Turkey's Two-Faced Aid For Gaza

Forbes ^ | 06.04.10 | Claudia Rosett

[Ooh-Ah]

From the fury with which Turkey's leaders are demanding carte blanche access for aid to Gaza, you might suppose the Turkish government had exhausted every available route for pouring its own bounty into the Palestinian enclave. Think again. While Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan whips up passions about Israel stopping a blockade-busting "aid" flotilla, his own government has racked up a record as one of the cheapskates of Gaza relief.

United Nations records show that if Gaza has been lean on aid from Turkey in recent years, it's not because Turkish relief donations have been blocked by the Israelis. It's because Turkey, relative to its size as a rising economic power, and despite its claims of regional leadership, has been surprisingly stingy about sending aid via the already existing channels of the UN. Apparently, Turkey‘s leaders are glad to enlist the U.N. full force for punishing Israel and stripping Israel's defenses against the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists who control neighboring Gaza. But the Turks are far less interested in the U.N. when it comes to handing over Turkish goods and cash for U.N. aid efforts.

The chief U.N. agency in Gaza is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA. Love or hate it--and I am no fan--UNRWA, according to its website, is "the main provider of basic services--education, health, relief and social services--to 4.7 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East." Many of those Palestinians live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank. But Gaza is the core of this operation. UNRWA‘s headquarters are in Gaza, where 1.1 million Palestinians--the bulk of Gaza's population--are registered on UNRWA's refugee rolls and eligible for its services.