Turkey’s president is attracting ridicule for his latest use of history to promote Turkish nationalism

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is in Wonderland! Just kidding, it’s only Turkey’s new presidential palace. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan doesn’t spare any trouble when it comes to welcoming his Palestinian counterpart to Ankara. Last time out in July 2014, Abbas was surrounded by a group of popular artists, posing with him as they would do during a photo shooting session.

For their first meeting at the new presidential palace, the flamboyant complex that has become known as the White Palace, or Ak Saray (“ak” meaning white in Turkish), and less charitably among the opposition as the “KaçAk Saray” (illegal palace), in reference to its alleged construction without permits – Turkish officials planned something they meant, or at least believed, to be even more special.