Secretary of State John Kerry was wildly successful in Turkey this week — if his aim was to ratchet up Ankara’s hostility toward Israel. Alas, his stated goal was to smooth ties between the two nations.
Kerry’s trouble began when he responded to a question about a rapprochement between Turkey and Israel. In his answer, he referred this way to the infamous 2010 Gaza flotilla in which several Turks were killed while trying to break an Israeli blockade that even the United Nations says is legal under international law:
“I particularly say to the families of people who were lost in the incident, we understand these tragedies completely, and we sympathize with them . . . I have just been through the week of Boston, and I have deep feelings for what happens when you have violence . . . and you lose people that are near and dear to you.”
What? True, the Boston bombings and the flotilla affair both involved violence.
But the similarity ends there: In Boston, terrorists murdered innocent people. In the flotilla attack, the “near and dear” folks Kerry referred to were on a ship funded by one terrorist organization (the Turkish IHH) in support of another (Hamas); the Israelis who killed them did so after being met with armed resistance.
Kerry’s analogy not only equates the Turkish attackers with Boston’s victims; it also lumps the Israelis in with the Marathon bombers. That’s beyond perverse.
Not that it did Kerry any good. Turkey refused Kerry’s bid to delay the prime minister’s trip to Gaza — calling it “diplomatically objectionable, wrong and incorrect.”
Whatever message Kerry thought he was sending, the one that Turkey received was this: It’s all Israel’s fault.