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Turkey's crisis with Israel, its backing for Hamas and close ties with Iran may irk its NATO allies but they have added to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's popularity in his quest for a third term in power in Sunday's polls.

Just a year ago, tens of thousands of people would demonstrate outside mosques in Istanbul shouting "Down with Israel!" and "We are soldiers of Hamas!" referring to the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip.

The almost daily protests were triggered by the killing of nine Turks in an Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ferry that led an international flotilla aiming to break Gaza's blockade, spearheaded by a Turkish Islamist charity.

Commenting on the outrage, academic Ahmet Insel had then said: "It's good for Erdogan politically, and he will gain from it in 2011."

"This is indeed the case," Hasan Cemal, a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper, said in the run up to the June 12 elections.

They may have not used the same language as protesters, but Turkey's Islamist-rooted leaders reacted furiously to Israel: the Turkish ambassador was recalled from Tel Aviv and President Abdullah Gul declared that ties between the one-time allies would "never be the same."

The crisis remains unresolved.

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