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Turkish prime minister disses Arab world: Muslim leaders’ response to Gaza suffering ‘pitiful.’
He made the remarks when asked to compare the attitude of other Muslim countries to Turkey’s vehement outbursts against Israel over its devastating war on Gaza last year and its ongoing blockade of the impoverished enclave.
“The governments have failed to display the reactions that the world’s Muslims expected from them. And this has been a pitiful aspect of the matter,” Erdogan told reporters.
After the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Ankara, many in the West referred to a new Turkish foreign policy called “neo-Ottomanism”, suggesting a revival of the intellectual, political and social influence of the Ottoman Empire, which departed the scene 92 years ago.
That policy was attributed to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his advisor, now foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. Quickly, however, the term “Ottomanism” began to fade, given that it was difficult to market in countries formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire due to continued indoctrination against Ottomanism by the Arabs over nine decades.
Some, however, continued to stand by the term, including Cuneyt Zapsu, an advisor to the Turkish prime minister, who said: “A new, positive role for Turkey in the world requires a reconciliation with its own past, the overcoming of societal taboos, and a positive new concept of Turkish identity. We are the Ottomans’ successors and should not be ashamed of this.”
Decision-makers in Turkey had once tried to hide their Ottoman past, ashamed of it during the heyday of Kemal Ataturk because it looked backward and was too Islamic for the secular state that was being carefully erected in Turkey. That is now a thing of the past thanks to the steady policy of the AKP, which has been opening up to countries such as Syria and, more recently, Lebanon.