The easiest way in Turkey to get out of a difficult political corner, especially if you have Islamist leanings, is to point at Israel as the country orchestrating developments you don’t like. This is not to naively suggest that Israel does not interfere in the affairs of other countries in an effort to arrange things to its advantage. But to see a Jewish or Israeli hand in every Turkish crisis has become a knee-jerk reaction, even in crises that are blatantly home grown.
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The culprit for Erdogan behind the Gezi Park protests in June, which left him and his government in a negative light internationally, was a curious “interest-rate lobby.” He alleged this lobby was trying to undermine Turkey’s economic and political successes. The pro-government media made sure that this was understood to be an essentially Jewish lobby.
Having taken its cue from Erdogan’s remarks, this portion of the media is doing the same again by using convoluted arguments to bring in the Israeli and Jewish angle. The Star newspaper, for example, claimed Dec. 18 that Turkey’s oil transactions with Iran, for which Halkbank — the government bank implicated in the current probe — was used, was the reason the Mossad had launched the probe.
More: Al-Monitor
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