It is a matter of intelligence, not survival

On July 28, Tayyip appeared before his party's Rize provincial organization and said:

“We must be very strong so that Israel cannot pull this nonsense in Palestine. Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we can do the exact same thing to them. There is nothing to stop us from doing so.”

He said exactly these words.

Of course, he was not going to go and declare war on Israel.

But he did not speak just for the sake of talking, either.

His entire concern was to make people forget the defeat he suffered in the local elections, and to fortify and align his base and right-wing voters behind him ahead of a potential constitutional amendment referendum.

But this “offensive” approach did not yield the result he wanted.

While the people of my country are becoming poorer by the day, struggling with hunger and scarcity, and thinking about how to feed themselves, not many people paid much attention to these sentences of his excellency.

Even the right-wing voters, who suffer from an incurable allergy to Israel, did not really care much for the “jihad” rhetoric, if one might put it that way.

In fact, social media accounts, which are quite skilled at turning issues into jokes, had a good laugh at his expense over the Tomb of Suleyman Shah and the Mavi Marmara incident.

Tayyip changed his strategy, saying, “It won't happen like that, it will happen like this.”

Instead of an “offensive” approach, he adopted a “defensive” one this time.

When the idea of sending the Turkish Armed Forces to Israel in a sortie did not gain traction, he threw the issue of the “survival of the homeland” into the mix. He knew well that this would fortify the people of my country much more strongly.

This strategy had, one way or another, always worked in his favor since 2002.

If he could convince his own base, and especially the so-called “nationalist” crowd that is always looking for an opportunity to align behind his majesty, that the country was facing a survival issue, he could get the result he wanted.

That is why he came out this time and said:

“I am saying it clearly: the Israeli administration, acting with the delusion of the 'Promised Land' and driven by pure religious fanaticism, will set its sights on our own homeland after Palestine and Lebanon.”

He did not stop there; he said that everything is currently calculated based on this. After citing the proximity of the Lebanese border to Turkish territory in terms of vehicle travel time, he delivered the knockout blow with these sentences:

“The Netanyahu government is harboring a wild fantasy that includes Anatolia.”

In short, just two months after openly threatening Israel by saying, “We may come suddenly one night,” he made a U-turn and struck fear into hearts with sentences implying, “They may come suddenly one night.”

Of course, what he said had nothing to do with reason, logic, realpolitik, or rational military and political strategy.

No one even bothered to ask, “Why on earth would Israel attack Turkey?”

They found a 4,000-year-old theological excuse by saying “Arz-ı Mevud” (Promised Land).

The sycophantic news channels did not miss this opportunity; the “Jedi” who grabbed their pointers, following instructions from the palace, began to explain at length how Israel would attack Turkey and Netanyahu's plans to occupy Anatolia on maps of the “Promised Land.”

Yet, it would have been enough to look at the Diyanet Encyclopedia to see that this has nothing to do with Anatolian lands.

The entry for “Arz-ı Mevud” in the encyclopedia stated: “It has been suggested that the Mount Hor in question is the Taurus Mountains in Southern Anatolia (Ancien Testament, p. 326); however, the general consensus is that it is Mount Lebanon (Jabal Lubnan). In fact, nowhere in the Old Testament does the northern border of the promised land exceed the Lebanon region.”

But what was truly striking here was that Özgür Özel, who has been unable to fill the seat he occupies in the CHP and is eager to cozy up under Tayyip's wings at every opportunity, grabbed his salt shaker and ran to join in.

As if he did not know that this was a “fortification operation” aimed at the domestic audience, he went to Parliament and requested a closed session.

The AKP did not miss this opportunity.

Today, the deputies will gather and discuss whether Israel will attack Turkey, whether it will occupy Anatolian lands, how we will defend ourselves, and so on.

Unfortunately, the main opposition is pursuing an extremely shortsighted policy on this issue.

For instance, the CHP members should have brought up the fact that the government has been conducting trade with Israel secretly through Palestine since October 1, and they should have been hammering away at this politically five times a day.

Because Israel's ability to continue its massacres, which it calls “war,” depends on this. Turkey sends 60 percent of the oil, 90 percent of the cement, iron, and steel that Israel needs. The oil being sent is Azerbaijani oil, but Turkey receives a commission of 0.8 dollars per barrel.

But since Özgür Özel's concern is to please Tayyip and get a big pat on the back, he chose to go along with the government's agenda here as well.

Let us set all of this aside and ask the ten-point expert question:

If you truly believed that there was such an intention, that there were plans to seize Anatolian lands, and that Israel would attack Turkey in the near future, then why did you support the fragmentation of Libya, which balanced and limited Israel's power in the Middle East, the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and the dragging of Syria into a civil war?

Instead of seeking answers to reasonable and logical questions like these, let us ask whether the people of my country will once again stand at attention behind Tayyip under the influence of empty rhetoric; before leaving the answer to the discernment of our readers, let us underline with a thick pen that this is actually not a matter of survival, but a matter of intelligence, and put a period to our article.