Former Turkish PM: US Embassy move would be a ‘fatal mistake’

Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would be a “fatal mistake”, former Prime Minster of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu, said.

In a lengthy article discussing wide-ranging issues affecting the Middle East, Davutoglu stated that the embassy move would cause tension and “bloody conflicts between Palestine and Israel, and torpedo any chance of a two-state solution.”

Highlighting future dangers, Davutoglu added that the move “would ignite a further cycle of violence and bloodshed and provide fertile political ground for extremism of all sorts to thrive in the region.”

Pointing to the symbolic significance of Jerusalem and its potential to escalate tension, he stressed “Jerusalem is not only Jerusalem. It is not only a disputed issue between Israel and Palestine, or even the Arabs as a whole, but a much bigger potential source of friction.”

Davutoglu, a professor of international relations, was prime minister of Turkey from August 2014 until May 2016, and foreign minister from May 2009 until August 2014.

In his article, which has been circulated widely, Davutoglu discussed a number of issues including the legacy of former US President Barack Obama, the Syrian conflict, Iran’s nuclear deal and US President Donald Trump.

After recounting Obama’s policies in the Middle East and pointing to a long list of failures by his administration, Davutoglu concluded that Obama failed to meet expectations and his era will be viewed with “disappointment and dismay”.

“History will pass its own verdict on Obama’s foreign policy,” he said. “In all likelihood, it will be a damning one. Rather than becoming a transformative global foreign policy figure, and in spite of his rhetoric, Obama chose to be a prisoner of the status quo.”

Speaking about the peace talks between Israel and Syria which he helped mediate as a foreign minister, he expressed a feeling of betrayal by the fact that Israel had once again chosen war at the very moment that the prospect of a peace deal with Syria was becoming attainable.

While conveying details of the behind the scene progress that was made by Davutoglu and his team he was dismayed by the fact that the Obama administration had decided not to invest further energy nor effort in reviving the initiative.

On the election of Donald Trump he took a cautionary tone warning of the political discourse of the new US president prior to the election, and his performance and decisions since then, which he believes, carry “worrisome elements and are in complete contradiction of our expectations”.

Davutoglu described Trump’s executive order to ban citizens of seven Muslim majority countries as an “institutionalisation of Islamophobia as a government policy of a superpower”. He believes that it will increase polarisation worldwide and activate the fault lines in societies, religions and civilisations”, before cautioning that “this Muslim ban will reward these perpetrators with a gift that they could never have previously imagined.”

“The securitisation of Islam and Muslims will drive a further wedge not only between the US and its own Muslim population, but also between the US and the larger Islamic world.”

“It is an irony of history that Trump signed the Muslim ban on Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the guiding principle of this remembrance should have been never to again stigmatise any people, religion or society collectively.”