Turkish Forum

Category: Asia and Pacific

  • Israeli Bombers Planned to Use Georgian Airfields in Iran Strike

    Israeli Bombers Planned to Use Georgian Airfields in Iran Strike

    Report: Moscow ordered troops to raid Israeli facilities in Georgia to protect Iran

    by Arnaud de Borchgrave

    Global Research, September 17, 2008
    United Press International (UPI) – 2008-09-02

    NATO guarantees that an attack against one member country is an attack against all are no longer what they used to be. Had Georgia been inside NATO, a number of European countries would no longer be willing to consider it an attack against their own soil.

    For Russia, the geopolitical stars were in perfect alignment. The United States was badly overstretched and had no plausible way to talk tough without coming across as empty rhetoric. American resources have been drained by the Iraq and Afghan wars, and the war on terror. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it, Washington must now choose between its “pet project” Georgia and a partnership with Moscow.

    Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili evidently thought the United States would come to his side militarily if Russian troops pushed him back into Georgia after ordering an attack last Aug. 8 on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. And when his forces were mauled by Russia’s counterattack, bitter disappointment turned to anger. Along with Abkhazia, Georgia lost two provinces.

    Georgia also had a special relationship with Israel that was mostly under the radar. Georgian Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili is a former Israeli who moved things along by facilitating Israeli arms sales with U.S. aid. “We are now in a fight against the great Russia,” he was quoted as saying, “and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House because Georgia cannot survive on its own.”

    The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 12 reported, “Georgian Prime Minister Vladimir Gurgenidze made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community’s most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman. ‘I want him to pray for us and our state,’” he was quoted.

    Israel began selling arms to Georgia seven years ago. U.S. grants facilitated these purchases. From Israel came former minister and former Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo, representing Elbit Systems, and his brother Shlomo, former director general of Military Industries. Israeli UAV spy drones, made by Elbit Maarahot Systems, conducted recon flights over southern Russia, as well as into nearby Iran.

    In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter-bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli air force would fly over Turkey.

    The attack ordered by Saakashvili against South Ossetia the night of Aug. 7 provided the Russians the pretext for Moscow to order Special Forces to raid these Israeli facilities where some Israeli drones were reported captured.

    At a Moscow news conference, Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia’s deputy chief of staff, said the extent of Israeli aid to Georgia included “eight types of military vehicles, explosives, landmines and special explosives for clearing minefields.” Estimated numbers of Israeli trainers attached to the Georgian army range from 100 to 1,000. There were also 110 U.S. military personnel on training assignments in Georgia. Last July 2,000 U.S. troops were flown in for “Immediate Response 2008,” a joint exercise with Georgian forces.

    Details of Israel’s involvement were largely ignored by Israeli media lest they be interpreted as another blow to Israel’s legendary military prowess, which took a bad hit in the Lebanese war against Hezbollah two years ago. Georgia’s top diplomat in Tel Aviv complained about Israel’s “lackluster” response to his country’s military predicament and called for “diplomatic pressure on Moscow.” According to the Jerusalem Post, the Georgian was told “the address for that type of pressure is Washington.”

    Haaretz reported Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili — who is Jewish, the newspaper said — told Israeli army radio that “Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers” because he explained rather implausibly, “a small group of our soldiers were able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to Israeli training.”

    The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis was agreed at the highest levels with the approval of the Bush administration. The official liaison between the two entities was Reserve Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch who commanded Israeli forces on the Lebanese border in July 2006. He resigned from the army after the Winograd Commission flayed Israel’s conduct of its Second Lebanon War. Hirsch was also blamed for the seizure of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah.

    Israeli personnel, working for “private” companies with close ties to the Israel Defense Forces, also trained Georgian soldiers in house-to-house fighting.

    That Russia assessed these Israeli training missions as U.S.-approved is a given. The United States was also handicapped by a shortage of spy-in-the-sky satellite capability, already overextended by the Iraq and Afghan wars. Neither U.S. nor Georgian intelligence knew Russian forces were ready with an immediate and massive response to the Georgian attack Moscow knew was coming. Russian double agents ostensibly working for Georgia most probably egged on the military fantasies of the impetuous Saakashvili’s “surprise attack” plans.

    Saakashvili was convinced that by sending 2,000 of his soldiers to serve in Iraq (who were immediately flown home by the United States when Russia launched a massive counterattack into Georgia), he would be rewarded for his loyalty. He could not believe President Bush, a personal friend, would leave him in the lurch. Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country’s role, was the “Israel of the Caucasus.”

    The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis appears to have been cemented at the highest levels, according to YNet, the Israeli electronic daily. But whether the IAF can still count on those air bases to launch bombing missions against Iran’s nuke facilities is now in doubt.

    Iran comes out ahead in the wake of the Georgian crisis. Neither Russia nor China is willing to respond to a Western request for more and tougher sanctions against the mullahs. Iran’s European trading partners are also loath to squeeze Iran. The Russian-built, 1,000-megawatt Iranian reactor in Bushehr is scheduled to go online early next year.

    A combination of Putin and oil has put Russia back on the geopolitical map of the world. Moscow’s oil and gas revenue this year is projected at $201 billion — a 13-fold increase since Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin eight years ago. Not shabby for a wannabe superpower on the comeback trail.

    Global Research Articles by Arnaud de Borchgrave

    Source: Centre for Reserach on Globalization, September 17, 2008

  • Karabakh Leader Defends Current Negotiations Format

    Karabakh Leader Defends Current Negotiations Format

     

     

     

     

     

    Bako Sahakian, the head of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, has called for preserving the current format of negotiations over the protracted conflict with Azerbaijan, with the United States, France and Russia continuing to lead international efforts to resolve the dispute.

    At the same time, Sahakian stressed the need for restoring Nagorno-Karabakh’s status as a full party to the negotiating process.

    The Karabakh leader made the remarks while receiving the French negotiator in Stepanakert Tuesday evening.

    Bernard Fassier, the French cochairman of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), was in the Karabakh capital to discuss the recent developments in the region and their impact on the negotiating process around Nagorno-Karabakh.

    According to the Nagorno-Karabakh president’s press office, during the meeting, Sahakian and Fassier also pointed out the need for taking concrete steps towards forming an atmosphere of trust between the parties to the conflict.

    Fassier’s visit followed his U.S. counterpart’s regional tour, including a trip to Stepanakert late last week. The intensified diplomatic efforts of the international negotiators proceed against the background of a thaw in Armenian-Turkish relations following Turkish leader Abdullah Gul’s visit to Armenian capital Yerevan on September 6.

    The Armenian president last Friday publicly appreciated Turkey’s offer of assistance in the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. But Serzh Sarkisian told media that he differentiated between ‘assistance’ and ‘mediation’.

    However, the statement was construed by some observers as an approval of Turkey’s plans to increase its role in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is viewed by many as a threat to the current format of the peace process.

    Sarkisian’s most vocal political opponent in Armenia, ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosian later voiced his concerns over intensified efforts of Turkey to supplant the Minsk Group, which he implied would bolster Azerbaijan’s stance in the long-running dispute with Armenia.

    “The Minsk Group format is the most correct format, because it has provided the balance of superpowers and allowed us to ensure the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is not solved due to unilateral efforts of any of the superpowers,” Ter-Petrosian told an opposition rally in Yerevan Monday.

    At a news briefing following his meeting with Karabakh leadership on Tuesday, Fassier hailed the efforts of Armenia and Turkey to improve their historically strained relations.

    “Armenia’s president acted wisely by inviting Turkish President Abdullah Gul to Yerevan, although many in Azerbaijan and Turkey had thought such a meeting was impossible,” Fassier said, as quoted by the Russian news agency Regnum.

    “Any efforts of goodwill that could prove useful for the negotiating process should be welcomed,” the French mediator added. “Turkey is a significant member of the OSCE Minsk Group. As a member of the Minsk Group it has long supported the process and the efforts of the cochairmen… All these efforts, if concentrated, may prove useful.”

    On Wednesday, Fassier was in Yerevan where he was received by President Serzh Sarkisian.

    In a brief statement the presidential press service reported that the main subject on the meeting agenda was “the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the latest developments in the region.”

    The French diplomat was scheduled to give a press conference in Yerevan later on Wednesday.

  • Georgia on Our Mind

    Georgia on Our Mind

    by Morton Abramowitz

    09.16.2008

    Whether provoked or entrapped, President Saakashvili’s folly cost the United States $1 billion and counting. But that is only money. He has changed the world in ways neither he nor the West ever dreamed. If any compensation is found to tame Putin’s Russia, it will not likely be by the actions of Western governments, but by capital fleeing from Russia and the price of energy continuing its precipitous decline. The Bush administration is a spent force with little credibility. Only a new administration might pursue a policy that has coherence, purpose, and international support. A number of issues emanating from the Georgian conflict will face the next president, including energy policy in Central Asia and power politics in NATO.

    Following the conflict in the Caucuses, the energy equation of the region has radically changed. In Georgia, even if Saakashvili survives—that appears to be in doubt and will require huge Western help—he will face unremitting enmity from Moscow. Moscow was previously too weak to prevent the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline—the East-West energy corridor—to be built. But the notion that investors will put billions of dollars into a new pipeline for gas from Central Asia through the Caucasus before Georgia’s relations with Russia are restored defies the imagination.

    In any event, gas from Turkmenistan and other Central Asian countries is unlikely to be transmitted through Georgia on its way west. Georgia may be too bitter a lesson for these states. Pressure from Moscow makes it more likely that gas will continue to go through Russia onto the West or to Turkey.

    In addition to this shifting energy landscape, NATO has suffered a serious setback: Expansion of the alliance has reached a dangerous fork. Giving membership prospects to Georgia and Ukraine later this year is more likely to endanger, not strengthen them. The two countries would be under constant pressure from Russia, damaging or destroying Ukraine’s unity and Georgia’s stability. Besides, it is unlikely that consensus could be achieved on the membership issue. Turkey, for example, has few illusions about Putin’s Russia. But the Georgian war has cast doubt on Turkey’s full cooperation with the United States on Russian issues and NATO expansion. Turkey does not like Russia’s egregious intervention in the Caucasus, but is not particularly sympathetic to Shaakashvili’s Georgia either. Increasingly, the Turks are skeptical of American foreign policy management, and are not interested in getting into a hassle with Russia. Russia is Turkey’s leading trade partner and the supplier of the vast bulk of its imported energy (some $50 billion this year). The United States has expressed displeasure with Turkey’s choice of energy suppliers—Iran and Russia—but has yet to tell Ankara how they realistically propose to make up for them. Turkey can make money whether energy comes through Georgia or Russia. The Turks remain committed to NATO, but the Russian relationship is a matter of realism for Ankara—not an alliance matter—unless the Russians were to attack a NATO member. Most likely, Turkey, along with several others, will seek to postpone any potential membership offer to Georgia and Ukraine.

    Another international institution, the European Union, has also been impacted by the Georgian conflict. Although the EU is under attack in many quarters in the United States and Europe for its pusillanimous reaction to Russia’s brazen behavior in Georgia, it has the real ability to do something important for Ukraine and Georgia—namely beginning a serious process to admit these countries to the EU. One must be skeptical that the EU is actually prepared to do that. The EU also has the practical ability to do something about Russian behavior. Whether they will seriously try to or not remains to be seen. The Russians have skillfully created tensions between the “old” Europe and the “new” one.

    As for America, the Bush administration will continue to pay for Saakashvili’s battle with the Russians and give Georgia strong moral support. But with a financial system in disaster, the administration’s writ on controversial matters during their last months in office does not extend far.

    Although the next president will have many foreign-policy challenges, cleaning up after the Georgian war needs early attention. Most importantly, the United States and its allies must create an effective Russian policy. They have to sort out their relations with an angry and internationally disruptive Russia, while ensuring Russian cooperation on pressing issues, such as stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program and energy security. Slogans and fulminations won’t do the trick.

     

    Morton Abramowitz is a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

  • Turkey will never recognize Armenian Genocide to improve relations with Yerevan, AKP member says

    Turkey will never recognize Armenian Genocide to improve relations with Yerevan, AKP member says

    /PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey will never recognize the Armenian Genocide to improve its relations with Yerevan, said an executive of the ruling Justice & Development (AK) Party.

    Speaking at the panel discussion “Whither Turkey” hosted by the Eastern Institute during the Krynica Economic Forum, one of the most prestigious forums in Eastern Europe, in Polish capital city of Warsaw, Egemen Bagis, deputy chairman of the AK Party, said, “Turkish

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed Armenia to establish a joint commission with the participation of the third countries and to open archives. Armenia has not yet given a response to Turkey’s proposal.”

    “Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s paying a visit to Armenia upon invitation of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan is the most concrete sign of Turkey’s good-will. On the other hand, more than one million documents examined upon directives of Turkey proved that those bitter events were not genocide, but a civil war during a world war,” he said, the Anatoly news agency reports.

    Armenian News – PanARMENIAN.Net | Armenian News Agency – Turkey will never recognize Armenian Genocide to improve relations with Yerevan, AKP member says.

  • ‘Good Basis’ for Solving Armenia Conflict: Azerbaijani President

    ‘Good Basis’ for Solving Armenia Conflict: Azerbaijani President

     

     

     

     

     

    AFP

    Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday said there was “a good basis” for resolving a long-running conflict with Armenia after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near Moscow.

    “It seems to us that there is now a good basis for a resolution of the conflict, which would fit with the interests of all states and would be based on the principles of international law,” Aliyev said.

    “If the conflict is resolved in the near future, I am sure that there will be new perspectives for regional cooperation,” Aliyev said.

    Aliyev also expressed his concern over the situation in the region following Russia’s war in Georgia, saying that conflict “should be resolved in a peaceful way, through dialogue, by finding common points and based on mutual respect.”

    Aliyev visited Medvedev at his residence near Moscow for talks on last month’s conflict in Georgia and on Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbour Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a tense stand-off over the enclave, which ethnic Armenian forces seized in the early 1990s in a war that killed nearly 30,000 people and forced another million on both sides to flee their homes.

    A ceasefire was signed between the two former Soviet republics in 1994 but the dispute remains unresolved after more than a decade of negotiations, and shootings between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the region are common.

  • Yerevan Hails Turkish Initiative for Caucasus

    Yerevan Hails Turkish Initiative for Caucasus

     

     

     

     

     

    By Karine Simonian

    Armenia welcomes the Turkish initiative aimed at establishing a stability and cooperation platform in the Caucasus, President Serzh Sarkisian told media as he visited the country’s northern Lori province late last week.

    “The Turks have said from the very outset that their initiative is not an alternative to any structure or format but is aimed at improving the atmosphere,” the Armenian leader stressed. “I consider it natural that we should welcome this initiative, we have no right to avoid any discussion, especially if it is aimed at strengthening our security.”

    The issue was reportedly discussed by the two countries’ leaders on September 6 as Turkish President Abdullah Gul made a historic trip to Armenia at the initiative of his Armenian counterpart.

    Official Ankara announced plans to create a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Pact that would include the three South Caucasus countries plus two regional heavyweights, Turkey and Russia, following the brief but devastating war between Russia and Georgia over the latter’s breakaway province of South Ossetia in August.

    In a recent interview with RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service, Gul emphasized that the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a bilateral issue between the two Caucasus republics, but also affects the whole region.

    “Peace and stability is in the interest of everyone and to have that we have to resolve problems. But to resolve the problems we have to have discussion and dialogue,” Gul said.

    President Sarkisian expressed his satisfaction that the Turkish head of state also communicated the impressions of his Yerevan trip to the leader of neighboring Azerbaijan, with which Armenia is at loggerheads over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave that declared itself independent from Baku after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    He further appreciated the offer of assistance that Gul said Turkey was ready to render in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, if need be.

    “I was glad to accept that offer because only someone not normal would reject assistance,” Sarkisian said, emphasizing the difference between ‘assistance’ and ‘mediation’.

    Sarkisian also said that any step that can help the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in settling the Nagorno-Karabakh problem should be regarded as positive.

    Meanwhile, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian reiterated Yerevan’s position as he received a senior visiting U.S. diplomat on Saturday.

    During the meeting with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, Nalbandian said Armenia welcomes the steps aimed at building confidence and developing cooperation in the region, the Armenian Foreign Ministry reported.

    He also gave a positive evaluation to the Turkish president’s visit to Armenia, describing it as a good stimulus to starting a ‘serious dialogue’.

    Bryza, who is the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group along with representatives of Russia and France, met with the Armenian minister as part of his regional tour to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process as well as the recent developments in the region, including the war in Georgia and Armenian-Turkish relations.

    Before meeting with Bryza, Nalbandian paid a visit to the Georgian capital where he also presented the latest developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process and opportunities for normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey.

    In Tbilisi Nalbandian was received by the country’s Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze and President Mikheil Saakashvili.

    The Foreign Ministry’s press office quoted Nalbandian as stressing during his meeting with President Saakashvili that Armenia is one of the countries most interested in stability, security and peace in the neighboring republic. He reportedly said that apart from the fact that about 70 percent of Armenia’s foreign trade is made through Georgia, “two peoples have bonds of centuries-old friendship.”