuses Israel of “state terrorism” and last month called it an “adolescent, rootless state.”

If Cameron was troubled by such rhetoric, or by Turkey’s role in the ferry incident, he gave no indication. Instead, he proclaimed that “when I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a NATO ally . . . it makes me angry that your progress toward E.U. membership can be frustrated in the way it has been.”

That may win the new British government some points in Ankara. But the price will be paid by Israel, which has just seen the international campaign to delegitimize it gain a little more momentum.

Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 07/29/2010

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