Turkey's noble stand can be undermined by Israel's behind-the-scenes friends, warns Sayed Abdel-Maguid from Erzurum, Turkey To ordinary Turks, Egypt is the villain of the piece. It oppresses the Palestinians of Gaza by keeping them locked up in hellish conditions. The harshness of Egypt and the shameful silence of the Arabs made headlines in the newspapers affiliated with the Justice and Development Party (JPD), all glamourising the Turkish government's duel with the Zionists. This protest against Cairo has spread throughout Anatolia. In Ankara's main railway station, while waiting for the train coming from Istanbul and heading east, travellers noticed my foreign features. As soon as they discovered that, although a holder of Turkish passport, I was originally Egyptian, they lashed out at the politicians of Egypt. Why wouldn't Egypt open the crossing points? "Even the tunnels," one of them remarked, "were destroyed by the Egyptian authorities. It was a full day trip to my destination, enough time to dispel some of the misunderstanding. To be fair, the anger ebbed after a while, giving way to a patient attempt to learn about the facts. But this didn't stop one of the passengers from declaring in a loud voice that Turkey, God willing, could destroy the Hebrew state within a month or even less. At the train wagon, the discussion was frank. Some of the passengers sadly told me that Turkey was headed in the wrong direction. Then subtitles on a television monitor echoed their fears: Turkey, where is it going? When the train arrived at Erzurum on Friday night, people were gathered in coffeehouses listening to a boisterous speech by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Konya, the Islamist heartland of central Anatolia. Erdogan denounced Israel's cold- blooded war machine, lashed out at anyone who described Hamas as terrorist, and stated that the leaders of Hamas came to power in democratic elections. The next day, the country discovered that its currency has slipped versus the dollar and that the stock market was tumbling. The inhabitants of Erzurum woke up to newspaper headlines citing Sheikh Fathallah Julun, a powerful Sufi who runs dozens of religious schools and charities across Turkey from his voluntary exile in the US. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Julun criticised the government, saying that it should have sought Israel's prior consent before sending relief. He added that Turkish politicians were mixing religion with politics in a way that jeopardised the country's interests. Julun's statements came as a shock to the JDP. Bulent Yildrim, who planned the Freedom Fleet's journey expressed his alarm. Zeyid Aslan, chief of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Society, said that the sheikh was perhaps misquoted. This may prove to be wishful thinking. Turkey is going down a road that it may not be able to maintain for long. Namik Tan, the Turkish ambassador to Washington, made several conditions for restoring normal relations with the Hebrew state, but his remarks were for public consumption. No one expects Tel Aviv to apologise for its action. Already Bulent Arinc, the third man in the ruling trio, along with Abdullah Gul and Erdogan, is trying to bring down the rhetoric a notch or two. In Erzurum, a city that lives on winter tourism and plans to organise an international skiing championship next winter, officials breathed a bit easier when they heard Artugrul Gunai, the minister of culture and tourism, predicting the return of Israeli tourists to the cities of Anatolia within the next few weeks.
