On Turkey's reaction to the Israel-Iran war; the origins of Islam; the Musk-Trump relationship; bad 2000s historical fiction

notebook 24

This is a regular feature in which I write about what I’ve been reading, watching, and thinking about. The first item is free, the rest is for paid subscribers.

I skipped last week’s post, since it was a holiday weekend in Turkey, and I’m in Izmir with family. This week’s news is dominated by the Israel-Iran war, so I’ll be focusing on that.

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But first, I joined

Murtaza Hussain

on the

Drop Site News

podcast last week to talk about my book. Murtaza wrote about his thoughts about the book and was gracious to invite me to their podcast. You can listen to it below.

Turkey Marches Towards Authoritarianism as It Becomes a Global Power

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Israel-Iran war

It’s hard to write about something like this. Events are moving very quickly, and it’s difficult for us mere mortals to stay on top of it all.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry put out a condemnation of Israel’s attack against what is, after all, a neighbor of Turkey. Erdoğan also tweeted out a statement saying that he condemned the attack, framing it as a foreign intervention in the region. I do think that these statements reflect Ankara’s genuine stance on the issue. Ankara is deeply uncomfortable with any Israeli show of force, and certainly with something as major as this. Islamist elites see Israel’s strikes as part of a larger plan that is ultimately aimed at Turkey.

There’s also a lot of moving parts to this sort of thing. Already the strikes have had an impact on the Turkish economy, which is very susceptible to high oil prices. If the war grows and Iran is destabilized, it could also cause refugee flows whether there’ll be refugees heading towards the Turkish border, which won’t make anyone happy. There could also be opportunities for Turkey of course, the most obvious being on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border.

Head of National Intelligence Organization (MİT) İbrahim Kalın, Minister of National Defense Yaşar Güler, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan, and Chief of General Staff General Metin Gürak, meeting on June 13. I think the point of releasing photos like these was to calm nerves among the commentariat and let people know that the grownups were taking threats to Turkey seriously.

Aside from that, on a very basic level, I think Israel’s abilities have spooked Turkey’s elite. The fact that they’ve infiltrated Iran’s institutions and borders very deeply, and that they’re capable of pulling off these operations seems to be putting people on high alert. I’d be surprised if they weren’t working furiously to tighten counterintelligence measures right now.

It also seems that Erdoğan was hopeful that Trump was distancing himself from the Israel lobby, so he must have been disappointed. They talked on the phone recently, and I’m sure that Erdoğan beat the horse again about the illegitimacy of all this, and the need for regional stability.

popular anonymous account called “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fan club” comments on a tweet that reads “Tel Aviv is burning:” “well done you sons of whores, 10 on one side, 10 on the other, keep going, don’t you stop.” It’s one of the more vulgar accounts out there, but I think he captures the feelings of a certain base anti-Iranian Islamist contingent within the AK Party establishment, especially people who followed Syria’s civil war closely. Source: X

Turkey and Israel are irrevocably opposed to each other on the question of Palestine, and will be confronting each other over Syria for the foreseeable future. Everyone is steeling themselves for a tough time ahead. I keep hearing about how this is a new era, it’s the law of the jungle, and that Turkey has to maintain a strong defense sector. If the regional war ramps up, I think that domestic politics is going to take a back seat, even among serious economic problems that this would involve.