Turkish Forum

Category: Southern Caucasus

  • War in Georgia: The Israeli connection

    War in Georgia: The Israeli connection

    For past seven years, Israeli companies have been helping Gerogian army to preparer for war against Russia through arms deals, training of infantry units and security advice

    Arie Egozi

    The fighting which broke out over the weekend between Russia and Georgia has brought Israel’s intensive involvement in the region into the limelight. This involvement includes the sale of advanced weapons to Georgia and the training of the Georgian army’s infantry forces.

    The Defense Ministry held a special meeting Sunday to discuss the various arms deals held by Israelis in Georgia, but no change in policy has been announced as of yet.

    “The subject is closely monitored,” said sources in the Defense Ministry. “We are not operating in any way which may counter Israeli interests. We have turned down many requests involving arms sales to Georgia; and the ones which have been approves have been duly scrutinized. So far, we have placed no limitations on the sale of protective measures.”

    Israel began selling arms to Georgia about seven years ago following an initiative by Georgian citizens who immigrated to Israel and became businesspeople.

    “They contacted defense industry officials and arms dealers and told them that Georgia had relatively large budgets and could be interested in purchasing Israeli weapons,” says a source involved in arms exports.

    The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia’s defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation.

    “His door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel,” the source said. “Compared to countries in Eastern Europe, the deals in this country were conducted fast, mainly due to the defense minister’s personal involvement.”

    Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity and began doing business in Georgia were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res.) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res.) Yisrael Ziv.

    Roni Milo conducted business in Georgia for Elbit Systems and the Military Industries, and with his help Israel’s defense industries managed to sell to Georgia remote-piloted vehicles (RPVs), automatic turrets for armored vehicles, antiaircraft systems, communication systems, shells and rockets.

    According to Israeli sources, Gal Hirsch gave the Georgian army advice on the establishment of elite units such as Sayeret Matkal and on rearmament, and gave various courses in the fields of combat intelligence and fighting in built-up areas.

    ‘Don’t anger the Russians’

    The Israelis operating in Georgia attempted to convince the Israeli Aerospace Industries to sell various systems to the Georgian air force, but were turned down. The reason for the refusal was “special” relations created between the Aerospace Industries and Russia in terms of improving fighter jets produced in the former USSR and the fear that selling weapons to Georgia would anger the Russians and prompt them to cancel the deals.

    Israelis’ activity in Georgia and the deals they struck there were all authorized by the Defense Ministry. Israel viewed Georgia as a friendly state to which there is no reason not to sell arms systems similar to those Israel exports to other countries in the world.

    As the tension between Russia and Georgia grew, however, increasing voices were heard in Israel – particularly in the Foreign Ministry – calling on the Defense Ministry to be more selective in the approval of the deals with Georgia for fear that they would anger Russia.

    “It was clear that too many unmistakable Israeli systems in the possesion of the Georgian army would be like a red cloth in the face of a raging bull as far as Russia is concerned,”     explained a source in the defense establishment.

    For inctance, the Russians viewed the operation of the Elbit System’s RPVs as a real provocation.

    “It was clear that the Russians were angry,” says a defense establishment source, “and that the interception of three of these RPVs in the past three months was an expression of this anger. Not everyone in Israel understood the sensitive nerve Israel touched when it supplied such an advanced arms system to a country whose relations with Russia are highly tense.”

    In May it was eventually decide to approve future deals with Georgia only for the sale of non-offensive weapon systems, such as intelligence, communications and computer systems, and not to approve deals for the sale of rifles, aircraft, sells, etc.

    A senior source in the Military Industry said Saturday that despite some reporters, the activity of Georgia’s military industry was extremely limited.

    “We conducted a small job for them several years ago,” he said. “The rest of the deals remained on paper.”

    Dov Pikulin, one of the owners of the Authentico company specializing in trips and journeys to the area, says however that “the Israeli is the main investor in the Georgian economy. Everyone is there, directly or indirectly.”

    Georgian minister: Israel should be proud

    “The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers,” Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday.

    Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. “We are now in a fight against the great Russia,” he said, “and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own.

    “It’s important that the entire world understands that what is happening in Georgia now will affect the entire world order. It’s not just Georgia’s business, but the entire world’s business.”

    One of the Georgian parliament members did not settle Saturday for the call for American aid, urging Israel to help stop the Russian offensive as well: “We need help from the UN and from our friends, headed by the United States and Israel. Today Georgia is in danger – tomorrow all the democratic countries in the region and in the entire world will be in danger too.”

    Zvi Zinger and Hanan Greenberg contributed to this report

    Source: YnetNews.com

  • The Pipeline War

    The Pipeline War

    Editorial

    Thu. Aug 14, 2008

    Scenes of Russian tanks rumbling through Georgia, the former Soviet republic on the shore of the Black Sea, have touched hearts and consciences around the world, and rightly so. The bloody Russian incursion brings to mind other Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956, crushing hopeful sparks of democracy while the world looked on. For some protesters, especially in Georgia itself, the scenes also recalled another moment, Munich 1938, when the Western allies conceded Czechoslovakia to the Nazi murderers. In a perfect world, such images might serve as timely calls to action.

    But the world is not perfect. Russia is not Nazi Germany, and Georgia is not Czechoslovakia. The Russian-Georgian war is not a battle of absolute evil versus absolute innocence, and the onlooking world should not behave as though it is. Too much is at stake.

    Georgia is a tiny nation, one of the many squabbling tribes — Armenians, Azeris, Ossetians, Abkhaz, Mingrelians, Chechens and more — that make up the volatile Caucasus region. Once a proud kingdom, Georgia was dismembered in the Middle Ages and reestablished only after World War I, whereupon it was promptly absorbed by the new Soviet Union. Moscow generously padded its Georgian “socialist republic” — the beloved birthplace of dictator Joseph Stalin — by appending two small ethnic regions along the Russian-Georgian border, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

    Neither of the annexed regions had any love for Georgia. As soon as Georgia declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, they declared independence from Georgia. No nation recognized the breakaways, but Georgia was unable to recapture them. A long standoff ensued — until this month, when Georgia sent in its troops.

    Russia’s brutal response was, it must be said, entirely predictable. Russian leader Vladimir Putin had been working for years to erase his nation’s post-Soviet humiliation and regain great-power status. After restoring state control of oil and other privatized industries, his next essential step was reasserting Russia’s dominance of its neighbors. Georgia was fixed in his sights.

    Georgia has irritated Moscow since the Rose Revolution in 2003, when Georgians overthrew their ex-communist leader and elected a staunchly pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili. A onetime New York lawyer with close ties to Washington neoconservatives, Saakashvili has been pushing hard to join NATO, which Moscow sees as encroaching on its backyard. He has also cultivated close economic and military ties with Israel, which has a large community of Georgian Jewish émigrés. One former Georgian-Israeli is Georgia’s defense minister. Another Georgian Jew is the government minister in charge of efforts to recapture the breakaway regions, which some Georgians compare wistfully to Israel’s struggle to control the West Bank.

    Outweighing all those irritants, however, is Russia’s drive to control the flow of oil and gas to Europe from Central Asia. Russian pipelines now carry Europe’s fuel, allowing Moscow to control prices and earning billions of dollars. They also enable Russia to shut the tap, giving Putin a useful weapon against NATO growth and America’s missile defense plans. But negotiations are underway to build a new international pipeline through Georgia, bypassing Russia. Putin is determined to prevent it.

    This month’s fighting shut down pipelines that now run through Georgia from Caspian Sea oilfields. Some European investors now question the safety of the Georgian route, just as Putin hoped. In European business circles, the conflict is known simply as the Pipeline War.

    If Putin’s motives are clear, Saakashvili’s are a mystery. Why grab for the breakaway regions at this moment and invite an overpowering Russian response? True, he has made recapturing the breakaways a signature issue, but he also had a reputation for sensible pragmatism. Some observers say he was caught up in neoconservative rhetoric about defending democracy, and failed to consider the sapping of American power in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also may have underestimated the difficulty of facing down a nuclear-armed Russia at a time when Moscow’s help is needed on Iran, oil supplies and other global crises.

    Whatever his reasoning, Saakashvili ended up subjecting his nation to a cruel and unnecessary war. He gave Russia an excuse for a brutal and cynical power play. And he exposed America’s helplessness at a dangerous moment.

    Israel, for its part, prudently responded to the fighting by stopping military aid to Georgia, understanding that Russia’s help is needed to confront Iran. America has less wiggle room; it must make at least a show of standing up for democracy, however weak its hand.

    America and the West have a number of accounts to settle with Putin’s aggressively autocratic regime. But the timing must be of the allies’ choosing, not minor players with their own agendas. Weakening America weakens all its friends.

    Source: FORWARD

  • Israel Sees Immigration Opportunity in Georgian Strife

    Israel Sees Immigration Opportunity in Georgian Strife

    Israel Gears up for Wave of Immigrants from War-Torn Georgia

    Tuesday, August 12, 2008
    By Julie Stahl

    Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) – Israel is gearing up to receive a wave of Jewish immigrants from war-torn Georgia, officials here said.

    “Since last Friday night, with the eruption of battles in the South Ossetia region of Georgia, the Jewish Agency embarked on an extensive and immediate operation in Israel and in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to render all the necessary assistance to the Georgian Jewish community,” said Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski.

    That includes the accelerated handling of paperwork for those who want to immigrate as well as preparations here to absorb them, Bielski said in an open letter on Monday.

    The Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental organization, is responsible for immigration to Israel. Since before the founding of the State, the agency has sought to rescue Jews from life-threatening situations around the world and resettle them here.

    According to Bielski, the Jewish Agency rescued a number of Georgian Jews at the beginning of the 1990s during the civil war in the Abkhazia region, bringing most of them to Israel.

    According to Israeli law, every Jew throughout the world has a right to immigrate to the country. Israel has encouraged immigration for decades, partly as a way of boosting the country’s Jewish population. More than three million Jews have immigrated to Israel since the founding of the state.

    “The return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is an integral part of what Israel stands for,” says the Jewish Agency’s Web site. Between January and July 2008, 8,542 people arrived in Israel under the auspices of the Jewish Agency, a 16 percent decrease compared to the number that arrived in the same period last year.

    Jewish Agency spokesman Michael Jankelowitz told CNSNews.com that some 25 Georgians are expected in Israel on Tuesday night, if there is enough room for them on the planes that are bringing Israeli citizens home.

    Dozens of Georgians have applied to immigrate to Israel since fighting broke out on Friday, Jankelowitz said.

    Since 1989, about two-thirds of the Georgian Jewish community – some 25,000 people – has immigrated to Israel and only about one-third — 12,000 – of the Jewish community was left behind, he said.

    On Tuesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he had ordered an end to the military operation in Georgia, but reports from the region said the fighting has not ended.

    Zvi Avisar, spokesman for Israel’s Immigration and Absorption minister, said that a let-up in hostilities probably wouldn’t have an impact on emigration from Georgia.

    “The geo-political situation won’t change,” Avisar told CNSNews.com.

    The pressure from Russia probably is going to continue, and it would more than likely have an impact on the socio-economic situation in general. It is easier for people to make a decision to come to Israel when they are affected in such a way, Avisar said.

    According to Avisar, Israel is expecting two waves of immigration from Georgia.

    The first will consist of those who have passports and visas and are able to leave Georgia within the next two weeks. Sixty people already have applied to come immediately, he said.

    The second wave will take longer, even up to a year, as Georgian Jews work to get their travel documents in order. “We don’t know if it will be hundreds or dozens,” Avisar said.

    One immigrant who arrived from Georgia in 1992 said the situation is difficult in Georgia right now. But it’s not clear how many Jewish people will want to leave.

    The people still have hope now that the world will take Georgia’s side and force Russia to back down, she told CNSNews.com. So far, she added, it’s all talk.

    Many Georgians say it’s clear that Russia had been planning this attack for some time, prompted by Georgia’s desire to become part of NATO and its friendship with America.

    The U.S. has condemned the Russian bombing raids and called for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia.

    According to Avisar, the Jewish Agency plans to launch an information campaign in Georgia about the benefits offered to immigrants. Most of the Jewish community is based in Tbilisi.

    Israel has always depended on immigration to boost its population and fuel its rise as a modern state.

    In 1949, (a year after Israel’s founding) the Jewish Agency brought 239,000 Holocaust survivors here from Displaced Persons camps in Europe and detention camps on Cyprus.

    During the first four years of its existence, Israel absorbed more than 700,000 new immigrants, including 3,800 from Yemen, 343,000 from Eastern Europe and North Africa, 110,000 from Iraq, 40,000 Jews from Turkey and 18,000 from Iran.

    In 1991, more than 14,300 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in just 36 hours in what was known as Operation Solomon. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in about 1991, nearly one million Jews have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union.

    Source: CNSNews

  • Georgia war boosts Turkey-Armenia thaw

    Georgia war boosts Turkey-Armenia thaw

    By Paul de Bendern

    ANKARA (Reuters) – The first visit by a Turkish leader to Armenia should give momentum to help mend almost a century of hostility with the Caucasus country made more urgent since Russia’s war with Georgia.

    President Abdullah Gul’s trip to Yeveran on Saturday carried huge symbolic importance for neighbours with no diplomatic ties and whose relationship is haunted by the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War One.

    “A beautiful beginning,” Turkish newspaper Vatan said on its front page. “A hope-inspiring meeting,” said the daily Radikal.

    The presidents of Turkey and Armenia held talks and watched a World Cup qualifier soccer match together during an encounter they said could help herald a new beginning in ties and aid regional security. Their foreign ministers would now work to build on what was achieved during Gul’s one-day visit.

    Georgia war boosts Turkey-Armenia thaw | World | Reuters.

  • Turkey, Armenia vow to end traditional enmity after Gul’s visit

    Turkey, Armenia vow to end traditional enmity after Gul’s visit

    YEREVAN (AFP) — Armenia and Turkey pledged to overcome decades of enmity over the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces after Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s pathbreaking visit to Yerevan for a football match.

    Gul, the first Turkish president to visit Armenia, Saturday held talks with counterpart Serzh Sarkisian after which the two agreed there was the “political will” to improve ties frozen for decades over the 1915-1917 massacres by Turkish troops.

    The visit was hailed by French and EU President Nicolas Sarkozy as “courageous and historic.”

    “I believe that my visit was fruitful and that it promises hope for the future,” Gul said after returning to Ankara, adding that he had a constructive and sincere” meeting with Sarkisian.

    He said he had won Yerevan’s support for a new regional grouping in the Caucasus following last month’s conflict between Georgia and Russia.

    “I was happy to see that we were unanimous with the Armenian side on the need for mutual dialogue to remove barriers to improving bilateral ties.

    AFP: Turkey, Armenia vow to end traditional enmity after Gul’s visit.

  • Armenia and Turkey to improve ties

    Armenia and Turkey to improve ties

     

    Several hundred angry protesters lined the route of Gul

    Armenia and Turkey have pledged to overcome decades of enmity and disagreement over the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces.

     

    Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish president to visit Armenia on Saturday, attending a football match in Yerevan and meeting Serzh Sarkisian, his Armenian counterpart.

    The two agreed there was the “political will” to improve ties frozen for decades over the 1915-1917 massacres carried out by Turkish troops.

    “I believe that my visit was fruitful and that it promises hope for the future,” Gul said after returning to Ankara.

    “I was happy to see that we were unanimous with the Armenian side on the need for mutual dialogue to remove barriers to improving bilateral ties.”

    Sarkisian said earlier there was a “political will to decide the questions between our countries, so that these problems are not passed on to the next generation”.

    Al Jazeera English – Europe – Armenia and Turkey to improve ties