RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14848/turkey-israel-revolution

“Hatice Karahan, Erdogan’s top economic advisor, told DW that economic relations between the countries represented a ‘win-win situation’ for both: ‘Turkey exports automobiles, iron, steel, electrical devices and plastic to Israel. And in return, it imports Israeli fuel and oil.'” — Deutsche Welle, December 12, 2017.

Erdoğan was unjust, wrong and unrealistic in his quest internationally to isolate Israel. The world has not quite moved in the direction he wished for.

“[T]he rapprochement that significant sections of the Israeli military and security establishment have long wanted with the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] has taken root since 2011, as the post-Arab Spring landscape has provided the opportunity to deepen unofficial ties in areas of shared concern.” — Baker Institute, Rice University.

Turkey’s Islamist leaders, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have been pledging to their voters that they would “internationally isolate Israel” ever since they launched a diplomatic war on the Jewish state in 2010.

In a 2011 speech, Turkey’s foreign minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoğlu (later prime minister), said that his country’s Turkey’s policies in the Middle East “have brought Israel to its knees” and isolated the Jewish state both regionally and internationally.

The facts, however, could not have been more distant.

According to official reports, Israel’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by a healthy 3.3% in 2018, compared to 1.3% in 2009, while Turkey reported a drop from 8.5% in 2010 to 2.8% in 2018. The unemployment rate in Israel stood at 3.7% in July 2019. Turkey, meanwhile, boasted an unemployment rate of 14.7% in the December-February 2018-2019 period, its highest level in nearly a decade.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-myanmars-military-duped-the-west-11568069031

Yangon, Myanmar

Is the American foreign-policy community wise enough, disciplined enough, and knowledgeable enough about Asia to build an effective coalition to balance a rising China? The example of Myanmar is a worrying one.

Myanmar received extraordinary attention from the last administration, with visits from both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. But the crucial Southeast Asian country turned out not to be the human-rights miracle many in both parties envisioned. And when events in Myanmar failed to follow the idealistic script written in Washington, the U.S. responded in ways that undermined the country’s reformers, empowered its military and strengthened China’s hand. The U.S. failed even to demonstrate a balanced approach to human rights the people of Myanmar might have respected.

In the early years of the Obama administration, many Americans fell in love with a fantasy: the idea that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and endured 15 years of house arrest, was in the process of taking power from a defeated military junta. They misread the situation fundamentally.

In 2010 the military was frustrated. Decades of failed socialist planning had left the economy relatively backward, even as other Asian countries grew rich. Myanmar was largely dependent on Chinese investment, which made the generals nervous. They decided to begin to liberalize their domestic economy to promote faster growth and attract investment from Japan, the U.S. and Europe.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/09/belgium-mp-climbs-atop-antwerps-city-hall-to-demand-an-end-to-islamic-occupation/

Filip Dewinter, a well-known Flemish MP and city councilor, climbed the roof of Antwerp’s 500-year-old city hall building to call for an end to what he referred to as the “occupation of the city by Islam”.

The leader of the right-wing populist Vlaams Belang party in the Flanders part of Belgium, Filip Dewinter, posted a video on Twitter of himself delivering an Islam-critical message while he stands on top of Antwerp’s city hall roof beside a golden eagle. 

“At the beginning of the political year a special initiative: a statement from the roof of the Antwerp town hall, flanked by a recently restored eagle!” Dewinter wrote in the tweet.

During his message, Dewinter gives a short history lesson about the city, the city hall building, and how both relate to the idea of freedom. Dewinter also cites all of the different outside forces who have, at one time, occupied the city.

“This town hall has been around since 1565,” Dewinter said. “In those five centuries that the town hall has existed, it was besieged, set on fire and has experienced countless revolutions, wars, and invasions of our city. This town hall symbolizes the freedom of Antwerp.”

“It is not without reason that the office of the mayor of Antwerp is made of the wood of the tree of freedom that used to stand just in front of the town hall on the Grote Markt. Freedom is the essence of what the people of Antwerp believe in.”