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Why responding to Turkey’s talking points is not the right approach


There quite obviously is a battle going on, battle of the Titans, Saudi Arabia and UAE vs. Qatar and Turkey.

As an observer, I see how this is now taking shape. People in Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now organizing a response. Fighting back on the Turkish talking points, fighting back on Al Jazeera.

If that is the strategy, let me tell you, as a communication professional, I think that this is a battle nobody will win. It will turn into something like a “he said, she said” thing, it will become messy, or boring, and in the end, nobody will win.

Not the right approach.

Allow me to tell you what I think would be the right approach.

Let’s go back in time.

You remember the debate between Kennedy and Nixon? Was that debate about ideas, about talking points? It certainly wasn’t. There was a young bright suntanned president with a bright smile, a pretty wife and cute kids. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The sun. And then, there was the moon, Richard Nixon.

Electors were asked to vote. Between the sun and the moon, between that bright smile and the other guy.

Who would you have chosen? Kennedy, right? Because Kennedy looked like the promise of a bright future, of a new society when Nixon didn’t. And to most people, that’s enough.

MBS should be the Kennedy of our times. I have now spent 4 years observing this man, and for sure, he has the potential to be the Kennedy of our times. An Arab Kennedy.

Of course, this would need some work. It’s hard for some people to see a man in a thawb and imagine he’s the Kennedy of our time, you have to help those people see beyond the thawb and beyond anything else that has been polluting their mind.

You have to reach a point when people throughout the Arab world will look at MBS and just by looking at him say “Him, let him be the leader of our pack”. Why? Because he looks like the future.

Will that be enough to fight back on Turkey and Qatar? No, it won’t, a positive sentiment will not be enough, Kennedy was not just a smile, there was more to him, but it would make things a lot easier.

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