OTHER VIEWS

Learning Together

Amanda Warner

Community View

0

n Jan. 28, I participated in
Mentor Connection's Legislative
Day. More succinctly, I went on a
field trip to the State Capitol in Lansing.
In celebration of Michigan Mentoring
Month, State Senators Nancy Cassis, R-
Novi, and Gilda Jacobs, D-Huntington
Woods (who serve on the Mentor
Connection Advisory Council) hosted four
female mentor/youth matches of Mentor
Connection. The program, part West
Bloomfield-based Jewish Family Service
of Metropolitan Detroit, serves Oakland
County children and teens. The Legislative
Day was created to help encourage girls to
become leaders in their communities and
have the ability to speak with female lead-
ers in an intimate setting.
Soon after we arrived, we sat the balcony
area above the Senate floor to watch the
Senate in session. When Senators Cassis

and Jacobs formally welcomed us to the
Senate, we all stood and listened as they
shared with their fellow senators the impor-
tance of Michigan Mentoring Month.
At one point in the session, my mentee,
Alma, and I noticed that staffers were
entering the room with giant bakery cook-
ies. We hypothesized the treats were from
a special interest group.
At lunch, we learned per tradition, it
was a senator's birthday and she brought
in treats to share with her colleagues.
Apparently, some aspects of the Senate are
just like elementary school.
The timing of our trip was incredible
because we visited the beginning of a new
term. At lunch, we had the opportunity to
meet state Representatives Gail Haines,
R-Waterford, and Eileen Kowall, R-White
Lake. Both women are newly elected offi-
cials, who shared with us how they are
still settling in, learning names of fellow
representatives and staffers and navigating
the building.

We were again reminded of elementary
school when we had a chance to tour the
Senate floor (during their lunch break).
Senators have personalized their desks
with family photos, coffee mugs and
mementoes from their home districts.
On the bus ride home, my mentee and
I recapped the day's events. We agreed we
had learned so much more in our half day
in Lansing than we learn at a typical day
of school or work. That's a sign of a suc-
cessful field trip.
On behalf of Mentor Connection, I
thank Senators Cassis and Jacobs, along
with their staff, for hosting such a reward-
ing, enriching and inspiring event for big
and little kids alike.
Mentor Connection is always looking for
caring adults to become mentors to youth
in the local community ❑

Amanda Warner of Birmingham is a Mentor

Connection mentor and Advisory Council

member.

Aline and Amanda on the Senate floor

Turkish Tightrope

New York

I

have long admired Turkey. Yet with the
outburst of animosity for Israel and
the anxiety awakened in the Turkish
Jewish community, I wonder what's going
on and what the future holds.
If this only emanated from the "street"
or from an extremist fringe, it would be
worrisome enough. But it starts at the top.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
has been the loudest, attacking Israel in
a manner both vicious and disconnected
from facts.
He has described Israeli policy in Gaza
as a "massacre" and a "crime against
humanity" that would bring about Israel's
"self-destruction" through divine pun-
ishment. These words are inflammatory
— and wrong.
Israel yearns for a secure and lasting
peace. No one has more fully embodied
that vision or worked more tirelessly to
achieve a new start for the Middle East
than Shimon Peres, Israel's president, a
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Erdogan's
fellow panelist at Davos.
Yet, Erdogan essentially called Peres a
child-killer before storming off the stage
at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 29.

message loud and clear.
Maybe he gained popularity in
Since 1993, Turkey has sealed
the Turkish street, where anger
its border with landlocked
against Israel and Jews has
Armenia because it objects
been stoked in recent weeks;
to Armenian policy toward
but Erdogan's unstatesmanlike
Azerbaijan. But Erdogan now
behavior did Turkey no service.
accuses Israel of creating "an
What would Turkey do if its
open-air prison" by sealing its
population were targeted, day
own frontier with a hostile ter-
after day, by merciless enemies?
ritory, even while humanitarian
Actually, we know the answer.
assistance continues to cross
When Turkey has deemed its
David A.
from Israel to Gaza.
national interests in jeopardy,
Harris
And Erdogan contends that
it has acted, irrespective of the
Special
Hamas is a reasonable nego-
views of the international com-
Commentary
tiating partner. He invited its
munity.
leaders to Ankara, though Hamas had not
The PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party)
met the Quartet's demands to recognize
has targeted Turkey for years, initially
seeking an independent Kurdish state that Israel, renounce violence and abide by
previous agreements. It still has not and
included part of Turkey. Now it claims to
repeatedly declares its goal of Israel's
seek greater autonomy for the millions of
destruction, assisted by weapons from
Kurds in Turkey. As the PKK has appar-
Iran.
ently lowered its demands, has Turkey
The Turkey I know and admire would
pursued talks with that murderous group?
recoil from partners like Iran and Hamas.
Absolutely not! And it has urged other
Their central beliefs are antithetical to
nations to avoid any contact, as well.
Indeed, in the late 1990s, Ankara threat- everything that modern, democratic
Turkey ought to stand for.
ened to send its army into neighboring
I have long valued Turkey's increas-
Syria if the PKK continued to receive pro-
ingly important role in regional and global
tection there. Luckily for Turkey, Syria was
affairs. Turkey's growing link to Europe, its
smarter than Hamas. Damascus got the

longstanding NATO membership, its strong
ties with the United States, its historic place
as a haven for Jews fleeing the Spanish
Inquisition, its contributions to UN peace-
keeping operations, including in southern
Lebanon, and its mutually beneficial ties
with Israel have all served it well.
When Ankara needed assistance in
Washington, or in European capitals,
Turkish officials often turned to Jewish
groups, the American Jewish Committee
among them; and whenever we could, we
have helped. And when a major earth-
quake devastated Adapazari in 1999, AJC
built a school for 400 children as a gesture
of solidarity and friendship.
Only Prime Minister Erdogan knows
how far he wants to take his increas-
ingly belligerent posture. It certainly has
resulted in joy in Iran and llamas' radical
circles. Iranian leaders now talk of him as
a Nobel Peace Prize candidate. But with
friends like that, who needs enemies?
Without an ounce of hyperbole, Turkey's
future direction has enormous geopolitical
consequences for its neighborhood and
beyond. It bears very close watching. ❑

David A. Harris is executive director of the

American Jewish Committee.

Ai

February 12 • 2009

A35

