Erdogan’s Family is against “Israel”; their Father’s State is with it!

If it were not for the role of the Arab regimes and Ankara in the so-called Greater Middle East Project, and the resulting bloody “Arab Spring” that destroyed Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and other countries to varying degrees, the Zionist regime would not have dared to commit its latest act.

The following is the English translation from Arabic of the latest article by Turkish career journalist Husni Mahali he published on 11 December 2023 on the Al-Mayadeen news site Al-Mayadeen Net:

02 January 2024: At the invitation of dozens of civil society organizations loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the first day of the new year and after the dawn prayer, tens of thousands, and it was said that they were two hundred thousand Turkish citizens, headed from all directions to the bridge that connects the two sides of the Golden Horn Bay through which Muhammad the Conqueror conquered Constantinople in 1453.

President Erdogan’s two sons-in-law led the demonstration, the first was former Minister of Treasury and Finance Berat Bayrak (he had been absent from the political and media arena for 3 years after information about disputes with his wife Isra and their divorce), and the second was Selcuk Bayraktar, owner of the Turkish drone factories, in addition to Bilal Erdogan, the president’s son, and with them all their children and wives.

Although the main title of the demonstration is to commemorate the soldiers who fell as martyrs last week in the war against Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants, in northern Iraq and Syria, the speakers at the demonstration devoted the bulk of their speeches to the Palestinian issue, they threatened the Zionist entity and affirmed the determination and insistence of the Turkish state and nation to pursue the rulers of this entity and hold them accountable in international courts for the brutal crimes they committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

In turn, Bilal Erdogan said, “Turkey will not stand idly by in the face of Zionist barbarism supported by terrorist America,” and stressed “the necessity of continuing the Turkish boycott of the products of Israeli companies and those produced by companies that support the Zionist entity.”

Bilal Erdogan’s statements immediately became a target for opposition criticism, as the leader of the Republican People’s Party, Ozgur Ozal, said: “Mr. Bilal should ask his father before others to boycott Israeli products and stop exporting anything to Israel while it kills the Palestinian people.”

These criticisms by Ozal were the talk of hundreds of social media accounts that reminded Bilal Erdogan of the trade exchange between Ankara and Tel Aviv, the volume of which exceeded $10 billion last year, at a time when the Zionist entity covers about 70% of its needs for food, drinking water, oil derivatives, chemicals, cement, iron, and steel from Turkey.

The opposition says that ships owned by Burak Erdogan, Bilal’s brother, are transporting some of these materials to the port of Haifa, while other ships owned by the son of former Prime Minister Bin Ali Yildirim and some of those close to Erdogan are transporting the rest of them so that they are not exposed to any armed attack because they are flying the Turkish flag.

With the continuing contradictions between the political discourses and practical positions of Erdogan, and now his children and in-laws, regarding the Zionist aggression against Gaza, some political circles considered the Istanbul demonstration an attempt by Erdogan to politically promote his second son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar, and some expect Erdogan to nominate him in the Istanbul municipal elections at the end of next March.

Without ignoring the possibility that the eldest son-in-law, former Finance Minister Berat Albabrak, will be the candidate for these elections in Istanbul and perhaps in another city, and these scenarios do not prevent talk about the possibility of Bilal Erdogan being the third candidate, which is what President Erdogan will decide this week after he spoke last week about the importance of winning in Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities such as Izmir, Antalya, Adana, and Mersin, in which the candidates of the Republican People’s Party won in March 2018 elections.

Meanwhile, opinion polls have proven that Selcuk Bayraktar, the husband of Sumaya Erdogan, who was very close to her father before she married, is more fortunate than Berat and Bilal in Istanbul. At a time when independent opinion polls see the current mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, as the most fortunate, his popularity is still around 55%, despite the announcement of the Good Party’s leader, Meral Akşener, that she will not support him in the upcoming elections, as she did in the 2018 elections.

At a time when many expect the Palestinian issue and the Zionist aggression, along with the potential developments in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, to turn into a basic propaganda material in the upcoming election campaign that will begin soon. Erdogan, his candidates, and the media loyal to them will continue their fiery speeches against the Zionist entity, sometimes from historical nationalist standpoints and other times from religious grounds, which proved in the past elections their influence on the popular street loyal to Erdogan.

He convinced his voters that “his opponents are supported by America and the West, which supports Kurdish terrorists in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq,” which is the second sensitive issue that affects the Turkish voters. The opposition failed to convince the voters after it accused Erdogan of falsifying facts and lying to the people, not only in domestic policy but also in foreign policy.

As is the case in his ongoing relations with “Tel Aviv,” which is killing the Palestinian people, and the relationship with the strategic ally, Washington, which supports Kurdish militants who are fighting against Turkish interests in Syria, Iraq, and inside Turkey, even though America has dozens of military bases in Turkey.

Among the most important of them is the Incirlik base, which is close to the borders with Syria and Iraq, and the Koragek base, which monitors Iranian military movements and immediately transmits this information to American ships in the Mediterranean, which in turn transmits it to the Israeli “army” so that it can confront any potential Iranian missile before it reaches “Israel.”

The bet remains on field developments in the war on Gaza and the possibilities of escalation or decline in the American position after the Yemeni threats, for which everyone sets his own calculations. Everyone knows that these calculations will be affected, whether negatively or positively, by the positions of the Arab regimes, and they are now in a position that they cannot and will never be envied for.

Either it will persist in its complicity with the Zionist entity, directly or indirectly, or it will wake up and give priority, even for once, to the interests of its country and its people over its authoritarian personal interests. It was and still is the reason for everything that the Palestinian people and the region in general have lived and are experiencing.

Were it not for the role of these (Arab) regimes and Ankara in the so-called Greater Middle East Project, and the resulting bloody “Arab Spring” that destroyed Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and other countries to varying degrees, the Zionist regime would not have dared to commit its latest act, for which it will pay dearly with an Arab and Islamic position imposed on everyone combining words and actions.