Baku – APA. “The United States and Turkey have common targets on a number of issues, including Caucasus,” Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister, former Turkish ambassador to Azerbaijan Ahmet Unal Chevikoz, who ended his visit to Washington, said in his interview to Turkish service of the Voice of America, APA reports.
Chevikoz had high-level meetings with the U.S. officials in Washington and discussed President Barack Obama’s forthcoming visit to Ankara.
“Obama’s visit is very important. The relations between the two countries were discussed during the recent visit of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Ankara. We saw that the two countries had very significant foreign policy targets. We have a common agenda on a number of issues, including our relations with Iraq, Afghanistan, Caucasus and Russia,” he said.
Commenting on Turkey’s policy with respect to Armenia Chevikoz said the whole world witnessed everything.
“After September 6 visit of President Abdullah Gul to Yerevan, high-level warm relations were formed between the two countries. Foreign Ministers met seven times. The ways to improve Turkey-Armenia relations were discussed at the meetings. We hope the relations will normalize soon and it will be continuous. There are some preparations in this respect and these preparations will be realized with support of the Foreign Ministers of the two countries,” he said.
Ahmet Unal Chevikoz also commented on Azerbaijan’s attitude towards Ankara-Yerevan relations.
“Being our nearest neighbor in the region Azerbaijan is attentively observing normalization of the relations between Turkey and Armenia. On the other hand, there is unsolved Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It is normal that Azerbaijan is observing these processes. But Azerbaijan need not worry or doubt anything. Turkey’s position on Karabakh problem will continue as before, nothing has changed. Of course, normalization of the relations between Turkey and Armenia is parallel to the process of settlement of Nagorno Karabakh problem,” he said.
Turkish diplomat said his country was not mediator, but played an easing role in the settlement of the conflicts in the region.
Ankara has offered opportunities for contacts between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine and played an easing role in Israel-Syria and Syria-Lebanon dialogues and European Union’s contacts with Iran.
“All this is sourced from everybody’s confidence in Turkey,” he said.
The economic crisis is fuelling opposition to further EU enlargement. Yet the price of delay could be instability and deepening poverty, Katinka Barysch, Deputy Director of the Centre for European Reform argues.
This is part of a series of opinion pieces ahead of the June European elections.
The queue for EU membership keeps getting longer. The 27-nation EU has accepted Turkey, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Serbia and other Balkan countries as potential candidates. Recession-battered Iceland may follow.
Former Soviet countries such as Ukraine and Georgia have been told that they need to improve a lot before the EU will consider them as candidates.
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of eastward enlargement, the EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn released a report in February that explained how both the new members and the “old” EU have gained from integrating with each other.
Thanks to enlargement the EU is now the single biggest market in the world, and certainly a force to be reckoned with in the forthcoming G20 talks about how to fix the world economy.
Eastern progress
Over the last decade, the nimble, fast-growing East European countries also added a degree of dynamism to an EU economy that looked sluggish and sclerotic at the time.
The biggest winners have been the new members themselves.
Turkey's long-standing EU bid faces numerous hurdles
Nothing quite focuses politicians’ minds like the goal of joining the EU. The bloc is demanding: applicants have to open up their economies, tackle political favouritism and corruption, and adopt the EU’s accumulated legal rules. In return, they can expect booming trade with the EU’s 13 trillion-euro single market and large amounts of foreign investment.
Since 1973, when the UK joined what was then known as the European Community, the EU has welcomed new members on average every eight years.
Most recently, Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007. They had missed the “big bang” enlargement of 2004 when 10 – mostly ex-communist – countries had joined the club.
Stumbling blocks
But even the candidate countries are stuck at the moment.
There are well-known reasons why enlargement is now proceeding slowly. Many of the current applicants are poor and backward; some, such as Bosnia, have yet to build a functioning state; Kosovo has not even been recognised by all current EU countries.
Turkey poses special issues. Because of its 70 million population, proud politicians and predominantly Muslim religion, many people in Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere question whether it should join the EU at all.
Moreover, many people in the EU are still struggling to digest the impact of the last enlargement.
Fears that eastward enlargement would lead to political gridlock and economic hardship have not materialised. Nevertheless, the current EU-wide recession has aggravated concerns that taking in more countries would bring more low-cost competition at a time when jobless queues are getting longer everywhere.
The economic instability seen in some of the new eastern member countries, such as Latvia and Hungary, now will make voters in the West even warier of further enlargement.
At a recent meeting of foreign ministers, Germany and the Netherlands effectively blocked the application of Montenegro, a Mediterranean country of 620,000. If Montenegro made progress, they may have reasoned, Albania, Bosnia and Serbia would hand in their official applications this year as well, thus putting pressure on the EU to act.
Even before the foreign ministers’ meeting, there were signs of trouble.
Bilateral disputes
Various existing EU members have been holding the enlargement process hostage to bilateral spats they are having with some applicant or other. EU governments have always thrown their specific worries or pet projects into accession negotiations. What is new is the boldness with which some now hold up the entire process, to get what they want.
The most blatant example is Slovenia’s dispute with Croatia over a stretch of Mediterranean coastline.
Croatia was hoping to wrap up its accession negotiations this year so that it can join in 2010. But while 26 EU countries (and the European Commission) wanted to open 10 new “chapters” in the negotiations in 2008, Slovenia vetoed all but one.
Since then, the political atmosphere between Ljubljana and Zagreb has become so poisonous that the EU has called in Nobel Prize-winning diplomat Martti Ahtisaari to find a way out.
Greece is holding Macedonia’s application hostage to its long-running dispute over the country’s proper name.
Cyprus is blocking several chapters in Turkey’s accession talks, probably in the hope of gaining leverage in the peace talks on the divided island. France is also holding up the talks, but for more profound reasons: since President Nicolas Sarkozy prefers a “privileged partnership”, he argues that Turkey need not bother with those chapters of the acquis – the EU rulebook – that are only relevant for full members.
These small-minded vetoes are dangerous. The East European and Balkan region has been hit hard by the economic crisis. These countries would find it a lot easier to get through the crisis if they had the prospect of EU membership to guide them.
EU governments need some vision here. They should conclude a “gentlemen’s agreement” about not vetoing accessions because of bilateral grievances. They need to find a way of keeping Turkey’s accession process alive, even if no breakthrough is achieved in Cyprus this year. And they should allow the applications of the Balkan countries to proceed.
The alternative could be a region full of political instability, economic turmoil and disgruntled people dreaming.
The Centre for European Reform is a privately-funded think-tank, based in London, that favours European integration while pushing for EU reform.
ANKARA, Turkey – President Barack Obama may be invited to address Turkey’s Parliament in a rare honor reserved for the country’s closest allies, an official said Friday.
Obama is scheduled to visit Turkey on April 5 during his first visit as president to a Muslim nation.
Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan told reporters that lawmakers want Obama to give a speech to legislators and to the Turkish people from the rostrum of Parliament.
The invasion of Iraq has strained the long friendship between the U.S. and Turkey — close NATO allies — and Obama’s visit would mark an improvement in ties with Turkey, which is critical to aiding the U.S. pullout from Iraq and turning around the war in Afghanistan.
However, Obama could jeopardize relations unless he breaks a campaign promise to describe the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as “genocide.”
Such a declaration would infuriate Turkey, which could respond by withholding cooperation and complicate U.S. military operations in the region.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. (sic.)
But Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, contending the toll has been inflated, and the casualties were victims of civil war and unrest.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries Sweden was the most feared “superpower,” as unbelievable as that sounds today. The young King Charles XII, who had ascended to the throne at age 16, was in possession of all the states bordering on the Baltic Sea after winning some stunning military campaigns. He even defeated Peter the Great at Narva. However, that battle was his undoing, because Peter the Great retrenched his army and a few years later delivered a decisive defeat to Charles at Poltava. The Swedish king barely saved his life by escaping on horseback to his ally in Turkey.
This incident highlights a long-standing alliance between the northernmost and southernmost kingdoms of Europe, forged together by their mutual enmity with Russia. This alliance had, in fact, been cemented by a Jewish ambassador of Sultan Mohammad IV, Moshe ben Yehuda Bebri, or, by his Turkish title, Aslan Aga, who had twice visited Charles’ father, Charles XI. On his voyage back to Turkey, he died in Amsterdam, where his monumental marble tombstone can still be seen today in the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery. (I recently published a study on this forgotten Jewish hero).
At the beginning of his reign, Charles XII demonstrated his interest in the Middle East, by sending Sweden’s leading professor of Oriental languages, Michael Eneman, on an exploratory trip to Turkey, Palestine and Egypt. Eneman’s report, written in Old Swedish, and covering the years 1711 and 1712, is a gold mine of information about an era from which we have only few eye witness accounts by neutral observers. It was never published in English until I translated it and published it a few years ago, together with my friend, Professor Zvi Werblowsky, of the Hebrew University.
Here are some excerpts from Eneman’s report on the Jews of Smyrna, Turkey: “They number 5,000, and have the freedom to enter any trade, although they are despised by the Moslems. There is great unity among them, and in case of any controversy they turn to their own judge, Rabbi Israel ben Benveniste, of Spanish origin. His salary is the equivalent of 300 Swedish ‘Riksdaler.’ He is assisted by Rabbi Elija HaCohen, and by Rabbi Jacob. Jews will not accept food or wine from a non-Jew, partly for hygienic, partly for religious reasons. Therefore they have their own butchers and wine producers, even though they have to pay a higher price that Turks and Christians.
“Smyrna recently saw the appearance of a man, Sabathai Zevi, who claimed to be the Messiah. Jews from everywhere — Holland, Italy and the Orient — had perfect faith in his mission since they were sure that the time for G-d’s redemption of his people had come. They sold their belongings and sailed to Smyrna. Large groups of Jews arrived, which worried the Sultan. But instead of putting an immediate stop to these arrivals, he figured out a way to make money on this phenomenon. The Sultan imprisoned Sabathai Zevi near the Dardanelles. Thereupon he charged up to 10 Riksdaler from every Jew who came to visit Sabathai Zevi.
“A controversy among the Jews broke out. A Rabbi Nehemia Cohen claimed that there must be two Messiahs, one from the tribe of Ephraim, and one from the house of David. He himself aspired to being one of them. But Sabathai Zevi refuted him, claiming that only one Messiah has to come, from the house of David, and that he himself was that one. Rabbi Nehemia Cohen was angry at this, and traveled to Adrianapolis to denounce Sabathai Zevi to the Deputy Grand Vizier as a rebel against the throne of the Sultan. The Sultan thereupon called for Sabathai Zevi, and offered him a choice of either the death penalty or conversion to Islam. Zevi chose the latter, to the utter shock and shame of his Jewish followers. Despite all subsequent attempts to mediate in this scandal, no Jew was willing to accept a Messiah who wore a Moslem turban.”
Here follows part of Eneman’s report on the Jews of Jerusalem: “They still suffer from the punishments which the prophets of the Bible pronounced for abandonment of the laws of the Torah. Yet the Jews are inalterably attached to the city of Jerusalem, mainly in order to be buried there, so that they will be promptly resurrected when their Messiah comes (whom we Christians do not believe will ever come). So they prefer suffering all kinds of degradation and humiliation at the hands of the Moslems than to live in great honor in any other part of the world.
“They also adore the holiness of the ‘Kothel Mearabi’ (the Western Wall) where they are sure the ‘Shechina’ (Divine Presence) still dwells. They pray there incessantly, especially chapters 122 and 126 of the Psalms. When I asked one Jew what the wall has to do with the delayed coming of the Messiah, he answered with the verse from the Song of Songs, chapter 2, verse 9: ‘Behold he standeth behind our Wall, he looketh forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice.’ This shows, the Jew said, that the Messiah will first appear at the wall.
“The Jews also believe that the Ark and the Cherubim are buried under the Temple Mount, because G-d opened the mountain to swallow them up when the Temple was destroyed, and he will bring them forth again in due time. Therefore, no Jew will set foot on the Temple Mount, where a large Moslem Mosque, or ‘Dgiamesi,’ has been built, because they would die if they step on such divine treasures. Therefore, the Turks are happy since they know that no Jew will come to desecrate their Mosque.
“The Jews have two synagogues, one is for the German Jews, and the other is for the French, Italian, and Spanish Jewish refugees. Both synagogues send out emissaries abroad to collect charity and alms, especially for the Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. Sometimes these emissaries come back with 10-20,000 Riksdaler. Yet many of them are imprisoned by the police for non-payment of their debts. When I visited the German synagogue I only saw eight men there, in tatters, while the other synagogue is well attended by men who are very well dressed inside the synagogue, but who wear rags in the street, to avoid attention by the authorities as to their riches. As is well known, when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in the year 1099, all the Jews were slaughtered by them, but now they are allowed back again, but in very limited and crowded quarters.”
Such an eye witness account by a Christian gives us many important details of an historic nature. It should be remembered that no Jews were allowed to live in Sweden until about 50 years after Eneman’s trip, so he had no advanced knowledge of either Jews nor of Judaism. His keen observations are therefore especially praiseworthy.
Israel thinks about buying water from Turkey once again as an option to overcome water shortage, the worst in the country over the past ten years.
Officials of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), established to help alleviate the national water shortage, discussed whether or not water import from Turkey could be feasible.
Turkey and Israel once agreed on water trade to ship fresh water from Turkey to Israel –via either a pipeline or tankers– but the project was put on ice as it was considered too costly and non-operable.
The Fund is in talks with Turkish and Israeli governments, as well as Israeli companies, to revive the idea of carrying Turkish water to Israel, said Russel Robinson, an official from the JNF.
Israeli officials believe that it is almost impossible to find investors for projects to desalinate sea water amid global financial downturn. JNF officials said water import would be a feasible alternative.
Before recent rainfall since the beginning of March, analyst had said the country could face the worst water crisis in 80 years due to dry winter.
The Book
“A worthy addition to Metropolitan’s American Empire Project: a devastating account that policymakers-not to mention American citizens-ignore at their peril.” Kirkus Reviews
I wrote Devil’s Game to fill in a gap amid the millions of words that have been written about political Islam and U.S. policy since September 11, 2001.
It’s the story before the story, and it helps answer the question: How did we get into this mess? It’s my contention that part of the answer to that question, at least, is that for half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
I approached this book not as an historian, but as a journalist. A great deal of it is based on scores of interviews with men and women from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. military, and the private sector who participated in many of these events. And I relied on dozens of published works. Most of the sources I interviewed are quoted on the record, and virtually every fact in the book is footnoted.
For those who wonder how it is possible that the United States now supports a regime in Iraq run by hard-core Islamists, by Shiite fundamentalists supported by Iran’s ayatollahs, at least some of the answers will be found in this book.
For those who worry that Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Pakistan, and other Middle East and South Asia countries could fall to Iran-style Islamic revolution, at least some of the reasons why this is a real possibility will be found in this book.
For those who wonder about the worldwide support system for Osama bin Laden’s movement, at least some of the background about how that system came to be will be found in Devil’s Game.
Today it’s convenient to speak about a Clash of Civilizations. But in Devil’s Game I show that in the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.
In the 1950s, the United States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains. But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.
A second big mistake that emerges in Devil’s Game occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And, as described in a groundbreaking chapter in Devil’s Game, Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.
Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But as Devil’s Game shows, America’s alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.
Would the Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the virulence of the movement that we now confront-and which confronts many of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and beyond-would have been significantly less had the United States made other choices during the Cold War.
So what can the United States do now? It can start by not making things worse. It can withdraw from Iraq, and so remove the most important recruiting tool that Al Qaeda has. It can vastly reduce its military presence in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. It can work to reduce irritants that anger Muslims and fuel hatred and bitterness, above all by facilitating the creation of a viable Palestinian state and by working to ease conflicts on the fringes of the Muslim world, from the Philippines to Indonesia to Kashmir to Sudan.
Toward the end of Devil’s Game, I put forward what I believe are some constructive ideas about how to deal with the challenge posed by the Islamic right. But at the very least, it is my hope that Americans learn that the ultimate solution does not involve the U.S. armed forces. It will take many decades of nation-building and religion-building in the Middle East before enlightened, secular forces manage to eclipse the benighted forces of political Islam. Hopefully, at least, the United States won’t get in the way.
