How Turkey Can Improve Its Relations With the West

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5. The AKP’s support for Hamas—As I have written before, and as Jonathan Schanzer and David Weinberg have exposed more recently, the AKP has a blind spot for Hamas, believing that the Turkish Islamist experience is somehow parallel to that of Palestinian terrorists. I am not aware that the AKP or any of its predecessor parties condone bombing buses and cafes. Still, Erdogan believes that the fundamental unfairness with which Hamas has been treated, especially after it won an election in early 2006, and the pressure the organization is under from Israel, the Europeans, and the United States is similar to what the AKP and its predecessors had to endure in the context of radical Kemalist secularism. It is all rather strange until you read the work of Belul Ozkan, who was a student of the former foreign minister and current prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. Belul explicates the Davutoglu and the AKP worldview, which in brief believes that Turkey’s future is as a Muslim power and that Ankara must develop good ties with Islamist movements, including Hamas, around the region.
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