Much has been debated of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an‘s tendencies towards radical Islam. Erdo?an has been embraced by President Obama even before he ascended to the Presidency, and Turkey has been singled out as the shining example of what a peaceful, democratic AND Islamic state can look like. Of course Israelis are HUGELY suspicious of Erdo?an, amplified by the Mavi Marmara incident of May 2010.
But I would like to provide another small piece of evidence that suggests that Erdo?an is apparently a big bad wolf in a smaller, less threatening wolf’s costume.
Some background: The 4 finger salute here is a recent phenomena/meme which has emerged since the August 14 “massacre” of pro-Morsi demonstrators at Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo. If you haven’t heard of this specific event, I don’t blame you – it was barely covered in the English speaking press – all we had were vague reports of mass shootings at various rallies around Egypt, probably because Egyptian military censors are very strict, (and possibly also because most of the west turned a blind eye to what was going on since it was bad guys being wasted….)
Anyway, a new movement called “R4BIA” has emerged in a lightening fast fashion as you can read about in this excellent Front Page article from a few days ago, and that 4 finger salute that Erdo?an is giving is the symbol of the movement that their very professional PR firm has come up with as you can see here from their logo:
But why is this evidence of Erdo?an’s extremism? Well, its got to do with this image captured yesterday in Rafah in the Gaza Strip at an Al-Qassam Brigade rally (and Dave has posted some other photos including this one):
While people like Mr. Obama and his ilk will try to soften Mr. Erdo?an and his “Reformed Moderate Islamism”, the real face of that fascist ideology is in this image.