In the past year alone, about a dozen senior Hamas operatives have relocated to Turkey, a country they and their colleagues use as a base of operations for conducting terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. And just this past weekend, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially welcomed Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chairman, to his country. Richard Kemp writes:
Erdogan’s support for Hamas reduces the prospects for peace in the region and makes more likely a full-scale war involving Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Gaza, embroiling Russian forces in Syria—with inevitable spill-over into Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen. Given the vast array of Iranian-supplied rockets facing Israel, it is the population of southern Lebanon that will suffer most as the Israel Defense Forces are compelled to launch both heavy air strikes and large-scale ground incursions.
Erdogan will not trigger this conflict, but his support for Hamas is a major aggravating factor. Jerusalem knows this and, despite immense restraint so far, might at some point have no choice but to take action against Hamas in Turkey. Israeli operations on the territory of a NATO member would have dire consequences.
NATO, the UN, the EU, and the U.S. therefore have an obligation to pressure Erdogan to kick Hamas out and cease all backing for it. The UK should be part of this effort. Its message of condemnation should include proscribing Hamas in its entirety. Currently only the so-called “military wing” is designated as a terrorist organization. This is a false dichotomy, fabricated to allow continued dialogue with Hamas’s political leadership. But all elements of the group are interlinked and overlapping, and all contribute to terrorist violence. Proscribing it in its entirety would greatly damage Hamas and send a clear signal to Erdogan.
Read more on Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/18/turkeys-shameful-support-hamas-terrorists-could-provoke-full