Category: Non-EU Countries

The Egyptian revolt is coming home

Egypt’s uprising discredits every western stereotype about Arabs*

John Pilger

An Egyptian protester waves a national flag as he sits on an electricity pole during demonstrations by thousands of anti-government supporters. Photograph: Getty Images.

Western leaders should be quaking in their boots.

The uprising in Egypt is our theatre of the possible. It is what people across the world have struggled for and their thought controllers have feared. Western commentators invariably misuse “we” and “us” to speak on behalf of those with power who see the rest of humanity as useful or expendable. The “we” and “us” are universal now. Tunisia came first, but the spectacle always promised to be Egyptian.

As a reporter, I have felt this over the years. At Tahrir (“liberation”) Square in Cairo in 1970, the coffin of the great nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser bobbed on an ocean of people who, under him, had glimpsed freedom. One of them, a teacher, described the disgraced past as “grown men chasing cricket balls for the British at the Cairo Club”. The parable was for all Arabs and much of the world. Three years later, the Egyptian Third Army crossed the Suez Canal and overran Israel’s fortresses in Sinai. Returning from this battlefield to Cairo, I joined a million others in Liberation Square. Their restored respect was like a presence – until the United States rearmed the Israelis and beckoned defeat.

Thereafter, President Anwar Sadat became America’s man through the usual billion-dollar bribery and, for this, he was assassinated in 1981. Under his successor, Hosni Mubarak, dissenters came to Liberation Square at their peril. The latest US-Israeli project of Mubarak, routinely enriched by Washington’s bagmen, is the building of an underground wall behind which the Palestinians of Gaza are to be imprisoned for ever.

The grisly peacemaker

Today, the problem for the people in Liberation Square lies not in Egypt. On 5 February, the New York Times reported: “The Obama administration formally threw its weight behind a gradual transition in Egypt, backing attempts by the country’s vice-president, General Omar Suleiman, to broker a compromise with opposition groups . . . Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was important to support Mr Suleiman as he seeks to defuse street protests . . .”

Having rescued him from would-be assassins, Suleiman is, in effect, Mubarak’s bodyguard. His other distinction, documented in Jane Mayer’s investigative bookThe Dark Side, is as supervisor of US “rendition flights” to Egypt, where people are tortured by order of the CIA. When President Obama was asked in 2009 if he regarded Mubarak as authoritarian, his swift reply was “no”. He called him a peacemaker, echoing that other great liberal tribune, Tony Blair, to whom Mubarak is “a force for good”.

The grisly Suleiman is now the peacemaker and force for good, the man of “compromise” who will oversee the “gradual transition” and “diffuse the protests”. This attempt to suffocate the Egyptian revolt will depend on a substantial number of people, from businessmen to journalists to petty officials, who have provided the dictatorship’s apparatus. In one sense, they mirror those in the western liberal class who backed Obama’s “change you can believe in” and Blair’s equally bogus “political Cinemascope” (Henry Porter in the Guardian, 1995). No matter how different they appear, both groups are the domesticated backers and beneficiaries of the status quo.

In Britain, the BBC’s Today programme is their voice. Here, serious diversions from the status quo are known as “Lord knows what”. On 28 January the Washington correspondent Paul Adams declared, “The Americans are in a very difficult situation. They do want to see some kind of democratic reform but they are also conscious that they need strong leaders capable of making decisions. They regard President Mubarak as an absolute bulwark, a key strategic ally in the region.

“Egypt is the country, along with Israel, on which American Middle East diplomacy absolutely hinges. They don’t want to see anything that smacks of a chaotic handover to frankly Lord knows what.”

Fear of Lord-knows-what requires that the historical truth of US and British “diplomacy” as largely responsible for the suffering in the Middle East be suppressed or reversed. Forget the Balfour Declaration, which led to the imposition of expansionist Israel. Forget the secret Anglo-American sponsorship of jihadists as a “bulwark” against democratic control of oil. Forget the overthrow of democracy in Iran and the installation of the tyrant shah, and the slaughter and destruction in Iraq. Forget the US fighter jets, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and depleted uranium that are performance-tested on children in Gaza. And now, in the cause of preventing “chaos”, forget the denial of almost every basic civil liberty in Omar Suleiman’s contrite “new” regime in Cairo.

Overtaken by events

The uprising in Egypt has discredited every western media stereotype about the Arabs. The courage, determination, eloquence and grace of those in Liberation Square contrast with “our” specious fear-mongering, with its al-Qaeda and Iran bogeys and iron-clad assumptions of the “moral leadership of the west”. It is not surprising that the recent source of truth about the imperial abuse of the Middle East, WikiLeaks, is itself subjected to craven and petty abuse in those self-congratulating newspapers that set the limits of elite liberal debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps they are worried. Public awareness is rising and bypassing them.

In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To their victims, the resistance in Liberation Square must seem an inspiration. “We won’t stop,” said a young Egyptian woman on TV. “We won’t go home.” Try kettling a million people in the centre of London, bent on civil disobedience, and try imagining it could not happen.

* Title of the Print edition

John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. “John Pilger,” wrote Harold Pinter, “unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him.”

www.newstatesman.com, 10 February 2011

February 16, 2011
12 months warning about the signs of an impending Ice Age

Immediate Ice Gigantic Icelandic Volcano Could Plunge Europe Into Age…

A plethora of scientists have come out in the past 12 months warning about the signs of an impending Ice Age.

(CHICAGO) – Another mammoth Icelandic volcano, Baroarbunga, is ready to erupt. This one could dwarf the Eyjafjallajokull glacier volcano that blew in 2010 causing havoc throughout Europe.

That’s the word that’s streaming out of the northern island nation as geophysicists around the globe hold their breaths to see what will happen next.

The Eyjafjallajokull eruption galvanized Europe and stunned the world with its unrelenting ferocity. It caused billions of dollars in loss, paralyzed European air travel and caused food and other commodities to spike upwards.

Worried experts warn that this eruption could be much, much worse.

University of Iceland geophysicists have warned of a significant rise in seismic activity in the area of Vatnajökull, the largest of Iceland’s glaciers. A swarm of earthquakes has erupted signaling the likely eruption of Bardarbunga, Iceland’s second biggest volcano and one that sits directly above a major lava conduit.

Baroarbunga, a stratovolcano towering 6,600 feet, is part of the island nation’s largest volcanic system. The huge volcano’s crater covers 43 square miles and is completely encased under glacial ice.

Devastation in the 15th Century

Baroarbunga’s last major eruption was horrendous. It changed the weather pattern in northern Europe and darkened the skies for months during 1477. That gigantic eruption generated the largest lava flow in 10,000 years and significantly expanded Iceland’s land mass.

Grim experts concede that if the volcano’s current activity culminates in an eruption equal to that of 1477, all of Scandinavia and much of northern Russia and Europe will be left reeling. The UK will be slammed by choking volcanic dust, grit and poisonous superheated gases. Commerce will grind to a halt, the skies will blacken for weeks, perhaps months, and agriculture would be severely affected.

The late Cornell University professor, astronomer Carl Sagan, used the consequences of large volcanic eruptions impact on global cooling as part of his theoretical model for the frightening prospect of a nuclear winter.

Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California, and member of Britain’s prestigious Royal Society working group on geo-engineering, explained that “dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions is known to cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space.”

That simple process has led to the starvation of whole nations in the past. Volcanic gases and dust suspended in the atmosphere cool the Earth to a point where the growing seasons significantly shrink and crops cannot reach maturity.

Speaking to Icelandic TV about the danger the re-activating volcano posed to the country and the Northern Hemisphere, Einarsson said, “This is the most active area of the country if we look at the whole country together. There is no doubt that lava there is slowly growing, and the seismicity of the last few days is a sign of it.”

Vulcanologists confirm they have great concern, but the region prevents them from detecting earth movements more accurately.

“We need better measurements because it is difficult to determine the depth of earthquakes because it is in the middle of the country and much of the area is covered with glaciers,” Einarsson added.

The UK and the Baroarbunga Ice Age

A plethora of scientists have come out in the past 12 months warning about the signs of an impending Ice Age. Some believe it will be a mini-Ice Age, others argue it will be a major one.

Ice Ages are caused by a number of factors. Not all of the factors are fully understood.

But a consensus of scientists agree that more than anything else what dominates the climate is the sun’s activity, the Earth’s core, volcanic action and water vapor in the atmosphere.

Adding to Earth’s shivering woes: NASA has confirmed the sun will be going into an extended cooling period after 2012.

The cool down is expected to last from 30 to 50 years.

At one time geophysicists believed it took hundreds or thousands of years for an Ice Age to begin, but during the past few decades evidence has emerged that the planet can slip into an Ice Age in under a decade.

Events like a giant volcano erupting…

Salem News

February 15, 2011
The Economist’s unforgivable silence on Sayyid Qutb’s anti-Semitism
By Richard Cohen

Qutb was hanged in 1966 by the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser after the customary torture. He had been the intellectual leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and a man of copious literary output. One of his efforts was called “Our Struggle with the Jews.” It is a work of unabashed, breathtakingly stupid anti-Semitism, one of the reasons the New York Review of Books recently characterized Qutb’s views”as extreme as Hitler’s.” About all this, the Economist is oddly, ominously and unforgivably silent.

This is both puzzling and troublesome. After all, it’s not as if Qutb was some minor figure. He is, as a secondary headline on the Economist review says, “the father of Islamic fundamentalism,” and it is impossible to read anything about him that does not attest to his immense contemporary importance. Nor was Qutb’s anti-Semitism some sort of juvenile madness, expressed in the hormonal certainty of youth and later recanted as both certainty and hairline receded. It was, instead, the creation of his middle age and was published in the early 1950s. In other words, his essay is a post-Holocaust work, written in full knowledge of what anti-Semitism had just accomplished. The mass murder of Europe’s Jews didn’t give him the slightest pause. Qutb was undaunted.

But so, apparently, are some others who write about him. In his recent and well-received book, “The Arabs,” Eugene Rogan of Oxford University gives Qutb his due “as one of the most influential Islamic reformers of the [20th] century” but does not mention his anti-Semitism or, for that matter, his raging hatred of America. Like the Sept. 11 terrorists, Qutb spent some time in America — Greeley, Colo.; Washington, D.C.; and Palo Alto, Calif. — learning to loathe Americans. He was particularly revolted by its overly sexualized women. Imagine if he had been to New York!

The Economist’s review is stunning in its omission. Can it be that a mere 65 years after the fires of Auschwitz were banked, anti-Semitism has been relegated to a trivial, personal matter, like a preference for blondes — something not worth mentioning? Yet, Qutb is not like Richard Wagner, whose anti-Semitism was repellent but did not in the least affect his music. Qutb’s Jew-hatred was not incidental to his work. While not quite central, it has nevertheless proved important, having been adopted along with his other ideas by Hamas. Qutb blames Jews for almost everything: “atheistic materialism,” “animalistic sexuality,” “the destruction of the family” and, of course, an incessant war against Islam itself.

Obviously, this is no minor matter. Critics of Israel frequently accuse it of racism in its treatment of Palestinians. Sometimes, the charge is apt. But there is nothing in the Israeli media or popular culture that even approaches what is openly, and with official sanction, said in the Arab world about Jews. The message is an echo of Nazi racism, and the prescription, stated or merely implied, is the same.

The Economist and Rogan are insufficient in themselves to constitute a movement. Yet I cannot quite suppress the feeling that the need to demonize Israel is so great that the immense moral failings of some of its enemies have to be swept under the carpet. As Jacob Weisberg pointed out recently in Slate, the “boycott Israel” movement is oddly unbalanced — so much fury directed at Israel, so little at countries like China or Venezuela. Can it be that the French philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch was prescient when he suggested years ago that anti-Zionism “gives us the permission and even the right and even the duty to be anti-Semitic in the name of democracy”? The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, a demarcation I have always acknowledged, is becoming increasingly blurred.

Because the Economist’s book reviews are unsigned, it’s impossible to know — and the Economist would not say — who’s at fault here. So the magazine itself is accountable not just for bad taste or unfathomable ignorance but for disregarding its own vow, published on its first page, “to take part in a severe contest between intelligence . . . and an unworthy timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” During the week of July 15, it didn’t just lose the contest — it never even showed up for it.

cohenr@washpost.com

www.washingtonpost.com, August 10, 2010

—

Cohen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Cohen (surname), the most common Jewish surname
- Kohen, a direct male descendant of the Biblical Aaron, brother of Moses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen
February 13, 2011
Israeli Ambassador’s Unsuccessful Visit to Manchester University

BY LEEDS PSC (LEEDS PALESTINE SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN)

MPACUK The students of University of Manchester only had a little more than 36 hours to prepare for the coming of the self invited Israeli Ambassador, Ron Prosor. Understandably, considering the University didn’t release any notice of the visit until two days before his coming.

The event, chaired by the President and the Vice-Chancellor, Nancy Rothwell, was on the topic of “Shifting Paradigms: Evolving Regional Dynamics in the Middle East.” It was obvious it was kept very quiet and deliberately so.

Action Palestine, with some representation from Manchester ISOC helped to develop a plan of action the evening before. The next morning they were out on the Campus’ main road and it started well. The activists were ambient, hopeful and upbeat despite the cold. A stall outside raised publicity about the unwanted visit, educating students on the credentials of the Ambassador.

When the time came they moved to the entrance of the venue and started chanting the familiar pro-Palestinian signatures of the ever growing global intifada. Naturally, there was no sign of the Ambassador, but hearing that he was there and starting his talk, their voices and chants grew louder and louder. The leaflets they were continuing to give out, helped in their efforts, as their numbers were given a bolster.

Two Action Palestine activists who attended the event, reported that the event received a small audience of just 35. It seems the Ambassador’s visit was a bit of a flop. In contrast, Action Palestine received a lot of publicity from their pro-Palestine activity and in turn raised the issue of the Palestinian plight at the hands of Israeli oppression to hundreds of students and university staff. The message was loud and clear, the Vice Chancellor should think twice before she allows war criminals to visit her university.

Many Muslims and non-Muslims make up Action Palestine and this reflects how the Palestinian issue is a humanitarian issue and not a religious one, much to the dismay of the Zionists on campus. Even after being called extremists by their Zionist counterparts, they still stood strong at every chance to defend the Palestinian cause on campus, in a pro-active way and they have come up on top. A good lesson for the rest of us, who may be easily scared by such tactical labelling.

,

February 12, 2011
LSE conference speaker Professor J McCarthy attacked by Armenian audience

Betula Nelson
hhtp://ataturksocietyuk.com
10/02/2001
LSE conference speaker Professor J McCarthy attacked by Armenian audience

Organised by the Federation of Turkish Associations UK and entitled ‘Turkish- Armenian Relations’ this conference took place at the London School of Economics on Friday the 4th February 2011. It was attended by approximately 350 people and amongst the guests were Dr Andrew Mango, British Armenian historian Ara Sarafians,Turkish Ambassador, Azerbaijani Ambassador and other embassy officials. This annual conference is held in remembrance of the Turkish diplomats who were the victims of Armenian terrorists in several countries in the past.
The guest speaker Prof. Justin McCarthy specialises in the social and demographic history of the Modern Middle East, particularly Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. He is presently Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville.He spoke on the subject of ‘Prejudice, Deception and the Armenian Question’.
The conference was chaired by Prof. Sevket Pamuk, Turkish Studies Dept. at the LSE.

Prof. McCarthy explained that the 1915-1919 War years have already been widely discussed and written about, therefore he would concentrate on an earlier period around the 1890s and particularly the Sasun events. He demonstrated with maps, photographs and cartoons how it would have been impossible to report the events from Sasun as they had been by British Embassy Consulars and the various American missionaries who never got beyond the cities of Van or Kayseri. Due to the remoteness of the area, all the reports were second hand and Armenian based. The reports of the Association Press, British Daily News and weekly news in USA cannot be accepted as reliable because they were all based on reports by the Anglo-Armenian Association and missionary reports emanating from Boston. Sometimes these reports were made up as the reporters never managed to go to the claimed massacre sites and had nothing to report other than what they had heard.
Professor McCarthy also talked about the Hacin reports and demonstrated with photographs that the stories about Turks burning down a whole town were untrue because the houses were not made of wood and were upright in a photo taken after the reported event. These serious falsehoods were confirmed by the 1st established Commission by the British, French and Russians and this showed that a/those first killed were the Kurds and b/the Armenian dead was not in the thousands – it was 264. The Professor claimed that most of the reports were fabrications because the Ottoman government gave no figures and the reports were filed from Istanbul sometimes by ignorant AP agents who thought that the city of Kayseri was in Syria! Therefore these reports cannot be relied upon.

The significant theme of the conference was the prejudice which seemed to have been behind the deception and the myths that were created about the Ottoman Turks and events relating to Armenians. The ignorance of the Americans and others were clearly demonstrated in the media portrayal of the Ottoman Turks; they were drawn looking like monkeys and a mixture of Africans and Orientals. They were also portrayed as barbarians, rejoicing in the killings of children and babies in some of the cartoons. The Professor argued that the reports sent to US via British sources and based on claims by Armenian separatists organisations were clearly biased and were determined to influence the world view by portraying the Ottoman Turks in the most negative and horrible way possible. Professor McCarthy’s view was that it would be both wrong and foolish to accept the Armenian claims about massacres based on hearsay and made up stories.

Professor McCarthy explained the context of these events and reminded the audience that Ottoman empire was multiculturalistic and that there was a big movement towards ‘nationalism’ at the time. Unlike the Bulgarians and the Greeks, Armenians did not make up the largest populations in the areas they inhabited (around 20%) and therefore they were not entitled to a state of their own. This the Professor argued was behind the falsifications and myths which the Armenian activists created with the help of the British. For them the war was another means to obtaining a national state on the Ottoman lands.

Verbal attacks from Armenian activists

Unfortunately this was very embarrassing and less than civilised as some of the Armenians verbally attacked the speaker and called him names such as ‘the devil’, ‘liar’ and claimed that he had ‘sold out to the Turkish government’ during the question an answer period. It appeared that they were particularly annoyed because he did not talk about the 1915-1919 period, though the reasons for this were explained at the beginning of his speech. Although the chair gave everyone the opportunity to ask questions, some Armenian fanatics abused the rules and instead of asking questions they resorted to insults and ranting. There were a number of good and sensible questions, however the civilised atmosphere of the conference was spoiled by the behaviour of a minority group.

I felt that Professor McCarthy was heroic in the way he withstood the attacks and the insults, and responded with facts which after all what matters most in this debate. His statement – ‘only the ones without a real argument resort to insults’ seemed to sum up the behaviour of the few pretty well.

Betula Nelson
Media Coordinator
The Ataturk Society of the UK

February 10, 2011
UK-Turkey defence cooperation

The Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, visited Ankara on 24 January. He discussed UK-Turkey defence cooperation with the Turkish Defence Minister and senior military officials. He visited Ataturk’s Mausoleum and gave an interview to Haber Turk. He also set out UK priorities in an article for Cumhuriyet newspaper.

Article by the UK Secretary of Defence for Cumhuriyet newspaper

My visit to Turkey this week has the aim of building stronger relations in the defence and security sphere. I want to see increased political and military engagement between the Turkish and British Armed Forces. I want to see more joint training, more officer exchange, closer cooperation on equipment procurement. We are natural strategic partners.

As British Prime Minister David Cameron said when he visited Turkey last year “Turkey is vital for our economy, vital for our security and vital for our politics and our diplomacy.”. Britain and Turkey have an enduring friendship and like the best friendships this is based on mutual interests. We share many of the same security concerns: terrorism, the Middle-East Peace Process, stability in Iraq, concerns with Iran’s nuclear programme, energy security, piracy, and success in Afghanistan. This is why the David Cameron and British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited Turkey last summer so soon after the new Coalition government was formed in the UK and why the British Prime Minister signed a strategic partnership agreement with Prime Minister Erdogan. And it is why we should also pursue closer cooperation in the defence and security sphere. With all that Turkey does inside NATO and for European defence it is astonishing that it has been eight years since a British Defence Secretary has had a bilateral visit to Turkey.

Turkey has an important and strategic role in global affairs. The UK is determined that this role is properly understood by all of our partners. Turkey connects Europe and the Islamic world. It is a trading partner with a strong economy and a major player in the energy market. As a vitally important member of NATO Turkey makes a major contribution to the collective security of Europe. No organisation, especially the EU, can be serious about European defence without the full participation of Turkey.

Turkey’s military contribution to regional and global security is an example of why Turkey is such a valuable partner. Your country has deployed thousands of troops to Afghanistan and has been at the centre of seeking economic and political progress there. Turkey plays a significant part in counter piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and in Operation Active Endeavour, NATO’s first ever Article 5 military operation. Turkey’s contribution to European security should be praised and viewed as an example to many of our NATO allies. It is imperative that the NATO-EU relationship evolves to recognise what Turkey has to offer. After considering all that Turkey does for the defence and security of Europe I find it frustrating that its accession process into the EU has been stalled. I fear that at times, some EU Member States are so focused on their national agendas that we have collectively failed to realise that Europe needs Turkey just as much as Turkey needs Europe.

Some believe that Turkey faces a choice between looking west towards Europe or east towards Asia. I think this is a false dichotomy. Turkey is simultaneously a European and Near-Eastern country that has cultural and economic interests that extend well into Central Asia, the Middle-East, North Africa and Western Europe. This unique attribute is one of the reasons why Turkey is an asset to Europe. Because of its history, its culture and its strategic position, Turkey has influence on some issues that others in the West cannot match.

Take the issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will be a disaster – it could destroy the hopes for peace in the Middle East and cause a nuclear arms race and further conflict through the region, impacting directly on Turkish security. We believe Turkey shares that view and we are grateful for Turkish support for international efforts to address these concerns. This includes hosting last week’s talks between the E3+3 and Iran in Istanbul. We must keep up the pressure, including through robust implementation of sanctions. I welcome Turkey’s commitment to do just that. Like all of us, Turkey has an important responsibility to ensure it is not used by Iran to help it avoid its international obligations.

On the 5th of February, 1952 the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, stood up in the British Parliament and reminded people that Turkey is an “old and trusted friend” of the United Kingdom and that was why, he said, the UK was the first NATO country to give formal approval of Turkey’s admission to the alliance. Later that month Turkey attended the Lisbon Conference as a full member of NATO beginning 59 consecutive years of what has been one of the most important contributions to Europe’s defence and security. Today, the UK-Turkish relationship has never been closer. Turkey stands at the new military, economic, energy and political crossroads of the world and it would be profoundly wrong for Europeans to turn their backs at this time. The UK will continue to be Turkey’s strongest advocates for EU membership. I will take every opportunity possible to remind my European colleagues who are sceptical about Turkey’s future inside Europe just how short-sighted they are. What a mistake of truly historic proportions it would be if, the leaders across Europe delivered future generations into a much more dangerous and destabilised continent because Turkey was excluded from something it rightly deserves—membership of the EU.

Article by the UK Secretary of Defence for Cumhuriyet newspaperMy visit to Turkey this week has the aim of building stronger relations in the defence and security sphere. I want to see increased political and military engagement between the Turkish and British Armed Forces. I want to see more joint training, more officer exchange, closer cooperation on equipment procurement. We are natural strategic partners.
As British Prime Minister David Cameron said when he visited Turkey last year “Turkey is vital for our economy, vital for our security and vital for our politics and our diplomacy.”. Britain and Turkey have an enduring friendship and like the best friendships this is based on mutual interests. We share many of the same security concerns: terrorism, the Middle-East Peace Process, stability in Iraq, concerns with Iran’s nuclear programme, energy security, piracy, and success in Afghanistan. This is why the David Cameron and British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited Turkey last summer so soon after the new Coalition government was formed in the UK and why the British Prime Minister signed a strategic partnership agreement with Prime Minister Erdogan. And it is why we should also pursue closer cooperation in the defence and security sphere. With all that Turkey does inside NATO and for European defence it is astonishing that it has been eight years since a British Defence Secretary has had a bilateral visit to Turkey.
Turkey has an important and strategic role in global affairs. The UK is determined that this role is properly understood by all of our partners. Turkey connects Europe and the Islamic world. It is a trading partner with a strong economy and a major player in the energy market. As a vitally important member of NATO Turkey makes a major contribution to the collective security of Europe. No organisation, especially the EU, can be serious about European defence without the full participation of Turkey.
Turkey’s military contribution to regional and global security is an example of why Turkey is such a valuable partner. Your country has deployed thousands of troops to Afghanistan and has been at the centre of seeking economic and political progress there. Turkey plays a significant part in counter piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and in Operation Active Endeavour, NATO’s first ever Article 5 military operation. Turkey’s contribution to European security should be praised and viewed as an example to many of our NATO allies. It is imperative that the NATO-EU relationship evolves to recognise what Turkey has to offer. After considering all that Turkey does for the defence and security of Europe I find it frustrating that its accession process into the EU has been stalled. I fear that at times, some EU Member States are so focused on their national agendas that we have collectively failed to realise that Europe needs Turkey just as much as Turkey needs Europe.
Some believe that Turkey faces a choice between looking west towards Europe or east towards Asia. I think this is a false dichotomy. Turkey is simultaneously a European and Near-Eastern country that has cultural and economic interests that extend well into Central Asia, the Middle-East, North Africa and Western Europe. This unique attribute is one of the reasons why Turkey is an asset to Europe. Because of its history, its culture and its strategic position, Turkey has influence on some issues that others in the West cannot match.
Take the issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will be a disaster – it could destroy the hopes for peace in the Middle East and cause a nuclear arms race and further conflict through the region, impacting directly on Turkish security. We believe Turkey shares that view and we are grateful for Turkish support for international efforts to address these concerns. This includes hosting last week’s talks between the E3+3 and Iran in Istanbul. We must keep up the pressure, including through robust implementation of sanctions. I welcome Turkey’s commitment to do just that. Like all of us, Turkey has an important responsibility to ensure it is not used by Iran to help it avoid its international obligations.
On the 5th of February, 1952 the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, stood up in the British Parliament and reminded people that Turkey is an “old and trusted friend” of the United Kingdom and that was why, he said, the UK was the first NATO country to give formal approval of Turkey’s admission to the alliance. Later that month Turkey attended the Lisbon Conference as a full member of NATO beginning 59 consecutive years of what has been one of the most important contributions to Europe’s defence and security. Today, the UK-Turkish relationship has never been closer. Turkey stands at the new military, economic, energy and political crossroads of the world and it would be profoundly wrong for Europeans to turn their backs at this time. The UK will continue to be Turkey’s strongest advocates for EU membership. I will take every opportunity possible to remind my European colleagues who are sceptical about Turkey’s future inside Europe just how short-sighted they are. What a mistake of truly historic proportions it would be if, the leaders across Europe delivered future generations into a much more dangerous and destabilised continent because Turkey was excluded from something it rightly deserves—membership of the EU.

UK in Turkey

February 3, 2011