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After the failed coup attempt in July 2016 by a faction within the armed forces organized as the Peace at Home Council, that was opposed to Erdogan’s undermining of the secularism that Ataturk had promoted, and disturbed, too, by his determination to “re-islamize” Turkey, Erdogan came down hard on those whom he inaccurately described as followers of Fethulleh Gulen, an opponent of Erdogan’s dictatorial ways who lives in Pennsylvania. There were mass arrests, including those of more than 10,000 soldiers and 2,745 judges, charged with being affiliated with the coup attempt. In addition, 15,000 education staff in public institutions were also fired, and the licenses of 21,000 teachers working at private institutions were revoked — all because they supposedly supported Gülen. More than 77,000 people have been arrested and over 160,000 fired from their jobs, on reports of connections to Gulen. Among the professionals who lost their jobs were university rectors and professors, lawyers, judges, and journalists. Turkey has now jailed more journalists than any other country in the world. So much for Erdogan’s respect for civil liberties.

Erdogan accuses Israel of “war crimes.” Is this correct? Israel is making colossal efforts to always minimize civilian casualties. It does this mainly through an elaborate system of warning civilians to leave areas about to be targeted by the IDF. In Gaza, to this end, the IDF has so far dropped 14 million leaflets, made two million robocalls, and 26,000 personal calls, as well as using the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. And these mass warnings have worked so well to keep the all-important civilian-to-combatant ratio as of early March, with 30,000 Gazans killed, according to Hamas itself — about 15,000 of that figure were, according to the IDF, combatants. That means the ratio of civilians to combatant deaths is 1:1, an unheard-of number. The UN has said that in all wars since World War II, the average civilian-to-combatant ratio is 9:1. In Afghanistan, the British and Americans managed to get that ratio down to 4:1. In Iraq, the Americans did even better, killing three civilians for every combatant. But no army in the world has done what Israel has achieved in Gaza: a civilian-to-combatant ratio of 1:1. No wonder that the commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, has stated that “the IDF is the most moral army in the world” and John Spencer, head of the Department of Urban Warfare at West Point, has described the IDF in similar terms, noting that Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in the history of war.”

In Erdogan’s bizarre view, Israel is “behind the terrorist organizations in northern Syria and Iraq.” If he is talking about ISIS, that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and of the entire world of Infidels, he makes no sense. Why would Israel support Islamic fanatics dedicated to its destruction? If he means the Kurds who live in Syria and Iraq, and whose continued presence and supposed threat to Turkey render Erdogan hysterical, he is again off-base. Israel sympathizes with the Kurds, but has not sent military aid to its militias in Iraq since just after the Gulf War in 1990. It has sent some humanitarian aid to Kurds in Syria — after the Americans left, leaving a handful of soldiers, in 2019. And the Kurdish groups in both Iraq and Syria are not “terrorist organizations,” as Erdogan claims; they do not attack civilians to sow terror. Besides, Erdogan’s indignation over “terrorist organizations” is hard to take, since he has given Turkish citizenship and passports, and provided refuge to many dozens of Hamas’ senior echelon. And in his latest speech in Istanbul, he made clear that he, and Turkey, support Hamas to the hilt: “No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization." Turkey is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them.”

So Turkey “firmly backs” Hamas, which is listed as a terror organization by the US, Israel, the UK, the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. And let’s not forget Erdogan’s prediction that there may be a future war between the Crescent and the Cross, leaving no doubt as to which side he would be on. Indeed, he sees himself as the natural leader of the forces of Islam.

NATO is supposed to be a military alliance of democratic and Western countries that share a common civilization. It cannot continue to tolerate among its members a country that is led by a despot who backs Hamas to the hilt, and sees himself, in a future war, as the leader of the Muslims against the “Christian” countries. It’s time that NATO booted Turkey out of this quintessentially Western alliance, showing the door, too, to Turkey’s grobianistic ruler, the anti-Semitic Recep Tayyip Erdogan.