Turkey’s “Palestine Fetish”: More Bark than Bite

In recent years, Turkey has become one of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause, trying to break the Gaza blockade with a flotilla, providing safe haven and funds to senior Hamas operatives, shrilly condemning the Jewish state, and eroding the longstanding and important Turkish-Israeli alliance. But, argues the Turkish journalist Burak Bekdil, President Erdogan rarely puts his country’s money where its mouth is. This is because, historically, the Turkish government has always cared much less about the Palestinian people than about the near-magical political value of the Palestinian cause: