Viva Palestina and I.H.H. backed down after a five day stand-off, eventually agreeing to return to Syria and re-route themselves, via plane and ship, to El Arish. However, the Egyptian government made it clear that some of their vehicles, which were carrying sedans, pickup trucks, generators and other items proscribed by Egypt's blockade, would have to enter Gaza through Israeli checkpoints rather than the Egypt-controlled Rafah crossing. The convoy's response was a riot. Participants tried to break out of the El Arish port compound before being subdued by Egyptian riot police. To mark the stand-off and demonstrate solidarity with their patrons, Hamas staged a violent protest at Rafah near the Egypt-Gaza border. Nine Egyptian border guards were injured in the melee and one was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper.

The riots in El Arish and at the Gaza border were plainly designed to humiliate Egypt in the Muslim world by depicting it as an oppressive tool of Israel. Tellingly, five Turkish AKP parliamentarians - Hüsnü Tuna, Cemal Yılmaz Demir, Mehmet Nil Hıdır, Secarettin Karayağız and Hasan Murat Mercan -- joined with Viva Palestina and I.H.H. in El Arish. Murat Mercan is no mere bench-filler: he holds the sensitive post of being the head of the Turkish Parliament's Foreign Affairs Commission.

The AKP pols helped negotiated the release of compounded vehicles and arrested participants, backed to the hilt by Ankara.  (For its part, Egypt deported all the convoy activists once they returned to Egypt and banned them from taking part in any future aid missions in the country.)  Once in Gaza, the AKP contingent were among those ceremoniously feted by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, along with other Turkish VIPs such as Temel Karamollaoglu, vice president of the Felicity Party, and Ahmet Faruk Unsal, the former AKP MP and I.H.H. trustee.

Gone, evidently, were the days of Turkey's invigilation of this "fundamentalist organisation."

Egemen Bagis, Turkey's minister for European affairs, recently told the New York Times, "The I.H.H. has nothing to do with the AK Party, and we have no hidden agenda." He was half right: the agenda has been conspicuously advertised for anyone paying attention.