The Price for Criticizing Hamas in Turkey

April 7 2017

Burak Bekdil, a journalist who once wrote for a leading Turkish newspaper, recounts being harassed and hounded from his job after writing an article critical of Hamas:

[I]n the summer of 2014, . . . friends told me that my picture was on the front page of [Turkey’s] most militant Islamist newspaper, Yeni Akit—whose editors always find a seat aboard Erdogan’s private jet during his state visits abroad.

I was accused of undermining Turkey’s defense industry and promoting the Israeli weapons lobby. But my greatest sin was to argue: “The fact that there are no Israeli casualties [in the Gaza war thus far] does not mean Hamas does not want to kill; it just means Hamas, for the moment, cannot kill.” . . . [Shortly thereafter] a pro-government columnist, in [a] tweet, called me “the disgrace of humanity,” several others joined in a lynching campaign on social media. . . .

The campaign annoyed my editors and boss, but I was kept writing provided that I would not write on “explosive” subjects. . . . After a few attempts I stopped writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict [for Turkish publications]. . . . But things went from bad to worse in Turkey. . . . The increasingly difficult rules meant that my column could not contain any of the words “Jew, Israel, Israeli, Hamas, Hamas and terror, and Palestine.”

The last straw for Bekdil came in December, when he criticized President Erdogan and his editors, under direct pressure from the regime, fired him.

Read more at Jewish Chronicle

More about: Anti-Semitism, Hamas, Journalism, Politics & Current Affairs, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023