In Sincan, a suburb of the Turkish capital of Ankara, a routine event took place on February 2 of this year. The town council sponsored a rally to commemorate "Jerusalem Day" and, as elsewhere in the Middle East, the occasion offered a chance to execrate both Israel and the Arab-Israeli peace process. On a stage featuring a large picture of Fathi Shiqaqi, late leader of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad, politicians, activists, and the guest of honor--Iran's ambassador to Turkey--launched into a predictable and well-received tirade.
In the usual course of events, such a rally would attract little attention; such things happen almost daily some place around the world. In Iran and Sudan, where fundamentalists rule, the central governments themselves sponsor anti-Israel events; in Egypt and Jordan, countries where the state is formally at peace with Israel, the governments avert their eyes and permit such meetings. Even in the United States similar hate fests take place in the ballrooms of major hotels, attended by thousands of sponsors and supporters.
But things did not go as usual in Turkey last February. The next day, a high-ranking military official told a Hurriyet reporter, "I followed the meeting in Sincan. I was terrified by what I observed", and a day after that the army sent fifteen tanks, twenty personnel carriers, and an assortment of other military vehicles through the town. Two of those tanks just happened to "malfunction" as the convoy traversed the main road, and had to park for many hours in the very square where the meeting had earlier been held.
