What Utter Hypocrisy

Today Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan quoted the sixth commandment to Israel in Hebrew, telling the Jewish state "Thou shalt not kill". He has also described Hamas as freedom fighters. This from the government which continues to threaten severing ties with any country which even dares raise the issue of the Armenian holocaust, presided over by Ottoman Turkey when over a million Armenian Christians were massacred in a myriad atrocities across the country during the First World War (if you don't know much about those events do a little research and the facts will horrify you). Of course, Turks today cannot be held accountable for events carried out a century ago in their name, while many in Turkey equally condemn the genocide carried out early in the twentieth century. But Erdogan and his government  not only threaten allies who raise the issue a century later, the PM also issued a veiled threat to expel 100,000 Armenians just a few weeks ago if the world continued to refer to the Armenian genocide. And now Erdogan quotes the sixth commandment to Israel. What sheer hypocrisy! Turkey's rhetoric this week merely reinforce the view by some observers that she is in a process of strategic realignment and is distancing herself from Israel. One simply doesn't use such undiplomatic language otherwise. That, of course, is Turkey's prerogative. All nations must do as they see fit, whether out of pragmatism, ideological reasons or to satisfy their domestic populations. But Erdogan's hypocrisy by quoting Scripture really is too much and until the present regime is replaced I, for one, will not be going to Turkey any time soon. Put on ice, too, are any planned study trips with students to visit the seven churches of Revelation.