Stop Erdogan now

The uncontrollable appetite with which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pounced on Israel and refused to let go is enough to make an observer's jaw drop. Is he a cynical warmonger with a premeditated plan to work tirelessly until flames engulf the eastern Mediterranean? Or perhaps he is a man who has lost his good sense and been overcome by an evil impulse, an unquiet mind that eggs him on to scorch, burn and destroy everything in his path?

Both types are known to history and both have required international intervention to stop them in the past - intervention that usually came too late. For a moment it seemed as if Erdogan had adopted a humanitarian policy in the face of Bashar Assad's slaughter of his people in Syria. But Erdogan's criticism faded quickly. Instead, he found a convenient enemy and released a pent-up flood of anti-Semitic feelings. Its easier and more popular to incite against Jews than to deal with a fellow ruler who is murdering Arab brethren.

If that is not the case, then there is no explanation for Erdogan's conduct. Erdogan agreed to take part in the investigation by the U.N. panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer but then refused to sign off on its conclusions because it recognized the blockade of Gaza as legitimate. Since then his pronouncements have fueled conflict and conflagration on a daily basis. Suddenly, 16 months after the fact, he dusted off the bizarre claim that the clash on board the Mavi Marmara was a cause for war. When he arrived in Egypt, Erdogan repeated that his greatest wish is to visit Gaza - for no good reason, just to fan the flames. If he doesn't actually go through with his visit, it is because Hussein Tantawi, who is temporarily ruling Egypt, is preventing it.

Something rotten is happening in the Middle East. Irresponsible leaders, who can't control their tongues and may be irrational in their appetite for power, stand at the helm of the two countries competing for hegemony in the Arab-Muslim world. The competition between Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spells disaster for the Arab world and Western democracy. It is especially bad because an anxious and terrified world in the grip of an entrenched financial crisis does not dare stop the insane man on the roof holding a weapon. So they fiddle while a whole region threatens to burn.

Whoever does not stop them now will pay a much heavier price down the line.

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