From the NYT’s report on the potential appointment of Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO Secretary General:
NATO works by consensus, and the European-favored candidacy of Mr. Rasmussen was publicly opposed by Turkey, NATO’s only Muslim country. Turkish officials said that Mr. Rasmussen was too insensitive to Muslim concerns during the scandal over the Danish newspapers publication in 2005 of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and that while NATO is fighting in Muslim Afghanistan, the symbolism would be all wrong.
By all means, let’s talk about the symbolism being all wrong. Here is Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey shaking hands with the indicted war criminal Omar al-Bashir, president of Sudan, in January 2008, well into the Darfur genocide:
Via my friend Yigal Schleifer, we read of Turkey’s ongoing diplomatic moves in support of the Khartoum regime, which has conducted a policy of genocide against African Muslims. (The Turkish leader, meanwhile, felt moved to denounce the Israeli president as a murderer in front of news cameras, favorably citing the work of a virulent antisemite to boot.)
The hypocrisy is vile and astounding: Turkey, turning a blind eye to an anti-Muslim genocide, is lecturing Western Europe on “insensitivity” toward Muslims in the form of some stupid newspaper cartoons. It’s sad but unsurprising to note how some liberal commentators are buying into the Turkish line.
Yigal has more on this — apparently the Turkey-Denmark dispute might have more to do with Kurdish exile politics than anything else.
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