Why Israel's Hezbollah strike didn't bother Turkey's Islamists

On Jan. 18 news broke that Israel attacked a Hezbollah convoy moving in the Syrian Golan Heights. Although Israeli sources have not officially confirmed the attack, Hezbollah has confirmed it lost six senior officials along with an Iranian general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attack came at a time when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were engaged in a heated war of words about who should or should not have been present at the Paris solidarity march condemning the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks.

In his address at an Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) gathering in Istanbul on Jan. 21, Erdogan brought up Israeli attacks on Gaza and how the West turned a blind eye to Israeli atrocities. He again ridiculed Netanyahu for the Paris march. However, there was not a word about the Jan. 18 Israeli attack on Hezbollah forces. Intriguingly, as of Jan. 22, there was no comment or condemnation from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the incident. Pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) media were silent on the attack as well. A journalist from the government news agency Anadolu, Samet Dogan, tweeted Jan. 18: “In 2006, Hezbollah was at war [with Israel] with the support of the Sunnis. Now, they are alone. God erases one murderer with another.” Other social media users made comments that the fight between Hezbollah and Israel was nothing more than a deception.