Armed with the history of the Ottoman Empire, his stances opposed to Israel, and the support of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has set off on a tour of the countries of the “Arab Spring”. In Cairo, where the Muslim Brotherhood gave him a hero's welcome, he addressed the Arabs through their nearly collapsed League, and congratulated them for their “spring”. He urged them to head towards democracy, presenting himself, his party and his country as a modern model for the development of political Islam, in harmony with Western values and in coexistence with secularism. He was encouraged in this by the many things that have been written about the model he represents, in addition to the encouragement of NATO, which has discovered, after waging destructive wars in the region, that Muslims were willing to exchange their wealth for democracy and secularism. Iraq had been the evidence on which it based this conclusion, and now there is Libya and its military commander Abdelhakim Belhadj, who had been thrown in jail by Gaddafi in collaboration with European and American intelligence services. Every time Erdoğan plans to take a step forward in the Arab and Muslim worlds, he escalates against Israel. Before warning President Bashar Al-Assad and “stripping him of legitimacy”, he threatened to use his fleet to protect Turkish commercial ships as well as those headed towards Gaza. He also said that the Mediterranean Sea was no longer Israel's pond, thereby bestowing upon himself the title of “Sultan of Land and Sea”, as his ancestors used to do. The truth is that Iran had preceded Erdoğan in making use of the Palestinian issue as its broad gateway for entering the Arab World. Moving forward in its choice to strategically ally with Syria and with resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine, it supported Hamas and Hezbollah with weapons and funding. It made use, as it still does, of this stance as a weapon in confronting the West, and some of the Arabs as well. As for the AKP's (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) Turkey, it is using it to form an alliance, let us call it a “peace alliance”, in agreement with the West, i.e. with NATO (of which Israel is a member). In the background of such efforts is the fact that most Arabs and Muslims have become convinced that it was impossible for them to be victorious in war, and are now heading towards peace. They have publicly stated this many times, at the highest levels, and those of them who made no statements have applauded President Mahmoud Abbas, who never missed an opportunity to assert the choice of peaceful resolution over armed struggle, and who formed an apparatus in collaboration with the West and Israel to pursue any armed fighters in the West Bank. One can only place Erdoğan's escalation against Israel within the framework of competition amongst allies – allies with a single authority of reference: that of the United States and NATO. Indeed, he knows full well that any real confrontation with the Hebrew state would require departing from the will of this authority, which is managing the conflict and closely monitoring it. Other alliances, as well as a different Arab and Muslim climate, would be required if he were to seek actual confrontation. Iran had tried, before Erdoğan, to enter the Arab World, and had succeeded to a certain extent. Yet the Arab World, which had been divided between those who supported peace with Israel and those who rejected it, became divided between those who opposed Tehran and those who voiced solidarity with it. Turkey now comes to make such a division more acute, especially in the time of the “Arab Spring” – a spring which Erdoğan claims to be the sponsor of and NATO's messenger to. This is precisely what has made some influential Arab countries voice reservations over the direction taken by Turkey, considering it to be an attempt to spread the influence of a country that had always been in disagreement with them, and one which they still have apprehensions about, because they might have to share the support of the street with it at this decisive moment in the Middle East.
