Erdogan hitches Turkey’s wagon to NATO, as he assumes role of Muslim East prelate

By Zainab Cheema

The Fall season is here, and Ankara is somnolent with the dreams of Rome. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan recently completed his Arab Spring tour over North Africa, including the recently despoiled Libya, delivering his trademark no-holds barred rhetoric that has won the hearts of the Arab street. But while he continues to verbally joust with Israel, raising his profile in the streets of the Muslim world, he has signed on the dotted line for the NATO-led counter-revolution in the Muslim East. The fate of the Turkish model is by now, a twice-told tale, a suspense novel unraveling into a familiar potboiler after the spoilers have been revealed. But since the Turkish model is still widely touted as the blueprint par excellence for the new Muslim East, a retrospective is useful here.

Since beginnings are important, let us not neglect our “once upon a time.” One of the most stirring events in recent political history is the rise of the AKP, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, which appeared to advocate a unique blend of Islamic politics. The formula included a domestic return to Muslim cultural identity (headscarves in public are now permissible), and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s famous “zero problems” policy, which has tilted toward building strong economic and political links with the Middle Eastern countries rather than the long-desired Europe. Nervous political observers in the US and Europe began ringing alarm bells on Turkey’s “Islamicization” and “neo-Ottomanization.” If it were true, it would certainly be a perilous development on the hinge of the Bosphorus, the apex of the world’s military, economic, and energy traffic.

Disenfranchised Muslim populations watched in awe as Erdogan and his aides appeared to helm a burgeoning first-world state rooted in memories of the Muslims’ past civilizational greatness. In one of his media interviews, Davutoglu related a story illustrating this trademark: how he shamed warring Iraqi factions into an accord by reciting to them the past glories of Baghdad. Seemingly, such intervention can only be performed by an urbane, cosmopolitan Turkish-Muslim politician endowed with the knowledge and confidence of past Muslim civilizations. How could the street in Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, and Indonesia find this anything but irresistible?

However, notwithstanding Baghdad, Andalusia, and Mughal India, the AKP in particular harks back to memories of the Ottoman Empire. This is the continuity through which Turkey sees itself, in Davutoglu’s words, as imparting a “sense of justice and a sense of vision to the region.” Since 2007, Turkey actively presented itself as the Muslim East’s peacemaker, the strategic shuttle between US and European alliances and the Iranian, Syrian, and Hizbullah nexus. Turkey views its influence as a variety of soft-power stemming from deep cultural links with the Muslim East, uniquely bestowed by its Ottoman history in the region.

The Turkish experiment, for all the brouhaha about the US’s unease about Turkey’s covert Islamists, has been made possible by a particularly fantastic pitch: that the senescent US power agree to teamwork with a vibrant Turkey possessing the keys to the Muslim East (the people, not just to the dictators’ clubs). In Davutoglu’s vision, outlined in interviews and his academic writings, the US has been disadvantaged in that it possesses no “strategic depth” — that is, historical-geographic and cultural connections — to the Muslim East. It was more or less, an alien power. Turkey, possessing all of the above, was presented as an ideal collaborator in its quest for greater penetration. The role of go-between “was not assigned to Turkey by any outside actor,” wrote Davutoglu in Foreign Policy, “[t]his is what it means to be part of “we.”

“A global power like this [referring the US], a regional power like that [referring to Turkey] have an excellent partnership,” Davutoglu continued in an interview with the New York Times. In one of his articles for the journal Foreign Policy, Davutoglu characterized the AKP’s politics as “proactive and pre-emptive peace diplomacy” that honored NATO alliances but also maintained Turkey’s organic cultural and religious ties with the Muslim world. As a self-conscious Muslim power, it could deliver in a way Mubarak and Co. could not, since it could tap into the cultural and psychic panorama of the Muslim East. While US diplomats privately railed about Erdogan and co. as “pashas,” “beys,” and “radical Islamists,” it was an offer they couldn’t refuse. It is like lionizing a disreputable insider to get into the best club in town.

For Turkey’s part, its organic link with the Muslim East maps a little too uneasily on the borders of the Ottoman Empire at its zenith. It is an open question for Davutoglu whether Turkey’s organic connection with the Muslim East falls under the rubric of imperial domination in an Ottoman-esque manifest destiny or leadership that emerges from advocating for and promoting the rights of the disenfranchised? Erdogan’s speech after his 2011 election victory is instructive on that point. “Believe me, Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as Izmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir,” he declared, sketching the former borders of the Ottoman Empire.

Not that this should come as a surprise. After all, nationalism and imperialism are a natural fit, like hot-dogs and relish. The modern age of colonialism began when European populations gelled together as nation-states. What is ironic is that for all the AKP’s Islamic rhetoric, it shows itself to be deeply tutored by Ataturk’s legacy of European-style nationalism. “Justice and Development” has become rather an oxymoron for Erdogan and his aides, because “justice” means globally representing Muslims in Erdogan’s inimitable street-fighter style, while “development” is code for furthering Turkish national interests. Which has taken precedence? A hint: Turkish web writer Mustafa Akyok is rather on point when he says, “[t]he “Muslimness” of Turkish foreign policy should be seen as a bit like the “Judeo-Christianness” of American foreign policy”. That is, “Render unto Caeser what is Caeser’s and to God what is God’s.”

Nevertheless, the role of go-between has allowed Turkey to advocate for Iran within the halls of NATO, the military body that has reconfigured itself following the end of the Cold War for the long war in Eurasia and the Muslim East. At the end of 2010, NATO planned to unveil a new “Strategic Concept” that would openly define Iran as the new threat to Europe justifying NATO’s crusading and war-trafficking. Turkey raised a ruckus, preventing NATO from openly naming Iran and Syria as threats on official documents about a lavishly expensive missile shield and other projects. “Defending against the threat of a possible ballistic missile attack from Iran has given birth to what has become, for NATO, an essential military mission,” declared the original report, written by former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright. Turkish President Abdullah Gul declared that Turkey “would definitely not accept” pointing fingers at Iran, as it would harm relations between the two countries.

Perhaps zero-problems’ most significant achievement has been to forge a zone of economic cooperation between Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, enabling the free flow of business and tourists across the regions. Iranian tourists flooded into Turkey to the tune of millions, causing some slight recriminations in the US and Europe about blocking Turkey’s membership to the EU over the years. Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said as much: “if there is anything to the notion that Turkey is, if you will, moving Eastward,” it was the result of being “pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the sort of organic link to the West that Turkey sought.”

Banked by impressive legislative victories against the military and a robust Turkish economy dubbed by observers as the rising Eurasian tiger, Erdogan even had the leverage to talk tough with Israel, an achievement that can be claimed by few Muslim politicians. In the 2009 Davos World Economic Forum, during Israel’s Gaza massacre, Erdogan burst out at Shimon Peres before storming off the stage: “You know how to kill people very well!” The Mavi Marmara incident then proceeded to lift Erdogan to stardom in the Muslim street, as Pepe Escobar put it, “a cross between U2’s Bono and Barcelona’s superstar Argentine footballer Lionel Messi.” A political rockstar, a messiah from the Black Sea rather than a Bethlehem manger.

The US, long used to driving Faustian bargains with its allies, now found itself in the hot seat. A nightmare was driving the frenzied diplomatic cables, political counsels and newspaper articles — would AKP dare to convert their cultural Islamic capital, tentatively placed into NATO’s service so far, into political Islam? Newspaper print on this issue materialized into black ink the sweat that trickled down numerous Savoy Row and Hugo Boss suits over this issue.

This fear factor has helped Turkey in its trajectory on the world stage. “Zero problems” has yielded fabulous windfalls — greater penetration into the Muslim East, which paradoxically rendered it an even more desirable tango-partner for the United States. Turkish businesses blossomed in the wake of this precarious balancing act between Europe and the Muslim East, gaining access to both the distribution of resources in energy-rich, hard-luck countries and diplomatic cachet with Superman and friends. Turkey has blossomed into an object of study, anxiety, and fascination across the US’s political, economic, and academic strata — all thanks to the AKP.

Turkish influence in Iraq is a particularly successful example of “zero problems”. “This is the trick — we are very much welcome here,” noted Ali Riza Ozcoskun, the head of Turkey’s consulate in al-Basrah, referring to Turkish presence in Iraq. By mediating between Iraqi and US power factions (and eschewing Gothic installations of horror like Abu Ghraib), Turkey “has positioned itself as the country’s gateway to Europe, while helping to satisfy its own growing energy needs,” as the New York Times put it. Trade between Turkey and Iraq has already grown to $6 billion, doubling from 2008, and Iraq is projected to be Turkey’s largest export market in a few years.

Alas, all good things come to an end. As other writers have observed, Turkey was completely caught by surprise by the Arab Spring and found itself hedged by the Muslim world’s vociferous demands for self-determination on the one hand, and the desperate US and EU attempts to bring back the neo-colonies in line on the other. If “zero problems” means to eat your cake and have it too, at some point, you have to pay up when the baker comes calling. That is, at some point, the AKP would have had to face up to the contradiction between globally advocating Muslims’ rights and consolidating membership in the halls of power.

The US does know how to send a message — the postman doesn’t just ring twice, he makes a point of ringing three, four or even a dozen times. As a result of bomb-blasts leading to the 2011 Turkish elections, secret-negotiating in political councils, and some meetings with Saudi envoys, Turkey got the message that NATO expected it to toe a certain line in its campaign to tamp down on the Middle Eastern revolutions. Turkey has since backed away from the Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah nexus, and toward the US, EU, and Saudi alliance.

Perhaps the most obvious example is Erdogan’s recent agreement to house a radar system that is part of NATO’s missile shield against Iran. “Turkey’s hosting of this element will constitute our country’s contribution to the defense system being developed in the framework of NATO’s new strategic concept,” announced the Turkish Foreign Ministry in a statement that completely backpedaled on the AKP’s earlier resistance to NATO’s military rhetoric. “It will strengthen NATO’s defense capacity and our national defense system,” it continued. The Pentagon greeted the move with smug delight: “It was well received here,” reported one senior American military officer in Washington. Certainly, Turkey’s shift from objecting to anti-Iranian language on NATO reports into a shield-maiden for US and EU-crusading is slightly whip-lash inducing.

The Libya chapter has lifted a bloody feather in Erdogan’s career. NATO’s reconquista of Libya has involved genocide, a result of massive bombing campaigns over the city in order to destroy infrastructure, kill pro-Qaddafi population centers, and pave the way for the rag-tag rebel victory. Erdogan initially protested the Libya campaign for a few weeks — Turkey enjoyed considerable investment in Libya under Qaddafi, to the tune of $23 billion. However, he eventually came around, sending naval and logistical support to the Benghazi opposition, many of whom are hired thugs. Recently, Benghazi and a subdued Tripoli have been key stops in Erdogan’s Arab Spring tour.

“Few images of Turkey’s expanding influence are more powerful than of Mr. Erdogan joining hands with Libya’s new leaders for Friday prayers,” noted Alexander Christie-Miller of the Christian Science Monitor. Rebel leaders profusely thanked Erdogan for his help: “Our hands are clasped with those of the Turkish people,” declared Benghazi imam Salem al-Sheikhi, “We will never forget what you did for us.” Erdogan returned the gesture, painting the CIA-propped band of rebels as a bona fide democratic movement. “Turkey will fight with you until you take all your victory,” declared Erdogan, “You proved to all the world that nothing can stand in the way of what the people want.” Turkish companies are poised to win major contracts in the reconstruction phase, when NATO-affiliated corporate interests will move in and take ownership of Libya’s resources in return for rebuilding the infrastructure destroyed by NATO sorties.

Erdogan has also taken the diplomatic lead in championing the US-led counter-revolution against Bashar al-Assad. Mixed in with civilian demonstrations that swelled over the Muslim East, CIA-trained armed groups in Syria have been fighting pitched battles against the state army and accusing the latter of civilian massacre. “Those who repress their own people in Syria will not survive,” declared Erdogan, playing to the crowd with clichés scripted straight from Hillary Clinton’s desk. “The time of autocracies is over. Totalitarian regimes are disappearing. The rule of the people is coming,” he stated. The New York Times suggests that Turkey has been selected as the key interface for igniting civil disorder in Syria to bring the star crashing down like Humpty Dumpty: “In coordination with Turkey, the United States has been exploring how to deal with the possibility of a civil war among Syria’s Alawite, Druze, Christian and Sunni sects, a conflict that could quickly ignite other tensions in an already volatile region.”

If Syria and Iran (and their networks of influence) are out, what happens to Turkey’s cultural access to the Muslim East? It is telling that Davutoglu announced that Turkey’s future partnership will now be with Egypt (and not with the “disreputable” Iran and Syria, as he made clear). Ever given to hyperbole, Davutoglu described the Turkish-Egyptian partnership as a new axis of power in the Muslim East, positioned to alter the region’s geo-politics. “This will be an axis of democracy, real democracy,” he told the New York Times, “an axis of democracy of the two biggest nations in our region, from the north to the south, from the Black Sea down to the Nile Valley in Sudan.” Erdogan’s policy of publicly criticizing Israel while privately acquiescing to NATO seems intended to position Turkey as the heir of the Muslim East revolutions — to place Turkey “at the center of everything,” as he described it.

Of course, Egypt’s military junta has been paid off to the tune of $4 billion by Saudi Arabia acting on behalf of the cash-strapped US and EU, in order to put the brakes on the Egyptian revolution and keep North Africa’s most important asset firmly tethered to the US orbit. After the popular uprising against Cairo’s Israeli embassy on September 9, the “aid” promised to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi has jumped to $80 billion in order to keep things quiet. Turkey’s talk of developing an alliance with the military-governed Egypt is rather an outlandish piece of theater — Davutoglu seems to be working from NATO’s “divide and rule” script to paint a bona fide “Sunni” outpost of power to counterbalance the Iranian-Syrian-Lebanese “Shi‘i” one — not to mention hypocritical, considering the AKP’s own struggle with military authoritarianism in Turkey.

It seems that “zero problems with neighbors” is running into all sorts of problems. The Arab Spring has given way to a winter of discontent for Turkey, which fabulously believes that it can achieve domestic political agendas, regional influence, and international clout through real-politiking. As the AKP frays ties with key demographics in the Muslim East, reversing their political move “Eastward,” Erdogan has intensified his rhetorical bashing of Israel. Apparently, he sees no contradiction in signing on to NATO crusades against Libya and Syria while verbally flaying the most important outpost of US and European empire in the Muslim East. There is a tactic at work here, but clearly no strategy — Turkey seems to believe it can continue to justify its claims to leadership in the Muslim East by milking the symbolic capital offered by the Palestinian issue across the Muslim world. In this calculus, rhetoric can apparently substitute for real commitment to the people that one is invoking.

Of course, it is understandable that politicians must address multiple audiences and population groups — but it does not hold that Erdogan and Davutoglu see those various groups as equal. The biggest problem with “zero problem,” whether Turkey acknowledges it or not, is that there is a massive schism emerging between the two main audience groups that Erdogan and company have committed themselves to catering: US and European power groups (bankers, lobbies, politicians, war juntas) with their local representations in Turkey (military officers, secular nationalists) on the one hand, and disenfranchised populations struggling for bread and breath in the Muslim world on the other. Not to mention the split between the global Muslim street and Turkish capital interests, represented by the 200 or so businessmen who followed him on his trip to Tripoli and Benghazi.

Perhaps the greatest contradiction is that Turkey still desires Europe. As late as November 2010, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the Reuters news agency that “We have been kept waiting at the gates of the EU for 50 years. We are still waiting and waiting and still in the negotiating process.” Like their secular predecessors, Erdogan and Davutoglu desire the economic benefits that flow from consortium membership, political influence from sitting at tables with France and Germany, and the prestigious cultural recognition that yes, Turkey is part of Europe, not just its neglected gate-keeper. In a perfect future, the AKP would reconstitute the Ottoman zone of influence — empire has since become a dirty word — and force Britain, France and Germany to acknowledge it as an equal and a partner. The stain from history’s remembrance of the “the Sick Man of Europe” would finally wash away.

In imaging a divine right to history, AKP’s Turkey is betraying the present. In assuming Turkey’s role at “the center of everything,” Turkey is robbing the millions who strove to assume their God-ordained right to public action this past Spring. Dreams of Ottoman glory and grandeur — the seigneurial right to rule — has no place in the “we” that Davutoglu invoked in gently telling the New York Times that US power is alien to the Middle Eastern territory. However, the failure of Erdogan’s cabinet to imagine a future of inter-regional fraternity risks turning Turkey into an alien to this moment in time.

The Dönmeh: The Middle East’s Most Whispered Secret (Part II)

BY WAYNE MADSEN

What will surprise those who may already be surprised about the Dönmeh connection to Turkey, is the Dönmeh connection to the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.

An Iraqi Mukhabarat (General Military Intelligence Directorate) Top Secret report, “The Emergence of Wahhabism and its Historical Roots,” dated September 2002 and released on March 13, 2008, by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in translated English form, points to the Dönmeh roots of the founder of the Saudi Wahhabi sect of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. Much of the information is gleaned from the memoirs of a “Mr. Humfer,” (as spelled in the DIA report, “Mr. Hempher” as spelled the historical record) a British spy who used the name “Mohammad,” claimed to be an Azeri who spoke Turkish, Persian, and Arabic and who made contact with Wahhab in the mid-18th century with a view of creating a sect of Islam that would eventually bring about an Arab revolt against the Ottomans and pave the way for the introduction of a Jewish state in Palestine. Humfer’s memoirs are recounted by the Ottoman writer and admiral Ayyub Sabri Pasha in his 1888 work, “The Beginning and Spreading of Wahhabism.”

In his book, The Dönmeh Jews, D. Mustafa Turan writes that Wahhab’s grandfather, Tjen Sulayman, was actually Tjen Shulman, a member of the Jewish community of Basra, Iraq. The Iraqi intelligence report also states that in his book, The Dönmeh Jews and the Origin of the Saudi Wahhabis, Rifat Salim Kabar reveals that Shulman eventually settled in the Hejaz, in the village of al-Ayniyah what is now Saudi Arabia, where his grandson founded the Wahhabi sect of Islam. The Iraqi intelligence report states that Shulman had been banished from Damascus, Cairo, and Mecca for his “quackery.” In the village, Shulman sired Abdul Wahhab. Abdel Wahhab’s son, Muhammad, founded modern Wahhabism.

The Iraqi report also makes some astounding claims about the Saud family. It cites Abdul Wahhab Ibrahim al-Shammari’s book, The Wahhabi Movement: The Truth and Roots, which states that King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the first Kingdom of Saudi Arabia monarch, was descended from Mordechai bin Ibrahim bin Moishe, a Jewish merchant also from Basra. In Nejd, Moishe joined the Aniza tribe and changed his name to Markhan bin Ibrahim bin Musa. Eventually, Mordechai married off his son, Jack Dan, who became Al-Qarn, to a woman from the Anzah tribe of the Nejd. From this union, the future Saud family was born.

The Iraqi intelligence document reveals that the researcher Mohammad Sakher was the subject of a Saudi contract murder hit for his examination into the Sauds’ Jewish roots. In Said Nasir’s book, The History of the Saud Family, it is maintained that in 1943, the Saudi ambassador to Egypt, Abdullah bin Ibrahim al Muffadal, paid Muhammad al Tamami to forge a family tree showing that the Sauds and Wahhabs were one family that descended directly from the Prophet Mohammed.

At the outset of World War I, a Jewish British officer from India, David Shakespeare, met with Ibn Saud in Riyadh and later led a Saudi army that defeated a tribe opposed to Ibn Saud. In 1915, Ibn Saud met with the British envoy to the Gulf region, Bracey Cocas. Cocas made the following offer to Ibn Saud: “I think this is a guarantee for your endurance as it is in the interest of Britain that the Jews have a homeland and existence, and Britain’s interests are, by all means, in your interest.” Ibn Saud, the descendant of Dönmeh from Basra, responded: “Yes, if my acknowledgement means so much to you, I acknowledge thousand times granting a homeland to the Jews in Palestine or other than Palestine.” Two years later, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour, in a letter to Baron Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Zionists, stated: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people . . .” The deal had the tacit backing of two of the major players in the region, both descendant from Dönmeh Jews who supported the Zionist cause, Kemal Ataturk and Ibn Saud. The present situation in the Middle East should be seen in this light but the history of the region has been purged by certain religious and political interests for obvious reasons.

After World War I, the British facilitated the coming to power of the Saud regime in the former Hejaz and Nejd provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The Sauds established Wahhabism as the state religion of the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and, like the Kemalist Dönmeh in Turkey, began to move against other Islamic beliefs and sects, including the Sunnis and Shi’as. The Wahhabi Sauds accomplished what the Kemalist Dönmeh were able to achieve in Turkey: a fractured Middle East that was ripe for Western imperialistic designs and laid the groundwork for the creation of the Zionist state of Israel.

Deep states and Dönmeh

During two visits to Turkey in 2010, I had the opportunity of discussing the Ergenekon “deep state” with leading Turkish officials. It was more than evident that discussions about the Ergenekon network and its “foreign” connections are a highly-sensitive subject. However, it was also whispered by one high-ranking Turkish foreign policy official that there were other “deep states” in surrounding nations and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria were mentioned by name. Considering the links between Ergenekon and the Dönmeh in Turkey and the close intelligence and military links between the Dönmeh-descendent Sauds and Wahhabis in Arabia, the reports of close links between ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and the Binyamin Netanyahu government in Israel may be seen in an entirely new light… And it would explain Erdogan’s support for Egypt’s revolution: in Turkey, it was a democratic revolution that curbed the influence of the Dönmeh. The influence of Wahhabi Salafists in Libya’s new government also explains why Erdogan was keen on establishing relations with the Benghazi-based rebels to help supplant the influence of the Wahhabis, the natural allies of his enemies, the Dönmeh (Ergenekon) of Turkey.

Erdogan’s desire to set the historical record straight by restoring history purged by the Kemalists and Dönmeh has earned him vitriolic statements from Israel’s government that he is a neo-Ottomanist who is intent on forming an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab countries. Clearly, the Dönmeh and their Zionist brethren in Israel and elsewhere are worried about Dönmeh and Zionist historical revisionism, including their role in the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, and their genocide denial being exposed.

In Egypt, which was once an Ottoman realm, it was a popular revolution that tossed out what may have amounted to the Dönmeh with regard to the Mubarak regime. The Egyptian “Arab Spring” also explains why the Israelis were quick to kill six Egyptian border police so soon after nine Turkish passengers were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara, some in execution style, by Israeli troops. Dönmeh doctrine is rife with references to the Old Testament Amalekites, a nomadic tribe ordered attacked by the Hebrews from Egypt by the Jewish God to make room for Moses’s followers in the southern region of Palestine. In the Book of Judges, God unsuccessfully commands Saul: “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox, and sheep, camel and donkey.” The Dönmeh, whose doctrine is also present in Hasidic and other orthodox sects of Judaism, appear to have no problem substituting the Armenians, Assyrians, Turks, Kurds, Egyptians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Iranians, and Palestinians for the Amalekites in carrying out their military assaults and pogroms.

With reformist governments in Turkey and Egypt much more willing to look into the background of those who have split the Islamic world, Ataturk in Turkey and Mubarak in Egypt, the Sauds are likely very much aware that it is only a matter of time before their links, both modern and historical, to Israel will be fully exposed. It makes sense that the Sauds have been successful in engineering a dubious plot involving Iranian government agents trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington in an unnamed Washington, DC restaurant. The Iraqi intelligence report could have been referring to the Zionists and Dönmeh when it stated, “it strives to . . . [the] killing of Muslims, destructing, and promoting the turmoil.” In fact, the Iraqi intelligence report was referring to the Wahhabis.

With new freedom in Turkey and Egypt to examine their pasts, there is more reason for Israel and its supporters, as well as the Sauds, to suppress the true histories of the Ottoman Empire, secular Turkey, the origins of Israel, and the House of Saud. With various players now angling for war with Iran, the true history of the Dönmeh and their influence on past and current events in the Middle East becomes more important.

WAYNE MADSEN

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

The Dönmeh: The Middle East’s Most Whispered Secret (Part I)

BY WAYNE MADSEN 

There is a historical “eight hundred pound gorilla” lurking in the background of almost every serious military and diplomatic incident involving Israel, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Greece, Armenia, the Kurds, the Assyrians, and some other players in the Middle East and southeastern Europe. It is a factor that is generally only whispered about at diplomatic receptions, news conferences, and think tank sessions due to the explosiveness and controversial nature of the subject. And it is the secretiveness attached to the subject that has been the reason for so much misunderstanding about the current breakdown in relations between Israel and Turkey, a growing warming of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and increasing enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran…

Although known to historians and religious experts, the centuries-old political and economic influence of a group known in Turkish as the “Dönmeh” is only beginning to cross the lips of Turks, Arabs, and Israelis who have been reluctant to discuss the presence in Turkey and elsewhere of a sect of Turks descended from a group of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th and 17th centuries. These Jewish refugees from Spain were welcomed to settle in the Ottoman Empire and over the years they converted to a mystical sect of Islam that eventually mixed Jewish Kabbala and Islamic Sufi semi-mystical beliefs into a sect that eventually championed secularism in post-Ottoman Turkey. It is interesting that “Dönmeh” not only refers to the Jewish “untrustworthy converts” to Islam in Turkey but it is also a derogatory Turkish word for a transvestite, or someone who is claiming to be someone they are not.

The Donmeh sect of Judaism was founded in the 17th century by Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi, a Kabbalist who believed he was the Messiah but was forced to convert to Islam by Sultan Mehmet IV, the Ottoman ruler. Many of the rabbi’s followers, known as Sabbateans, but also “crypto-Jews,” publicly proclaimed their Islamic faith but secretly practiced their hybrid form of Judaism, which was unrecognized by mainstream Jewish rabbinical authorities. Because it was against their beliefs to marry outside their sect, the Dönmeh created a rather secretive sub-societal clan.

The Dönmeh rise to power in Turkey

Many Dönmeh, along with traditional Jews, became powerful political and business leaders in Salonica. It was this core group of Dönmeh, which organized the secret Young Turks, also known as the Committee of Union and Progress, the secularists who deposed Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II in the 1908 revolution, proclaimed the post-Ottoman Republic of Turkey after World War I, and who instituted a campaign that stripped Turkey of much of its Islamic identity after the fall of the Ottomans. Abdulhamid II was vilified by the Young Turks as a tyrant, but his only real crime appears to have been to refuse to meet Zionist leader Theodore Herzl during a visit to Constantinople in 1901 and reject Zionist and Dönmeh offers of money in return for the Zionists to be granted control of Jerusalem.

Like other leaders who have crossed the Zionists, Sultan Adulhamid II appears to have sealed his fate with the Dönmeh with this statement to his Ottoman court: “Advise Dr. Herzl not to take any further steps in his project. I cannot give away even a handful of the soil of this land for it is not my own, it belongs to the entire Islamic nation. The Islamic nation fought jihad for the sake of this land and had watered it with their blood. The Jews may keep their money and millions. If the Islamic Khalifate state is one day destroyed then they will be able to take Palestine without a price! But while I am alive, I would rather push a sword into my body than see the land of Palestine cut and given away from the Islamic state.” After his ouster by Ataturk’s Young Turk Dönmeh in 1908, Abdulhamid II was jailed in the Donmeh citadel of Salonica. He died in Constantinople in 1918, three years after Ibn Saud agreed to a Jewish homeland in Palestine and one year after Lord Balfour deeded Palestine away to the Zionists in his letter to Baron Rothschild.

One of the Young Turk leaders in Salonica was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. When Greece achieved sovereignty over Salonica in 1913, many Dönmeh, unsuccessful at being re-classified Jewish, moved to Constantinople, later re-named Istanbul. Others moved to Izmir, Bursa, and Ataturk’s newly-proclaimed capital and future seat of Ergenekon power, Ankara.

Some texts suggest that the Dönmeh numbered no more than 150,000 and were mainly found in the army, government, and business. However, other experts suggest that the Dönmeh may have represented 1.5 million Turks and were even more powerful than believed by many and extended to every facet of Turkish life. One influential Donmeh, Tevfik Rustu Arak, was a close friend and adviser to Ataturk and served as Turkey’s Foreign Minister from 1925 to 1938.

Ataturk, who was reportedly himself a Dönmeh, ordered that Turks abandon their own Muslim-Arabic names. The name of the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine, was erased from the largest Turkish city, Constantinople. The city became Istanbul, after the Ataturk government in 1923 objected to the traditional name. There have been many questions about Ataturk’s own name, since “Mustapha Kemal Ataturk” was a pseudonym. Some historians have suggested that Ataturk adopted his name because he was a descendant of none other than Rabbi Zevi, the self-proclaimed Messiah of the Dönmeh! Ataturk also abolished Turkey’s use of the Arabic script and forced the country to adopt the western alphabet.

Modern Turkey: a secret Zionist state controlled by the Dönmeh

Ataturk’s suspected strong Jewish roots, information about which was suppressed for decades by a Turkish government that forbade anything critical of the founder of modern Turkey, began bubbling to the surface, first, mostly outside of Turkey and in publications written by Jewish authors. The 1973 book, The Secret Jews, by Rabbi Joachim Prinz, maintains that Ataturk and his finance minister, Djavid Bey, were both committed Dönmeh and that they were in good company because “too many of the Young Turks in the newly formed revolutionary Cabinet prayed to Allah, but had their real prophet [Sabbatai Zevi, the Messiah of Smyrna].” In The Forward of January 28, 1994, Hillel Halkin wrote in The New York Sun that Ataturk recited the Jewish Shema Yisrael (“Hear O Israel”), saying that it was “my prayer too.” The information is recounted from an autobiography by journalist Itamar Ben-Avi, who claims Ataturk, then a young Turkish army captain, revealed he was Jewish in a Jerusalem hotel bar one rainy night during the winter of 1911. In addition, Ataturk attended the Semsi Effendi grade school in Salonica, run by a Dönmeh named Simon Zevi. Halkin wrote in the New York Sun article about an email he received from a Turkish colleague: “I now know – know (and I haven’t a shred of doubt) – that Ataturk’s father’s family was indeed of Jewish stock.”

It was Ataturk’s and the Young Turks’ support for Zionism, the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, after World War I and during Nazi rule in Europe that endeared Turkey to Israel and vice versa. An article in The Forward of May 8, 2007, revealed that Dönmeh dominated Turkish leadership “from the president down, as well as key diplomats . . . and a great part of Turkey’s military, cultural, academic, economic, and professional elites” kept Turkey out of a World War II alliance with Germany, and deprived Hitler of a Turkish route to the Baku oilfields.” In his book, The Donme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks, Professor Marc David Baer wrote that many advanced to exalted positions in the Sufi religious orders.

Israel has always been reluctant to describe the Turkish massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915 as “genocide.” It has always been believed that the reason for Israel’s reticence was not to upset Israel’s close military and diplomatic ties with Turkey. However, more evidence is being uncovered that the Armenian genocide was largely the work of the Dönmeh leadership of the Young Turks. Historians like Ahmed Refik, who served as an intelligence officer in the Ottoman army, averred that it was the aim of the Young Turks to destroy the Armenians, who were mostly Christian. The Young Turks, under Ataturk’s direction, also expelled Greek Christians from Turkish cities and attempted to commit a smaller-scale genocide of the Assyrians, who were also mainly Christian.

One Young Turk from Salonica, Mehmet Talat, was the official who carried out the genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians. A Venezuelan mercenary who served in the Ottoman army, Rafael de Nogales Mendez, noted in his annals of the Armenian genocide that Talat was known as the “renegade Hebrew of Salonica.” Talat was assassinated in Germany in 1921 by an Armenian whose entire family was lost in the genocide ordered by the “renegade Hebrew.” It is believed by some historians of the Armenian genocide that the Armenians, known as good businessmen, were targeted by the business-savvy Dönmeh because they were considered to be commercial competitors.

It is not, therefore, the desire to protect the Israeli-Turkish alliance that has caused Israel to eschew any interest in pursuing the reasons behind the Armenian genocide, but Israel’s and the Dönmeh’s knowledge that it was the Dönmeh leadership of the Young Turks that not only murdered hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Assyrians but who also stamped out Turkey’s traditional Muslim customs and ways. Knowledge that it was Dönmeh, in a natural alliance with the Zionists of Europe, who were responsible for the deaths of Armenian and Assyrian Christians, expulsion from Turkey of Greek Orthodox Christians, and the cultural and religious eradication of Turkish Islamic traditions, would issue forth in the region a new reality. Rather than Greek and Turkish Cypriots living on a divided island, Armenians holding a vendetta against the Turks, and Greeks and Turks feuding over territory, all the peoples attacked by the Dönmeh would realize that they had a common foe that was their actual persecutor.

Challenging Dönmeh rule: Turkey’s battle against the Ergenekon

It is the purging of the Kemalist adherents of Ataturk and his secular Dönmeh regime that is behind the investigation of the Ergenekon conspiracy in Turkey. Ergenekon’s description matches up completely with the Dönmeh presence in Turkey’s diplomatic, military, judicial, religious, political, academic, business, and journalist hierarchy. Ergenekon attempted to stop the reforms instituted by successive non-Dönmeh Turkish leaders, including the re-introduction of traditional Turkish Islamic customs and rituals, by planning a series of coups, some successful like that which deposed Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan’s Refah (Welfare) Islamist government in 1996 and some unsuccessful, like OPERATION SLEDGEHEMMER, which was aimed at deposing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2003. Some Islamist-leaning reformists, including Turkish President Turgut Ozal and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, died under suspicious circumstances. Deposed democratically-elected Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was hanged in 1961, following a military coup.

American politicians and journalists, whose knowledge of the history of countries like Turkey and the preceding Ottoman Empire, is often severely lacking, have painted the friction between Israel’s government and the Turkish government of Prime Minister Erdogan as based on Turkey’s drift to Islamism and the Arab world. Far from it, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) seem to have finally seen a way to break free from the domination and cruelty of the Dönmeh, whether in the form of Kemalist followers of Ataturk or nationalist schemers and plotters in Ergenekon. But with Turkey’s “Independence Day” has come vitriol from the Dönmeh and their natural allies in Israel and the Israel Lobby in the United States and Europe. Turkey as a member of the European Union was fine for Europe as long as the Dönmeh remained in charge and permitted Turkey’s wealth to be looted by central bankers like has occurred in Greece.

When Israel launched its bloody attack on the Turkish Gaza aid vessel, the Mavi Marmara, on May 31, 2010, the reason was not so much the ship’s running of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The brutality of the Israelis in shooting unarmed Turks and one Turkish-American, some at point blank range, according to a UN report, indicated that Israel was motivated by something else: vengeance and retaliation for the Turkish government’s crackdown on Ergenekon, the purging of the Turkish military and intelligence senior ranks of Dönmeh, and reversing the anti-Muslim religious and cultural policies set down by the Dönmeh’s favorite son, Ataturk, some ninety years before. In effect, the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara was in retaliation for Turkey’s jailing of several top Turkish military officers, journalists, and academics, all accused of being part of the Ergenekon plot to overthrow the AKP government in 2003. Hidden in the Ergenekon coup plot is that the Dönmeh and Ergenekon are connected through their history of being Kemalists, ardent secularists, pro-Israeli, and pro-Zionist.

With tempers now flaring between Iran on one side and Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States on the other, as the result of a dubious claim by U.S. law enforcement that Iran was planning to carry out the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States on American soil, the long-standing close, but secretive relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia is coming to the forefront. The Israeli-Saudi connection had flourished during OPERATION DESERT STORM, when both countries were on the receiving end of Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles.

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

(to be continued)

A Review of the Disastrous Occupation of Palestine

More than six decades have passed since the tragic occupation of Palestine. All the main causes of this bloody tragedy have been identified and the colonialist English government is the most important cause. The policies, weapons and military, security, economic and cultural power of the English government and other arrogant western and eastern governments were put to the service of this great oppression. Under the ruthless clutches of the occupiers, the defenseless people of Palestine were massacred and forced out of their homes. Until today even one percent of the human and civil tragedy – which was carried out at that time by the claimants of civilization and ethics – has not been properly portrayed and this tragedy has not had its fair share in the media and visual arts. The owners of visual and cinematic arts and western movie mafias have not been willing to allow this to happen. An entire nation was massacred and displaced in silence.

Certain instances of resistance emerged at the beginning, which were harshly and ruthlessly crushed. From outside Palestinian borders and mainly from Egypt, a number of men with Islamic motives made certain efforts which were not sufficiently supported and could not have an effect on the scene.

Afterwards there were full-scale and classical wars between a few Arab countries and the Zionist army. Egypt, Syria and Jordan mobilized their military forces, but the unconditional, massive and increasing military and financial support of America, England and France for the Zionist regime overwhelmed Arab armies. Not only did they fail to help the Palestinian nation, but they also lost an important portion of their territories during these wars.

After the weakness of Palestine’s Arab neighbors was revealed, cells of organized resistance were gradually established in the form of armed Palestinian groups and after a while they came together to form the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This was a spark of hope which shone brightly, but it did not last long. This failure can be attributed to many factors, but the essential factor was their separation from the people and from their Islamic beliefs and faith. Leftist ideology or mere nationalistic sentiments were not what the complicated and difficult issue of Palestine required. Islam, jihad and martyrdom were the factors that could have encouraged an entire nation to step into the arena of resistance and turned it into an invincible force. They did not understand this properly. During the first few months of the great Islamic Revolution, when the leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization had found a new spirit and they used to visit Tehran repeatedly, I asked a pillar of the organization why they did not raise the flag of Islam in their righteous battle. His answer was that there were a number of Christians among them as well. Later on that person was assassinated by the Zionists in an Arab country and I hope Allah the Exalted has bestowed mercy on him. But his reasoning was flawed. I believe a faithful Christian who fights alongside a group of selfless mujahids – who carry out jihad in a sincere way while having faith in God, the Day of Judgment and divine assistance – would be more motivated to fight than a Christian who has to fight alongside a group of people who lack faith, rely on unstable sentiments and lack loyal support of the people.

Lack of firm faith and separation from the people gradually made them neutral and ineffective. Of course there were honorable, motivated and valorous men among them, but the organization went off in a different direction. Their deviation has been a blow to the issue of Palestine. Like certain treacherous Arab governments, they too turned their back on the ideal of resistance which has been the only way of saving Palestine. And of course not only did they deliver a blow to Palestine, but they also delivered a strong blow to themselves. 

As the Christian Arab poet says,

لئن اضعتم فلسطيناً فعيشكم          طول الحياة مضاضات و آلامٌ

Thirty two years were spent in this misery, but suddenly God’s hand of power turned the tables. The victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in the year 1979 completely changed the conditions of this region and turned a new page. Among the amazing global effects of this Revolution and the strong blows that it delivered to arrogant policies, the blow to the Zionist government was the clearest and the most immediate. The statements of the leaders of that regime during those days are interesting to read and they show how unhappy and anxious they were. During the first few weeks after the victory, Israel’s embassy in Tehran was closed down and its staff was expelled. The embassy was officially given to the Palestinian Liberation Organization whose representatives are still there. Our magnanimous Imam announced that one of the goals of the Revolution was to liberate Palestine and to remove the cancerous tumor, Israel. The powerful waves of this Revolution, which engulfed the entire world at that time, conveyed this message wherever it reached: “Palestine must be liberated.” Even the repeated and great problems that the enemies of the Revolution imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran failed to discourage the Islamic Republic from defending Palestine. One instance of the problems that they caused was the eight-year war waged on Iran by Saddam Hussein who had been goaded by America and England and was supported by reactionary Arab governments.

Thus, new blood was pumped into the veins of Palestine. Muslim mujahid groups started to emerge in Palestine. The Lebanese Resistance formed a powerful and new front against the enemy and its supporters. Instead of relying on Arab governments and seeking help from global organizations such as the United Nations, which were accomplices of the arrogant powers, Palestine started to rely on itself, its youth, its deep Islamic faith and its selfless men and women. This is the key to all achievements.

Over the past three decades this process has been accelerated on a daily basis. The humiliating defeat of the Zionist regime in Lebanon in the year 2006, the humiliating failure of the arrogant Zionist army in Gaza in the year 2008, the Zionist regime’s escape from South Lebanon and withdrawal from Gaza, the establishment of the resistance government in Gaza and in brief, changing the Palestinian nation from a group of helpless and hopeless people to a hopeful, resistant and self-confident nation – these were the outstanding characteristics of the past thirty years.

This general picture will be clear when attempts at compromise and treacherous activities – whose goal is to break down resistance and make Palestinian groups and Arab governments acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel – are also reflected upon in an appropriate way.

These activities, which were initiated with the Camp David Accords by the treacherous and unworthy successor of Gamal Abdel Nasser, have always been aimed at undermining the steely determination of resistance forces. During the Camp David Accords, for the first time an Arab government officially acknowledged that the Palestinian lands belonged to the Zionists and it signed the papers according to which Palestine was recognized as the homeland of Jews.

From that time until the Oslo Accords in the year 1993 and later on in complementary plans – which were imposed one after the other on compromising and careless Palestinian groups with the intervention of America and the cooperation of colonialist European governments – the enemy tried its best to discourage the Palestinian nation and Palestinian groups from resisting through the use of empty and deceptive promises and making them busy with amateur political games. The uselessness of all these accords was revealed very soon and the Zionists and their supporters repeatedly showed that they consider these accords as worthless pieces of paper. The goal of these plans was to create doubt among the Palestinians, make materialistic unbelievers greedy and cripple Islamic resistance.

So far, the spirit of resistance among the Islamic Palestinian groups and the Palestinian people has been the antidote to all these treacherous games. They stood up against the enemy with Allah’s permission and as promised by God, they benefited from divine assistance: “And surely Allah will help him who helps His cause. Most surely Allah is Strong, Mighty.” [The Holy Quran, Sura al-Hajj, Ayah 40] The resistance of Gaza in spite of a comprehensive siege was an instance of divine assistance. The collapse of the treacherous and corrupt government of Hosni Mubarak was divine assistance. The emergence of the powerful wave of Islamic Awakening in the region is divine assistance. The removal of the mask of hypocrisy from the face of America, England and France and the increasing hatred of the regional nations towards these countries are divine assistance. The repeated and innumerable problems of the Zionist regime – from its domestic political, economic and social problems to its isolation in the world, to public and even academic hatred of the Zionists in Europe – are all instances of divine assistance.

Today the Zionist regime is weaker, more hated and more isolated than ever before and its main supporter, America, is more embattled and confused than ever before.

Today the general history of Palestine in the past 60 years is in front of our eyes. It is necessary to delineate the future by considering that general history and learning lessons from it.

(Supreme Leader’s Speech at International Conference on Palestinian Intifada -01/10/2011)