"Erdogan's Voice" - New Turkish FM Davutoglu refers to Israel as a “geostrategic tumor” and “a weed.”

"Erdogan's Voice" - New Turkish FM refers to Israel as a “geostrategic tumor” and “a weed.” HT: Monitor.

Al-Monitor:  What do you mean by Davutoglu’s pan-Islamic worldview?

Ozkan:  The neo-Ottomanist label that is frequently attributed to Davutoglu is misleading. He criticizes neo-Ottomanism in his articles for being too Western-oriented. Davutoglu is a pan-Islamist. He is deeply influenced by Islam, yet he also uses Islam to achieve his foreign policy goals.
He believes in a Sunni Muslim hegemonic order led by Turkey that would encompass the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and include Albania and Bosnia as well. 

And I say Sunni because Iran is not part of this envisaged world. He argues that Turkey cannot be confined to its present-day borders. Should it continue to cling to its post-Cold War policy of preserving the status quo, Turkey will be destroyed. He believes that the nation-states that were formed in 1918 were artificial. But he does not idealize post-nation-state systems such as the European Union. To the contrary, he wants to go back in time to an order based on Islamic unity, on which Turkey expands its power not through military power but by creating spheres of influence. But this is a fantasy that has no academic basis.

Al-Monitor:  You have been following Davutoglu for a long time. What surprised you most in his articles?

Ozkan:  What I saw was a man who was far more radical in his thinking than as portrayed in “Strategic Depth.” Moreover, I realized that the book was not written from scratch. Some of the passages are copied word for word from his previous articles. But in many instances the tone has softened. Though he never overtly opposes Israel’s existence, one senses that he does.

In his previous articles, he refers to Israel as a “geostrategic tumor” and “a weed.”

And in “Strategic Depth” he uses terminology and concepts long abandoned in the West to describe his vision for the 21st century. These include “lebensraum,” which was used by German expansionists. Frankly, I was shocked. Hmmm.....Frankly....I'm not shocked.....just following the script of their predecessor.