Ihsan Yilmaz, a Today’s Zaman political analyst, reports about his experience of the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. The political analyst draws his attention back to times when Turkey was bombastically trying to play the role of elder brother in the region but then faced the cold fact that nobody needed elder brothers but equal partners.
I am not sure what the actual reasons are but the “heartbroken Turks” have left the Central Asian republics to the Hizmet movement and have continued almost minimal political, diplomatic and business relations with them despite the rhetoric. Yilmaz doubts similar disappointments could also take place in Turkey vis-à-vis the Middle East and notices that when it comes to Turks, it is only normal to talk about how glorious the Turkish nation, its history, its past achievements and future prospects are, but when the Arabs do it, the very behavior suddenly becomes nationalistic, divisive and un-Islamic.
According to Yilmaz, what Israel does today towards the Palestinians is not self-defense, but attacking of the civilians for domestic political gain. The political analyst concludes that the Turkish government has observed that anti-Israeli statements increased both for their regional and especially domestic electoral popularity. They made a habit of playing this card for domestic consumption but could not calculate the irrationality of the right-wing Israeli politicians. With zero leverage on the issue, the Turkish nation can only watch in agony.
