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  • ‘Obama Is Certainly A European’, Prof Ash

    ‘Obama Is Certainly A European’, Prof Ash

    Interview: ‘Obama Is Certainly A European’

    freeinternetpress

    Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash discusses the demise of Europe’s social democrats, threats to the European Union posed by populist nationalists, the imminent change of government in Great Britain and America’s rapid slide to the left.

    SPIEGEL: Professor Garton Ash, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression voters have turned away from the social democrats and socialists in European elections. Isn’t this paradoxical?

    Timothy Garton Ash: I think there’s an explanation for it. First, voters apparently feel that the conservatives and liberals are more competent when it comes to economic policy. Second, we are witnessing a return to nationalism as a reaction to the great crisis. And when that happens, voters tend to move to the right rather than to the left, in some cases quite far to the right.

    SPIEGEL: It would seem that leftists, the critics of capitalism, would stand to benefit from a crisis of capitalism.

    Garton Ash: In essence, you have two social democratic parties in Germany, just as we do in Great Britain – with some minor differences. David Cameron’s Conservatives are taking (former Prime Minister) Tony Blair’s approach, except when it comes to European policy. And there is no decisive difference between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats in Germany, at least not by the standards of the last century.

    SPIEGEL: In other words, we lack ideological differences, and we are all social democrats?

    Garton Ash: I think so. We are not talking about capitalism as such, but about the question of which form of capitalism works best in our country. And then there is the question of competency. Our governments are behaving more and more like managers. After 10 years, voters are dissatisfied with the current management, and along comes a new one.

    SPIEGEL: The left lost its identity as a result of politicians like Tony Blair and (former German Chancellor) Gerhard Schroder, who believed in the free market and abandoned old social democratic principals. Isn’t that the reason for their defeat throughout Europe?

    Garton Ash: I don’t think so. In each case, the voter is voting for a version of European social liberal democracy. Perhaps a party that calls itself conservative can provide him with the better social democracy.

    SPIEGEL: At least 15 percent of the new European parliament will consist of right-wing extremists, protest parties and joke parties. What does this mean for Europe’s future?

    Garton Ash: If I remember correctly, Bertolt Brecht said: “The womb is fertile still, which bore this fruit.” We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the temptation of xenophobia and national populism no longer exists, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see these forces being strengthened in the course of a major economic crisis. We must make the social market economy credible again as the central solution for the middle class.

    SPIEGEL: How?

    Garton Ash: There are two major domestic policy challenges for the European Union. First: Creating meaningful work for the majority of society. And second: the integration of fellow citizens of non-European descent. These are two sides of the same coin. After all, what are the populists and xenophobes saying, from Latvia to Portugal, and from Finland to Greece? They are saying: We’re in bad shape, and the others are at fault. Both parts of that sentence must be addressed politically.

    SPIEGEL: In Great Britain, the racist British National Party has won two seats for the first time.

    Garton Ash: The same thing also happened in Romania, Finland and Hungary. There are comparable developments everywhere. Until now, the Conservatives in Great Britain have always managed to neutralize the extreme right, just as the CDU/CSU has done in Germany. This time, not only has the BNP won its first two seats, but the anti-European U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) has even won more votes than Labor. Now that’s unsettling.

    SPIEGEL: Do the successes of right-wing extremists and the defeat of the left also indicate a decline in solidarity among voters?

    Garton Ash: Solidarity is certainly a European value, but our willingness to display solidarity also has narrow limits, especially toward the poor, and even more so when they are of non-European origin. This stems partly from the fact that we have developed social welfare states that are difficult to sustain, especially in global competition. The integration of immigrants in the United States is easier, because there is no social welfare state there.

    SPIEGEL: While Europe slips to the right, the United States, under Barack Obama, is discovering the social market economy – and is slipping to the left.

    Garton Ash: Soon they’ll be more European than we are.

    SPIEGEL: How do you explain that?

    Garton Ash: Six years ago, we had the manifesto of Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in connection with the discussion of the Iraq crisis, pitting Europe, with its socially progressive values against the United States. In that respect Obama, in terms of his system of values, is certainly a European. This is because the middle class in the United States has experienced the brutality and injustice of the unbridled Anglo-Saxon free market economy firsthand – in the healthcare system, for example.

    ‘The True European Elections Will Take Place in Germany in September’

    SPIEGEL: The election was a European election, and yet Europe wasn’t really the issue at all. Instead, the election was about national politics. Does this demonstrate that Europe is not united at all, but in fact divided?

    Garton Ash: I like to say that the true European elections will take place in Germany at the end of September. The German parliamentary election is certainly more important for the future of the European Union.

    SPIEGEL: Why?

    Garton Ash: At issue is the behavior of the most important member of the European Union, which is obvious. The competencies of the European Parliament have certainly grown, and I believe that voters underestimate its true influence. Nevertheless, the European Union is no direct democracy, nor will it become one anytime soon. I believe that voters sense this, and in this regard their behavior is completely rational.

    SPIEGEL: The competencies of the European Parliament have been expanded, partly in the hope that this would increase voter turnout, and yet it was lower than ever this year.

    Garton Ash: I believe that voter turnout will not improve in the foreseeable future, at least not as long as we are not prepared to take the big step toward a United States of Europe, and toward direct democracy. Almost nowhere in Europe are we prepared to do this. The parliament will remain a part of the European system, but the decisive elements will continue to be the European Council, the council of ministers and the cooperation among democratically elected governments.

    SPIEGEL: Doesn’t the voters’ lack of interest show that political Europe has disengaged itself from its citizens?

    Garton Ash: I believe that the European project is a victim of its own success. In each country, the pro-European argument, all national differences aside, took the same form: We were doing poorly, but thanks to Europe our lot will improve. But then comes the moment when we take Europe for granted, which raises the question: What is the purpose of this Europe?

    SPIEGEL: And what is it?

    Garton Ash: We need, for example, a common European foreign policy, so that we can defend our interest in an increasingly non-European world.

    SPIEGEL: Are the words of Henry Kissinger still applicable …?

    Garton Ash: … who was searching for a phone number for Europe? I believe, by the way, that he never said that. We did a lot of research at this university and were unable to find a source for the quote. In the end, I wrote to Henry Kissinger myself, and asked: Where did you say this? His response was wonderful. He wrote: I think I must have said it. I just don’t remember when and where. Of course, there is a kernel of truth to the remark. From Washington’s standpoint, or from Beijing’s or Moscow’s, Europe does not exist as a foreign policy player. And we must begin to exist.

    SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that Germany or France would give up its own foreign policy? Don’t national interests always trump European interests?

    Garton Ash: Why always? Why should something that was true in the past continue to apply in the future? The deutsche mark was the epitome of German identity, and yet the Germans gave it up. The history of the European Union over the last 50 years is a history of impossible things that happened, after all.

    SPIEGEL: And how do we arrive at a common foreign policy?

    Garton Ash: We don’t need a United States of Europe for that. What we need, most of all, is the political will of a strategic coalition of member states. It must include Germany, France and Great Britain, but others, as well. When that happens, it will be possible to pursue a common foreign policy.

    SPIEGEL: But there is a big difference between giving up a currency and giving up one’s own foreign policy. Economically speaking, the Union is accepted as a success story, but political Europe is criticized. In Great Britain and Eastern Europe, skeptics of the European Union are calling for a return to a purely economic union.

    Garton Ash: We already have a common foreign policy in the E.U. today – with regard to Tehran’s nuclear program, for example. And it is also accepted by the public. Now it is time to explain why it makes sense to pursue a common Russia policy, or a China policy, and why we are stronger together than individually.

    SPIEGEL: Isn’t it a vote of no confidence against Europe when voters elect someone like the Romanian Paris Hilton, the president’s daughter, Elena Basescu, to the parliament, as well as Sweden’s Pirate Party, and jokesters and odd characters like Austrian populist Hans-Peter Martin?

    Garton Ash: This is an indication of two things. First, voters are saying to themselves that the European Parliament isn’t all that important, so we can afford to elect a couple of pirates. Second – and this is something we see everywhere in Europe – there is a growing, deep dissatisfaction with the political class, to the point of a pre-revolutionary mood. The scandal over the expense accounts of British politicians we are currently experiencing is only one example among many.

    SPIEGEL: What is the source of this deep dissatisfaction?

    Garton Ash: I keep hearing the same thing from a wide range of people throughout Europe: The parliament is a self-service shop, and the political class is merely there to pursue its own interests.

    SPIEGEL: But that view is borne out by the scandal surrounding British members of parliament who used government funds to buy plasma TVs and porn films.

    Garton Ash: It’s really more complicated than that. The reason for this scandal is that politicians, almost 30 years ago, lacked the courage to approve better pay for members of parliament. That’s why they created this absurd system of so-called expenses, which were in fact allowances. As a result, all MPs became expense knights. And some of them were even real knights, right?

    SPIEGEL: At the moment, it looks as though David Cameron will be the next British prime minister.

    Garton Ash: Indeed.

    SPIEGEL: Cameron is threatening to hold a referendum over the Lisbon Treaty. That would be a declaration of war on Europe. Do you think he’ll do it?

    Garton Ash: If you were to inject a truth serum into David Cameron, he would probably have to confess to his secret hope that the treaty will be ratified by then. Then the referendum would no longer be necessary. I believe that, deep in his heart, he is not a euro-skeptic when it comes to Europe. The majority of his MPs and his foreign policy spokesman, William Hague, are euro-skeptics out of conviction. He has to use this rhetoric, especially because the UKIP did so well in the European election. And that’s why it is important for the European Union that the end of the Gordon Brown administration be drawn out for as long as possible.

    SPIEGEL: Cameron is now trying to forge an alliance with Polish and Czech opponents of Europe in the European Parliament.

    Garton Ash: Farce begets farce. Unfortunately, the man carelessly stated a position on the question of the European Parliament in 2005, when he was fighting for the leadership of the Conservatives. Aside from that, though, he learned an important lesson from Blair: Never commit to anything. But that’s why he must now remain true to himself, and is thereby compromising the British Conservatives. Suddenly they’re in bed with Latvian friends of the Waffen SS, Polish homophobes and Czech deniers of climate change.

    SPIEGEL: Is Gordon Brown truly, as they say, the worst British prime minister since Neville Chamberlain?

    Garton Ash: By no means. He isn’t a bad prime minister, as far as the content of his policies is concerned. I don’t know if the inexperienced David Cameron would have handled this major crisis more effectively. But as a personality, Brown is undoubtedly one of the weakest politicians. He makes one mistake after the next. He lacks the talent to sell his policies. He looks ridiculous when he tries in vain on YouTube, where he looks like a grandfather, to sell the people a solution to the expenses affair. He is hampered by the machinery of politics.

    SPIEGEL: Does he lack the charisma?

    Garton Ash: He lacks it completely. He hasn’t even managed to simply come across as a direct and upright character, which is something Angela Merkel has mastered. He could have been the Scottish Mr. Merkel. But he’s too Blairist for that. He wants to manipulate public opinion, and perhaps the worst thing is to try and fail in that endeavor.

    SPIEGEL: Who is responsible for the demise of New Labor? Tony Blair or Gordon Brown?

    Garton Ash: If this is its death, then it certainly had a nice life. In fact, it was quite successful: three legislative periods in a row, which is something Labor didn’t manage in 100 years. Besides, the Labor government is leaving behind a fairly substantial legacy – including Conservatives, who for the better part have adopted New Labor’s approach.

    SPIEGEL: Couldn’t Labor be successful again, after all, perhaps with Alan Johnson as a new party leader?

    Garton Ash: As a historian, I know that everything is possible in history, except cheating death. But I would bet a bottle of champagne that even the best Labor leader in the world will not win the next election.

    SPIEGEL: What kind of a bottle?

    Garton Ash: A magnum bottle, I would say.

    You can read this Spiegel interview with Historian Timothy Garton Ash in context here:

    www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,631359,00.html

    This interview was in German, it was translated from the German for Spiegel by Christopher Sultan.

    Source: www.reeinternetpress.com, 21.06.2009

  • Contemporary Necessary : Frankfurt School

    Contemporary Necessary : Frankfurt School

    Frankfurt school had been established to create a new resist about old traditional sociological theories and its main minds base on Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. We define foundation of Frankfurt school in near historical perspective. At this time European destruction on I.World War, different dimensions of Russian revaluation, fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini in socialist regions of Europea influenced ideas of this school. frankfurt

    Frankfurt school had been established to create a new resist about old traditional sociological theories and its main minds base on Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. We define foundation of Frankfurt school in near historical perspective. At this time European destruction on I.

    World War, different dimensions of Russian revaluation, fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini in socialist regions of Europea influenced ideas of this school. In general founders had been affected by ideas of Marx. So we say that this school created a general table as Marxist methods to criticism. The project of the Frankfurt School was to develop a critical theory of contemporary society that would combine philosophy, social theory, economics and cultural criticism in a new type of interdisciplinary theory. Also there is a variety between main ideas and methods of Marx[1]. Frankfurt school adopted contributions of Marx to economical developments and his research and critique methods. So there is a new Critique Method of school.

     

    Frankfurt school believed that old principles should be transformed into new tools. On this way self image is important than common criticism. All theoretical points can be improve by firstly auto-criticism, hereby thinkers refused social and economical determinism which are existed on old Marxist theories, also disclaimed comdemnation individuals on common social body in Marx and Engel’s idea. Society needs to secret potentials of individuals according to school.

     

    Criticism will destroy all oppressive systems and people will be conscious against to ideologies. Capitalism is progressing quickly, so we don’t need old methods to understand contemporary circumstances. Modern capitalism is controlling people who are working in heavy conditions and it manipulating information and populer cultur to prevent disobediences. Frankfurt school is defining this as culture industry. Its first duty is to adapt people to capitalism. Culture industry creates some small daily relaxation materials in heavy working life. Industry abuses mass media organs to create artificial system and people know them as relaxation mechanisms. Theodor Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. School refuses its functions because these mechanisms are working to create again people’s work desires to capitalist system. Thus capitalism need to establish secret masks to legitimate its artificial system, contemporary sociologies are these masks. Theories of sociology and functionalism transformed to serve this idea.[2] Common target should be defined by thinkers as to create new solutions, share paradoxes in society and how they are produced by dominant system. Works of Adorno and Horkheimer heavily influenced intellectual discourse on populer culture.

     

    It is possible to create rational society with using Hegel’s ideas. Hegel says that reality is rational and humanity has an intelligence potential. So school is criticising modern society which is controlled by the cruel world system. Rational society is a common body which we are joining this with transforming environmental conditions. It gives standart opportunities to criticise available societies but Habermas creates a different model about it. He refuses rationality, humanity uses a concrete way. His utopic idea is that everybody should join to public discussions. Ideas of Habermas don’t base on rational society term, it is an ideal society which shares potential abilities of people.

    He determined three common points of human in Knowledge and Human Interests[3];

     

    – The technical human interest, which entails empirical and analytical ways of knowing and represents the world in terms of objects, processes and laws which describe the transformation of objects and processes

     

    – The practical human interest, which entails historical and hermeneutic ways of knowing that represent the physical, social, and cultural worlds as “texts” which have to be interpreted in order for meaning to emerge

     

    – The emancipatory human interest, which entails a critical way of knowing where critical theorems are gleaned through collective reflection on social and cultural practices and then used to restructure future actions.

     

    Thinkers of Frankfurt school focused on cultural and modernism problems. Related to this, they resisted to concrete rationalities of capitalist society. On this way they defenced importancy of cultural reality as against to economical functions. First resist to positivism had been created by Horkheimer. He aimed at dialectic positivists because of they shared a seperatist movement between phenomenons and values.[4] According to Horkheimer, positivism is a poor philosophical branch because it can not modernize itself and as epistemologically it can not understand real results. Horkheimer criticised positivism systematically in his articles and created common outlook to positivism of school.

     

    Criticism of Horkheimer improved by Habermas. In his “Knowledge and Human Interests” he define positivism as a monopolistic system which keeps information. If positivism recognises its target, it can be itself an information. It is possible to create this with using cathegories and notions which are refused by itself. Positivism had been established to give directions to people, it worked and today it has no important function. Also thinkers followed a way to criticise positivist approach of Marx. It shares a criticism to Soviets. Decisions can not depend on worker class, it should be established by theorists. So today’s authoritarianism of Soviet Marxism is a result of positivism, not Marxism.[5]

    Frankfurt school is a revisionist movement because criticism action of classic Marxist ideas and economical determinism.

    [1] Marxist Internet Archive, The Franktfurt School, www.marxist.org

    [2] Rudolf J. Siebert. “The Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School

    [3] Knowledge, Jurgen Habermas : http://www.psychiatriapsychoterapia.pl

    [4] Jeremy J. Shapiro. “The Critical Theory of Frankfurt “, in: Times Literary Supplement

    [5] Necati Bozkurt, 20. yy Düşünce Akımları , Sarmal Yayınları

     

    Mehmet Fatih ÖZTARSU

    Caspian Weekly

  • Turkey Considers Procuring American or Russian Attack Helicopters

    Turkey Considers Procuring American or Russian Attack Helicopters

    Turkey Considers Procuring American or Russian Attack Helicopters

    Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 116
    June 17, 2009
    By: Saban Kardas
    Undersecretary of Defense Industries Murad Bayar told reporters that he is optimistic about the purchase of Super Cobra helicopters from the U.S. Navy, amidst reports that a Turkish delegation is visiting Moscow to discuss the procurement of Russian MI-28 helicopters. In a stalled bid, the Turkish military has been eyeing additional strike helicopters as a stop-gap measure to meet its needs until its own national attack helicopter project becomes operational.

    Attack helicopters have been on Turkey’s defense procurement agenda since the 1990’s. In order to increase the army’s effectiveness in combating the PKK, Ankara designated attack helicopters as an urgent requirement, and developed multi-million dollar programs to meet the army’s needs. Following the purchase of several Cobra class platforms, the subsequent tenders Turkey opened were cancelled due to price disputes, licenses and technology transfers and the changing political climate. Consistent with Turkish military procurement policy after 2004, it initiated a national helicopter gunship program.

    However, due to the stringent regulations on local participation and technology transfers, American firms could not participate in tenders, and Turkey eventually awarded the contract for the production of its national attack/tactical-reconnaissance helicopters to the Italian AgustaWestland. Under the $3 billion project, the Turkish army will acquire 50 T129 helicopters, a modified version of the Italian Mangusta-A129. The deliveries were expected to start in 2013, but some sources claim that this date be pushed back to 2015 (EDM, June 27, 2008).

    Criticism surrounding Turkey’s military modernization program has continued unabated. According to its critics, Turkey’s handling of the helicopter project since the outset reveals poor planning and the lack of direction within the defense industry. Many ambitious weapons systems including main battle tanks, assault helicopters and UAV’s are to be produced domestically, but their design and prototypes will not be ready before 2012. Critics claim that “if the development of those projects was not followed closely, the Turkish defense industry might face a serious crisis in 2012 after falling short of meeting the real needs of the Turkish armed forces” (EDM, January 6).

    Meanwhile, the Turkish army reported deficiencies in combating the PKK caused by the delays in the helicopter program, especially after the escalation of the PKK’s terrorist campaign in recent years. The helicopters within the Turkish military inventory, mostly Cobra class, are aging and fall short of the army’s operational meets. This situation lends credibility to the critics’ arguments, since although an attack helicopter project was considered as urgent in the 1990’s, it remains unfinished -and it will take several years before the army will acquire the quantities it needs.

    Realizing that even under the most optimistic estimates national attack helicopters will not be delivered before 2013-2015, as a short term measure Turkey approached the United States in late 2007 to purchase up to 12 Cobra class helicopters already in use by the U.S. navy. U.S. sources said that they were in short supply. Since operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have overstretched U.S. military resources, Washington declined the Turkish requests (Turkish Daily News, March 28, 2008). Instead it offered Turkey AH-64 Apaches, but Ankara did not want them since having operated Cobras for almost two decades, the Turkish army lacked the infrastructure and personnel to operate Apaches. The Italian AgustaWestland offered its Mangusta-A129 helicopters, but the Turkish armed forces declined, arguing that the A129’s engine was insufficient to meet its needs (Aksam, March 28, 2008).

    The issue resurfaced several times, but the American side did not change their stance. Diplomatic observers maintained that although shortages were cited as the official justification, Washington refused to sell used Cobras to Turkey to punish Ankara’s inflexibility over the attack helicopter tender. It was also claimed that Turkey’s refusal to send additional troops to Afghanistan was behind Washington’s reluctance to sell the Cobras to Ankara (Today’s Zaman, April 14, 2008; Aksam, March 28, 2008).

    Turkey then reportedly turned to Russia in late 2008. Turkish and Russian media reports claimed that, after being turned down by the United States, Ankara planned to procure 32 MI-28 Night Hunters, an all-weather day-night attack helicopter, in a deal worth $1 billion. However, Russian defense officials denied these claims and said that Turkey did not officially submit such a request (Cihan Haber Ajansi, December 22, 2008).

    Nonetheless, Turkish interest in pursuing the Russian option has continued, reportedly negotiating the purchase of at least 12 MI-28 choppers (Taraf, June 10). Russian defense industry officials attending the IDEF 2009 arms fair in Istanbul in late April maintained that Turkey showed interest in buying Russian air defense systems and combat helicopters (RIA Novosti, April 27). According to recent reports, a delegation from the Turkish defense ministry traveled to Moscow in order to explore the possible acquisition of between 12 and 32 helicopters within the next two or three years (RIA Novosti, June 15).

    In response to a question about the visit of a Turkish delegation to Moscow, Bayar told reporters “I am very hopeful about the purchase of Cobra W class [AH-1W-Supercobra] helicopters… I believe we will acquire them. The U.S. navy is considering the acquisition of the Z series, and they will not need the Cobra W class.” He added that during his visit to the United States, the Turkish Chief of the General Staff General Ilker Basbug also raised this issue with his American counterparts (Radikal, June 14).

    Given the feasibility concerns, the Turkish government is likely to reach a decision after comparing the Russian and American platforms. In addition to technical and economic factors, political considerations will also play a key role in Ankara’s decision. Given the recent rapprochement between Turkey and the United States, it might indeed acquire the Cobras as a temporary measure. Turkish plans to make a greater contribution to Afghanistan following Basbug and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s contacts (EDM, June 16) might help remove the objections of the U.S. army to Turkey’s requests.

    Nonetheless, these developments demonstrate how Ankara treads carefully between Moscow and Washington to maximize its leverage. In line with its recent foreign policy orientation, Turkey also appears equally determined to keep its options open in its defense procurement policies.

    https://jamestown.org/program/turkey-considers-procuring-american-or-russian-attack-helicopters/
  • Turkey to buy Russian Night Hunters

    Turkey to buy Russian Night Hunters

    16:02 15/06/2009

    MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik) – A Turkish military delegation has come to Russia to discuss the possible acquisition of Mi-28 attack helicopters. This is not the first time the two countries have discussed cooperation.

    In the 1970s and the early 1980s, Turkey bought 32 used AH-1P/S Cobra attack helicopters in the United States and later upgraded them to the AH-1F specifications. The Turkish army still has 23 AH-1P/S Cobras. However, Turkish military authorities started thinking about replacing them in the mid-1990s.

    During the subsequent tender they considered several models of combat helicopter, including the Ka-50-2 Erdogan, a version of the Russian Ka-50 Black Shark developed by Russia and Israel for Turkey. Unlike the Ka-50 where the pilots sit side-by-side, the seats in the Erdogan are placed in tandem as in the U.S. Cobra chopper.

    However, Turkey did not choose the Kamov helicopter for political reasons, such as growing U.S. influence in Turkey and, conversely, the lack of Russian influence. Also, Russia could not then guarantee the timely production of the required number of new helicopters or post-sale service. Lastly, the Ka-50 was not mass-produced even for the Russian army at that time.

    An updated Cobra with new weapons and equipment was the most probable winner in the Turkish tender, but the contract was eventually awarded to a European producer, the Anglo-Italian AgustaWestland, which proudly proclaims to be “a total rotorcraft capability provider.”

    AgustaWestland, announced as the winning bidder in March 2007, pledged to assemble 50 T129 prototypes in Turkey. However, the first T129 will be rolled out only in 2015, whereas Turkey needs choppers now to fight Kurdish militants.

    The purchase of seven used AH-1W SuperCobras in 2008 has not solved the problem either. Turkey needs modern attack helicopters to fill the gap until 2015 and for several more years while its pilots learn to fly the T129 choppers.

    As a result, Turkey has decided to purchase Russian machines. It has opted for the Mi-28N Night Hunter, which, unlike the Ka-50, has been mass-produced since the 1990s and is supplied to the Russian Armed Forces.

    Turkey may buy between 12 and 32 helicopters within two or three years. It is unclear if it wants the choppers with or without top-mounted radar, which is an extremely expensive option.

    The Turkish military had once considered buying the Mi-24 Crocodile, which has several common structural elements with the Mi-28. The Mi-17 multirole helicopter is currently used in Turkey for military, police and civilian purposes.

    Significantly, the Mil helicopters have for years been used in similar terrain in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East. Moreover, Russia’s influence and relations with Turkey have grown dramatically and many contradictions in bilateral ties have been smoothed over since the 1990s.

    Therefore, Turkey could buy the Mi-28, whose track record over the past 20 years and the initial results of its combat use show that this highly versatile helicopter could remain on combat duty even after T129 assembly start-up in Turkey.

    And the final touch: the protection and combat payload specifications of the T129 are below those of the Mi-28.

    The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

  • Tatar activist against the policy of Russification

    Tatar activist against the policy of Russification

    Vienna, June 12 – A Tatar activist recently given an 18-month suspended sentence for articles protesting Moscow’s Russification policies, says that the Internet activists may have kept him out of jail and, given the government’s increasing pressure on other media, they are often a last line of defense for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in that country.
    In an interview given to an independent Tatar journalist, Rafis Kashapov, a leader of the All-Tatar Social Center (VTOTs), explained that he has simply tried through his articles to attract the attention of society and the government to problems others have said less about (www.rupor.info/analitika/2009/06/09/lidera-oppozicii-v-tatarstane-osudili-k-lisheniju-/).
    Among the issues he has raised are “the policy of Russification of national minorities, the restriction of the rights of Muslims, the deportation of peoples, fascism, corruption, drug abuse, alcoholism, depravity, and other social problems” that he believes can only be addressed by open and honest discussion.
    If Russia were a normal democratic state, he suggested, “the leadership of the country would react positively” and seek a resolution of them. But in Russia, “instead of that, [the powers that be] opened a criminal case against” him, charging Kashapov with promoting extremism.
    While the authorities have been angered by Kashapov for a long time, the last straw appears to have been his essay “Say No to Christianization!” posted online earlier this year in which he protested the actions of officials who allowed an Orthodox priest to baptize Tatar babies without the permission of their parents.
    Addressing that issue in particular, Kashapov noted that the authorities had not taken the obvious step of inviting Christian and Muslim leaders to meet with them in order to overcome the problems these baptisms created and that, once they opened a case against him, prosecutors never questioned either the priest who baptized the children or the official who permitted it.
    Unfortunately, however, the Russian government had no interest in finding the truth or even in examining his case more or less honestly, the Tatar leader said. Not only were two FSB agents present at every hearing, an indication of the political sensitivities of the case, but the judge routinely ignored protests by his lawyers.
    Kashapov suggested that “the Internet possibly played a large role” in keeping him out of jail. Not only did he and his supporters place information about the case online when they had no other way of getting past the government’s information blockade, but “the majority” of those who read these materials “understood on whose side the truth is.”
    Moreover, many of those who learned about his case, Kashapov continued, supported him in court, signed appeals, and organized demonstrations and protests on his behalf. And he used this interview to “express gratitude” to these individuals and also to the administrators of the sites of the independent information agencies.”
    Kashapov said that their efforts were especially important because “at the present time in Russia is being conducted an unwritten nationality policy based on force over non-Russian peoples which precludes their free development, subjects them to humiliation and Russification and takes away their spiritual and material wealth.”
    In Tatarstan, this policy involves the ban on the use of the Latin script, the closure of Tatar schools, and the problem of opening replacement in the Tatar language. And as is the case with many other national minorities, it involves Moscow’s decision to reduce to almost nothing the “national-regional component” in the curriculum of the public schools.
    Those legitimate concerns are exacerbated, he said, by the Russian government’s flagrant ignoring of extremist behavior by Russian nationalist groups, like Spartak football fans who displayed pro-Hitler banners at a Kazan match, and by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is trying to baptize or convert the historically Islamic Tatars.
    Individuals and groups in Tatarstan who have tried to expose and oppose such things, Kashapov said, have suffered. Indeed, he said, they like those elsewhere who share their commitment to freedom and national rights increasingly find themselves in a situation that is “difficult and dangerous.”
    But he added, neither he nor they have any choice but to proceed: “Every time, when we multiply a lie, speak an untruth, or commit wrong actions, then by so doing we recognize and support the authoritarian powers that be of Russia, we work for it, and that means we strengthen it.”
    And he added, “playing at democracy in Putin’s Russia has come to an end. It turns out that now the most reliable means [for the government] to resolve a problem is to ‘bury’ an individual just as in Stalin’s time.” According to the calculations of Moscow’s leadership once again, “where there is no person, there is no problem.”
    Kashapov said that he has been physically threatened for his activities and that his family and friends had told him that “it would be better if [he] went abroad,” lest the powers that be “put [him] away in jail or still worse kill [him].” But he told his interlocutor, he has no plans to do so, preferring instead to continue his work in and for Tatarstan.
    His lawyers have filed an appeal which is scheduled to be heard by the republic supreme court, but Kashapov does not expect to win in any Russian venue, given the politics of his situation. Instead, he — like so many other opponents of the regime — is already looking to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for legal vindication.

    http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/06/window-on-eurasia-internet-last-line-of.html

  • Moderate Islam of Tatarstan Can Be ‘Exported,’ Moscow Scholar Says

    Moderate Islam of Tatarstan Can Be ‘Exported,’ Moscow Scholar Says

    Paul Goble

    Vienna, June 1 – While some Western analysts argue that it is nearly impossible to “export” moderate Islam to other segments of the Muslim community, an increasing number of scholars have begun to focus on those parts of the Muslim world where “moderate” Islam is practiced and where leaders are interested in the spread of this trend.
    Most have focused on Malaysia with its concept of “Islam hadari,” but Ruslan Kurbanov, a senior researcher at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies who earlier worked at the RAND Corporation, argues in a new article posted online this week that the moderate Islam of Tatarstan could prove to be an equally successful “export” (www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/exportumer/).
    No one should be surprised by this, Kurbanov says, given the commonalities between the two: Both Tatarstan and Malysia “are today among the leaders not only in the economic modernization of traditional Muslim societies but also examples of the achievement by Muslim peoples of high levels of education and integration in a broader and more developed region.”
    The Tatars and the Malaysians are also, he continues, “examples of the most successful models of the combination of traditional Islamic values with the demands of the contemporary world and of the promotion [in their respective societies] of the ideas of moderation, tolerance and openness to the external world.”
    Moreover, both peoples, Kurbanov notes, “came to Islam by a peaceful path in the course of the adoption of the new faith by an aristocratic hierarchy and the soviet Islamization [of the remainder of their societies] ‘from above.’” And both have lived for many centuries in close proximity to “major non-Muslim communities.”
    Not surprisingly, the Muslim leaders of these two societies and in their wake the political leaders of them as well have begun to talk about the kind of Islam their peoples profess as a model for others, even to the point of suggesting this in speeches delivered in Saudi Arabia, the country where Islam began.
    Because Malaysia is an independent country, its political leaders have had a greater opportunity than have those in Tatarstan to promote their ideas more internationally, with that country’s prime minister, Najib Razaq, even telling senior US State Department officials that Malaysian Islam represents “a model” for all other a Muslims.
    But Tatarstan’s version of moderate Islam, Kurbanov insists, deserves attention too as a possible “export commodity” both within the Russian Federation and CIS and more generally, all the more so since an increasing number of Tatar Muslim leaders and political ones as well have been pushing that idea.
    In March of this year, he notes, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan held a roundtable on “The Export of Russian Islam,” a meeting which Kurbanov regrets “did not attract a great deal of attention from the media, although some of the presentations there are beginning to spread through the expert community (www.islamtat.ru/publ/61-1-0-555).
    One reason that this session did not attract more attention at the time, the Moscow scholar suggests, is that Russia’s Muslim leaders have insisted for decades that “traditional” Russian Islam is by its very nature “moderate.” Consequently, many observers likely assumed that the meeting in Kazan did not represent an innovation.
    But, Kurbanov insists, what makes this meeting and the intellectual ferment that produced it something new and important to attend to is that “until recently practically no one advanced the idea that the traditional Russian version of Islam could and should be exported to the rest of the world.”
    The March meeting proposed precisely that, with Rustam Batyr, the deputy head of the Council of the Ulema of the MSD of Tatarstan, saying that “our obligation is to show the entire world just what Russian Islam is and what solutions it offers” to the problems which face the worldwide umma.
    Indeed, Batyr continued, “in our republic has already long been found a model of peaceful cooperation [with people of other faiths] and therefore now, Tatarstan is one of the centers where the future of humanity is being decided,” even if many people elsewhere are not yet aware of that reality.
    According to Kurbanov, the Tatars believe that a major “channel” for exporting their version of Islam consists of the works of the brilliant pleiade of Muslim theologians who formed what is sometimes called the Jadid movement at the end of the tsarist period. But those who seek to promote these writers are limited by the small print runs of their works.
    If that changes or if a new intellectual renaissance begins in Tatarstan, Kurbanov suggests, then the impact of moderate Tatar Islam on the Muslims of the world could quickly become far great than many expect, a development that could justify Batyr’s contention that Kazan is where “the future of humanity” is in fact being decided.

    http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/06/window-on-eurasia-moderate-islam-of.html