Turkish PM Warns Israel

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan left Lebanon on Thursday completing a two-day visit.Erdoğan’s trip to Lebanon came after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to the Lebanese capital and days before Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri is scheduled to travel to Tehran.

Lebanon and Turkey signed an agreement to establish a free trade zone between the two countries and announced the creation of the High Level Strategic Cooperation and Coordination Committee between the two countries.

“Turkey doesn’t have any direct interest in Lebanon other than economic. But Turkey is just starting its good relations with the Arab world. It doesn’t yet have local powers that will support it,” he said. “If Erdoğan is trying to match the roles of Saudi Arabia and Syria, he will not make it.”

Turkish prime minister’s two-day visit to Lebanon, during which he inaugurated a burn treatment center in Sidon, a major southern coastal city. South Lebanon was badly hit during the Hezbollah militia's deadly war with Israel in 2006.
Ankara is in a position to fill, in part, the power vacuum left by Washington’s waning popularity, Salem said. “There is nothing serious about neo-Ottomanism except that Turkey is remembering that it had a massive empire and now is saying, 'Why not take advantage of it?' There's a lot to be gained from this. Turkey is a global player, so it is looking after its backyard,” he said.

“What struck me about Ahmadinejad's visit was that he was sounding more like Erdoğan,” said Paul Salem, director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
Prime Minister also called on the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to pressure Israel over its nuclear program in the same way that the international community has been dealing with Iran.

Amal Saad Ghorayeb,research at Qatar-based think tank the Doha Institute, said Erdoğan’s presence in Lebanon after Ahmadinejad’s exhibits a key policy shift. “It’s an important detail because it indicates that there are not two contradictory messages behind these visits,” she told the media. “Turkey is moving closer to the so-called ‘resistance axis.’ It is edging toward a definitively anti-Israeli stance.”

Turkish prime minister said Thursday that his country would not remain silent if Israel attacked Lebanon or the Gaza Strip, as ties between the long-time allies remain at an all-time low. "We will not be silent and we will support justice by all means available to us," the Turkish prime minister said.In a speech at a village in northern Lebanon inhabited by Turkmen families, Erdoğan called on Israel to apologize for its regional mistakes. He also inspected Turkish troops serving with the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon at the Israeli border who are stationed in the area.His remarks echoed, albeit less stridently, sentiments expressed by Ahmadinejad during speeches he delivered during his Lebanon trip.“What struck me about Ahmadinejad's visit was that he was sounding more like Erdoğan,” said Paul Salem, director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. He said the visits of both leaders sought to avert sectarian strife in a country teetering on the brink of political disintegration over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

“Erdoğan represents a major Sunni power,” Salem told the media “Some [in Lebanon] have encouraged the Turks to play more of a role in the face of Persian and Shiite Iran, but Turkey definitely doesn't want to get into that game. They respect [Sunni Prime Minister Saad] al-Hariri, but are not falling into a Sunni-Shiite conflict.”