Turkish Forum

Category: Eastern Europe

  • Ambassador Brenton: UK expects Russia to reconsider Abkhazia, S. Ossetia recognition

    Ambassador Brenton: UK expects Russia to reconsider Abkhazia, S. Ossetia recognition

    Interfax’s Interview

    British Ambassador to Russia Tony Brenton has said he hopes Russia will reconsider its position on recognizing Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence and vowed that the United Kingdom would take part in a European Union mission of military monitors in the South Caucasus.

    “I do not know the exact numbers, but I do know that we are looking for twenty, thirty, or forty participants, and I am assuming that they will be on the ground as the European community gets its people onto the ground over the next few days,” Brenton said in an interview with Interfax.

    Times New Roman;”> “I hope that your readers will note that this will be a fantastic operation. The European community, the European Union from a standing start on the 8th of September has put together a big peacekeeping observer operation in the course of three weeks. That is a strong demonstration of the will of the European Union to contribute to getting the tensions down and to getting peace back in the region,” he said.

    Brenton described Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “a big mistake, because the effect of it is that it makes it much more complicated for us to find a long-term solution to tensions between Georgia and Russia and between Georgia and Abkhazia and Georgia and South Ossetia.”

    “It is a pity that Russia said it is irreversible,” Brenton said.
    “I hope that, on reflection, Russia will think again, because the precedent we have for this is the president of Turkey recognizing North Cyprus, and it has landed Turkey for a period of thirty years with a small enclave unrecognized anywhere else in the world and placing on Turkey an economic and political burden. It would be very sad to see Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the same situation,” he said.

    Commenting on Russia’s proposal that an embargo should be imposed on weapon supplies to Georgia, Brenton said, “I do not think that Russia has formally made a proposal to that effect. I think that we would want to see Georgia having the capacity to defend itself in the future and having normal armed forces. I am sure we would not want to see, on the other hand, a sort of military buildup in the region which led to the problems of the 7th and 8th of August,” he said.

    Brenton urged the beginning of a discussion on launching a peace process “with nobody setting too many preconditions.”

    The immediate issue is the implementation of the 8th of September agreement [reached at negotiations between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy]. Once that agreement is fully implemented, then I hope the political tensions will begin to calm down and we will begin to be able to discuss the resumption of contacts of various sorts,” he said.

    “I know that the French presidency of the EU, for example, has made it clear that on the assumption that the 8th of September agreement is implemented, the European Union will then resume the negotiations on the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Russia,” he said.

    “NATO has not yet reflected on what the conditions have to be for the resumption of NATO-Russia contacts,” he said.

    Source: www.interfax.com

  • Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital ; Yahudi Turklerin Hazar Devletinin Baskenti: Itil, the Khazar capital

    Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital ; Yahudi Turklerin Hazar Devletinin Baskenti: Itil, the Khazar capital

     

    The KHAZARS/ Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

    September 22nd, 2008 · 1 Comment  

     

    By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 20, 2:13 PM ET
    MOSCOW – A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of theKhazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
    Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.
    By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
    “The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe’s first feudal state is of great significance,” he told The Associated Press. “We should view it as part of Russian history.”
    Kevin Brook, the American author of “The Jews of Khazaria,” e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, “Now I’m as confident as the archaeological team is that they’ve truly found the long-lost city,
    The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
    Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.
    It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which “helped Khazars amass giant profits,” he said.
    The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found “luxurious collections” of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.
    But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
    “If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that’s interesting but does not make a big difference,” said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. “If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important.”
    Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.
    “We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few,” said Kraiz. “But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing.”
    The Khazars’ ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.
    Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. “They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days,” he said.
    In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.
    The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the “Jewish Giant.”
    “In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state,” Vasilyev said.

    He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatarsand Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Seaaround the 14th century.

    The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia’s own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they “disproved his theory of Russian statehood,” Satanovsky said.

    Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.

    “Khazar studies are just beginning,” Satanovsky said.

     

  • Turkey and Armenia Friends and neighbours

    Turkey and Armenia Friends and neighbours

     

    Sep 25th 2008 | ANKARA AND YEREVAN
    From The Economist print edition
    Rising hopes of better relations between two historic enemies

     
    KEMAL ATATURK , father of modern Turkey, rescued hundreds of Armenian women and children from mass slaughter by Ottoman forces during and after the first world war. This untold story, which is sure to surprise many of today’s Turks, is one of many collected by the Armenian genocide museum in Yerevan that “will soon be brought to light on our website,” promises Hayk Demoyan, its director.
    His project is one more example of shifting relations between Turkey and Armenia. On September 6th President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia when he attended a football match. Mr Gul’s decision to accept an invitation from Armenia’s president, Serzh Sarkisian, has raised expectations that Turkey may establish diplomatic ties and open the border it closed during the 1990s fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The two foreign ministers were planning to meet in New York this week. Armenia promises to recognise Turkey’s borders and to allow a commission of historians to investigate the fate of the Ottoman Armenians.
    Reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia could tilt the balance of power in the Caucasus. Russia is Armenia’s closest regional ally. It has two bases and around 2,000 troops there. The war in Georgia has forced Armenia to rethink its position. Some 70% of its supplies flow through Georgia, and these were disrupted by Russian bombing. Peace with Turkey would give Armenia a new outside link. Some think Russia would be happy too. “It would allow Russia to marginalise and lean harder on Georgia,” argues Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Media Institute.
    Mending fences with Armenia would bolster Turkey’s regional clout. And it might also help to kill a resolution proposed by the American Congress to call the slaughter of the Armenians in 1915 genocide. That makes the Armenian diaspora, which is campaigning for genocide recognition, unhappy. Some speak of a “Turkish trap” aimed at rewriting history to absolve Turkey of wrongdoing. Indeed, hawks in Turkey are pressing Armenia to drop all talk of genocide.
    Even more ambitiously, the hawks want better ties with Armenia to be tied anew to progress over Nagorno-Karabakh. But at least Mr Gul seems determined to press ahead. “If we allow the dynamics that were set in motion by the Yerevan match to slip away, we may have to wait another 15-20 years for a similar chance to arise,” he has said.

  • Turkey facing difficult choice on nuclear energy

    Turkey facing difficult choice on nuclear energy

    By Thomas Grove and Orhan Coskun

    ISTANBUL/ANKARA, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Turkey has a difficult decision ahead as it ponders if it can afford to reject the single bid it received in a long-delayed $7.5 billion nuclear tender at a time when global liquidity is drying up.

    A consortium led by Russian-based Atomstroyexport was the single bidder on Wednesday in the tender to construct and operate the first of three planned nuclear power plants.

    The plants are a cornerstone of the Turkish government’s policy to cut dependence on imports and address power consumption demand, seen rising at eight percent a year.

    But doubts the tender will go ahead have mounted as analysts say the government will want a broader range of options beyond a single offer, and Atomstroyexport’s plan is considered expensive for the technology on offer.

    Analysts also have pointed out that the Russian-based company’s construction of the plant undermines Ankara’s energy policy of limiting its dependence on Russia, which already provides more than 60 percent of Turkey’s gas imports.

    “The fact the tender came at the moment of the latest global financial crisis really weighed on the process. If a competitive second bid had come in it would have been much better,” said a senior Turkish Energy Ministry source, who declined to be named.

    Business Feed Article | Business | guardian.co.uk.

  • Are Russia and Turkey Trying to Alter the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process Format?

    Are Russia and Turkey Trying to Alter the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process Format?

    Confronted with widespread international criticism over its actions in Georgia, Russia is eager to show that it can still serve as a peace broker the post-Soviet area. A primary Kremlin aim appears to be checking any further advance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

    “The South Ossetian crisis will not constitute a precedent,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee on September 18. “We will continue to responsibly fulfill our mediation mission in the negotiation process and peacemaking [and] that fully applies to [the separatist conflicts of] Transdniester and Nagorno-Karabakh,” he said.

    The signal the Kremlin wants to send is that “it is not restoring its empire and that it is ready to reconcile warring parties while playing a leading role in the process,” wrote Sergei Markedonov of the Moscow-based Institute for Political and Military Analysis in the September 16 issue of Russia’s “Kommersant” daily.

    Russia has been expending a lot of energy since the August crisis to revive the Transdniester and Nagorno-Karabakh peace processes outside the framework of the existing international settlement mechanisms.

    Concerning Karabakh, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met twice in September with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan and once with

    EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight – Are Russia and Turkey Trying to Alter the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process Format?.

  • MORE SPEED, LESS HASTE RESULTS IN TURKISH NUCLEAR TENDER FIASCO

    MORE SPEED, LESS HASTE RESULTS IN TURKISH NUCLEAR TENDER FIASCO

    By Gareth Jenkins

    Thursday, September 25, 2008

     

    Turkey’s latest attempt to acquire nuclear power resulted in humiliating failure on September 24, when only one consortium submitted a bid to build the country’s first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu, near the eastern Mediterranean port of Mersin.

    In the six months following the announcement of the contract in March, 13 consortia bought tender documents. However, almost all had subsequently expressed reservations about the project; not least about the terms of the state guarantee to buy electricity for the first 15 years of the proposed plant’s operating life. Their concerns were exacerbated by the recent turbulence on the international markets and increased uncertainty about the prospect of securing financing for the project. In the run-up to the September 24 deadline for bids, there were repeated calls for an extension of the deadline pending a resolution of ambiguities in the tender terms and a decline in the turbulence on international financial markets (see EDM, September 23). The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), however, remained adamant that the process would continue as scheduled.

    “Turkey has already waited until very late for nuclear energy. It doesn’t have the luxury of being able to afford a postponement,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on September 22 (Anadolu Ajansi, September 22).

    As a result of the AKP’s intransigence, all but one of the potential bidders declined to make an offer. Humiliatingly for the government, the opening of the bids at 14.30 on September 24 was carried live on national television. Although officials from the tender commission reported that they had received six responses, it soon became clear from the five slim envelopes and single large parcel sitting on the desk in front of them that they had received only one bid. The five slim envelopes contained letters thanking the commission for its time and politely declining to submit an offer. The sole bidder was a joint venture between the state-owned Atomstroyexport of Russia and the Turkish Ciner Group (NTV, CNNTurk, CNBC, September 24).

    What happens now remains unclear. In theory, the tender process consists of three stages. In the first, the consortium presents the commission with a sealed envelope indicating an intention to bid. In the second stage, the technical details of the bid are forwarded in a sealed envelope to the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK) to be examined for compliance with the project’s safety standards. If TAEK approves the project, a sealed envelope containing the proposed price of the electricity is opened (Referans, Dunya, Anadolu Ajansi, September 25).

    The AKP appears to have assumed that despite all the expressions of concern, several consortia would present bids and the government would be able to choose the cheapest. When asked by a Turkish journalist whether the single bid meant that the tender would now be cancelled, Haci Duran Gokkaya, the general manager of the state-owned Turkish Electricity Trading and Contracting Inc. (TETAS), huffily replied: “The fact that there was a bid means that the competition process is continuing” (NTV, Anadolu Ajansi, September 24). Gokkaya did not specify the identity of the rival with whom the Atomstroyexport-led consortium is now competing.

    The Turkish media is in doubt about why, alone of all the consortia that bought tender documents, it was the one led by a Russian state-owned monopoly that submitted a bid. Turkey currently obtains almost two thirds of its natural gas and approximately one third of its oil from Russia (see EDM, September 9).

    “The reason Russia was interested in the project was because it is the largest supplier of natural gas to Turkey, which gives it extraordinary bargaining power,” noted columnist Metin Munir in the daily Milliyet. “One of the main reasons the other companies kept their distance was concern about payment for the electricity that they would produce. Russia has no such worries. It is confident that all it would have to do would be to give the government a kick in the backside by cutting off the gas for a couple of days in the middle of winter” (Milliyet, September 25).

    Although it has received less coverage in the Turkish media, a decision by the AKP to award the contract to Atomstroyexport would undoubtedly also have political repercussions. Even before the tension sparked by the war between Russia and Georgia in August, the United States would have been unlikely to welcome Turkey’s choosing the same company that has been so heavily involved in Iran’s nuclear program. In the current political climate, awarding the contract to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant to a Russian company would doubtless be regarded in Washington as not just an economic but also a strategic decision.

    Despite Gokkaya’s comments, the general consensus in Turkey is that the AKP will eventually have to cancel the nuclear power tender. It is currently unclear whether it would simply invite private companies to submit bids in a new tender or whether it would look for some kind of public-private partnership. Although the Nuclear Power Plant Law, which was promulgated in November 2007 (Law No. 5710, published in the Official Gazette, November 21, 2007), provides for the state to build the plant on its own if necessary, the Turkish public sector lacks the expertise to do so.

    Whichever option the AKP decides to take, the result is likely to be a further loss of time and credibility, both of which are already in increasingly short supply. Turkey currently has a total installed electricity production capacity of 40,834 megawatts (MW) (www.tetas.gov.tr); but 13,393 MW is from hydroelectric plants, which can operate only at a limited capacity as the result of declining rainfall. A recent study by the state-owned Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEIAS) forecast that, even if the nuclear plant at Akkuyu is completed, Turkey will still face severe electricity shortages over the next decade. The TEIAS study was based on worst case and best case scenarios, taking into account the expected growth in electricity demand over the period from 2008 to 2017. According to the best case scenario, Turkey will add 12,917 MW in installed capacity by 2017. Under the worst case scenario, just 8,599 MW will be added; but the study also found that in order to keep pace with expected demand, the country will need a minimum of 22,000 MW in extra capacity by 2017; and if the economy continues to grow at a reasonable rate, it is more likely to need an additional 34,155 MW.

    “Whatever we do, we face a crisis,” noted Songul Selvi in a commentary on the report in the daily Dunya. “The only question is how bad.” (Dunya, September 25).