Category: Israel

What Cyprus tells us about Turkey

By David Kenner

Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias gave Foreign Policy an interview earlier this week, where he offered an eloquent explanation of the factors that have conspired to leave his country his country divided [sic.], even after 36 years of diplomacy. But his answer to why the average U.S. citizen — or even the average diplomat in Foggy Bottom — should care about Cyprus’s plight was rather unsatisfying. “The United States of America is a bastion of freedom and human rights, isn’t it?” he said. “I call upon the Americans to respect the Cypriots as they respect themselves.”

That’s true, of course. Human rights are inalienable and universal, and if the approximately 1 million Cypriots are forced to live in a bifurcated nation, and the quarter million citizens of northern Cyprus exist in a state of international isolation, that’s an issue that deserves our concern. We should also be concerned with the treatment of the Uighur population in China, the work of Cambodia’s international tribunal, and the ongoing chaos in the Congo. In a world of finite resources, however, concern doesn’t necessarily translate into the United States spending time and money to resolve a problem.

However, there is a good reason that the United States should be paying active attention to the progress, or lack thereof, in resolving the Cyprus dispute. It just has less to do with the plight of Cypriots themselves, and more to do with the fate of Christofias’s primary rival: Turkey. The Turkish government, which is increasingly throwing its weight around in the Middle East, still refuses to recognize the Republic of Cyprus or let its vessels dock in Turkish ports. Cyprus, as a full member of the European Union, can be expected to continue to block Turkey’s EU accession bid until a resolution is reached. The fear is that, if Prime Minister Erdogan’s government finds its path blocked to the West, it will increasingly drift into the orbit of Iran and Syria.

Indeed, the lack of progress on the Cyprus issue is just one instance of how Erdogan’s ambitious foreign policy has been unable to resolve issues closer to its borders. While Erdogan travels the globe blasting Israel for its policy toward Gaza or mediating the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, his diplomats have also made little progress in normalizing relations with Armenia; efforts to resolve the increasingly violent conflict with Turkey’s Kurdish population have also stalled. Issues like Cyprus, Armenia, and Kurdish integration might not command the international spotlight in the same way as Iran and Israel can, but they are arguably more important for Turkey’s long-term well being.

,October 1, 2010

October 2, 2010
Turkey and Russia: Cleaning up the Mess in the Middle East

There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey and Russia as they form the axis of a new political formation. Turkey, once the ‘sick man of Europe’, is now ‘the only healthy man of Europe’, notes Eric Walberg.

The neocon plan to transform the Middle East and Central Asia into a pliant client of the US empire and its only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East is now facing a very different playing field. Not only are the wars against the Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis floundering, but they have set in motion unforeseen moves by all the regional players.

The empire faces a resurgent Turkey, heir to the Ottomans, who governed a largely peaceful Middle East for half a millennium. As part of a dynamic diplomatic outreach under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey re-established the Caliphate visa-free tradition with Albania, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Syria last year. In February Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay offered to do likewise with Egypt. There is “a great new plan of creating a Middle East Union as a regional equivalent of the European Union” with Turkey, fresh from a resounding constitutional referendum win by the AKP, writes Israel Shamir.

Turkey also established a strategic partnership with Russia during the past two years, with a visa-free regime and ambitious trade and investment plans (denominated in rubles and lira), including the construction of new pipelines and nuclear energy facilities.

Just as Turkey is heir to the Ottomans, Russia is heir to the Byzantines, who ruled a largely peaceful Middle East for close to a millennium before the Turks. Together, Russia and Turkey have far more justification as Middle Eastern “hegemons” than the British-American 20th century usurpers, and they are doing something about it.

In a delicious irony, invasions by the US and Israel in the Middle East and Eurasia have not cowed the countries affected, but emboldened them to work together, creating the basis for a new alignment of forces, including Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Syria, Turkey and Iran are united not only by tradition, faith, resistance to US-Israeli plans, but by their common need to fight Kurdish separatists, who have been supported by both the US and Israel. Their economic cooperation is growing by leaps and bounds. Adding Russia to the mix constitutes a like-minded, strong regional force encompassing the full socio-political spectrum, from Sunni and Shia Muslim, Christian, even Jewish, to secular traditions.

This is the natural regional geopolitical logic, not the artificial one imposed over the past 150 years by the British and now US empires. Just as the Crusaders came to wreak havoc a millennium ago, forcing locals to unite to expel the invaders, so today’s Crusaders have set in motion the forces of their own demise.

Turkey’s bold move with Brazil to defuse the West’s stand-off with Iran caught the world’s imagination in May. Its defiance of Israel after the Israeli attack on the Peace Flotilla trying to break the siege of Gaza in June made it the darling of the Arab world.

Russia has its own, less spectacular contributions to these, the most burning issues in the Middle East today. There are problems for Russia. Its crippled economy and weakened military give it pause in anything that might provoke the world superpower. Its elites are divided on how far to pursuit accommodation with the US. The tragedies of Afghanistan and Chechnya and fears arising from the impasse in most of the “stans” continue to plague Russia’s relations with the Muslim Middle East.

Since the departure of Soviet forces from Egypt in 1972, Russia has not officially had a strong presence in the Middle East. Since the mid- 1980s, it saw a million-odd Russians emigrate to Israel, who like immigrants anywhere, are anxious to prove their devotion and are on the whole unwilling to give up land in any two-state solution for Palestine. As Anatol Sharansky quipped to Bill Clinton after he emigrated, “I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.” Russia now has its very own well-funded Israel Lobby; many Russians are dual Israeli citizens, enjoying a visa-free regime with Israel.

Then there is Russia’s equivocal stance on the stand-off between the West and Iran. Russia cooperates with Iran on nuclear energy, but has concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions, supporting Security Council sanctions and cancelling the S-300 missile deal it signed with Iran in 2005. It is also increasing its support for US efforts in Afghanistan. Many commentators conclude that these are signs that the Russian leadership under President Dmitri Medvedev is caving in to Washington, backtracking on the more anti-imperial policy of Putin. “They showed that they are not reliable,” criticised Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi.

Russia is fence-sitting on this tricky dilemma. It is also siding, so far, with the US and the EU in refusing to include Turkey and Brazil in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme. “The Non-Aligned countries in general, and Iran in particular, have interpreted the Russian vote as the will on the part of a great power to prevent emerging powers from attaining the energy independence they need for their economic development. And it will be difficult to make them forget this Russian faux pas,” argues Thierry Meyssan at voltairenet.org.

Whatever the truth is there, the cooperation with Iran and now Turkey, Syria and Egypt on developing peaceful nuclear power, and the recent agreement to sell Syria advanced P-800 cruise missiles show Russia is hardly the plaything of the US and Israel in Middle East issues. Israel is furious over the missile sale to Syria, and last week threatened to sell “strategic, tie-breaking weapons” to “areas of strategic importance” to Russia in revenge. On both Iran and Syria, Russia’s moves suggest it is trying to calm volatile situations that could explode.

There are other reasons to see Russia as a possible Middle East powerbroker. The millions of Russian Jews who moved to Israel are not necessarily a Lieberman-like Achilles Heel for Russia. A third of them are scornfully dismissed as not sufficiently kosher and could be a serious problem for a state that is founded solely on racial purity. Many have returned to Russia or managed to move on to greener pastures. Already, such prominent rightwing politicians as Moshe Arens, political patron of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are considering a one-state solution. Perhaps these Russian immigrants will produce a Frederik de Klerk to re-enact the dismantling of South African apartheid.

Russia holds another intriguing key to peace in the Middle East. Zionism from the start was a secular socialist movement, with religious conservative Jews strongly opposed, a situation that continues even today, despite the defection of many under blandishments from the likes of Ben Gurion and Netanyahu. Like the Palestinians, True Torah Jews don’t recognise the “Jewish state”.

But wait! There is a legitimate Jewish state, a secular one set up in 1928 in Birobidjan Russia, in accordance with Soviet secular nationalities policies. There is nothing stopping the entire population of Israeli Jews, orthodox and secular alike, from decamping to this Jewish homeland, blessed with abundant raw materials, Golda Meir’s “a land without a people for a people without a land”. It has taken on a new lease on life since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made an unprecedented visit this summer, the first ever of a Russian (or Soviet) leader and pointed out the strong Russian state support it has as a Jewish homeland where Yiddish, the secular language of European Jews (not sacred Hebrew), is the state language.

There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey and Russia as they form the axis of a new political formation. Rather it is the resilience of Islam in the face of Western onslaught, plus — surprisingly — a page from the history of Soviet secular national self-determination. Turkey, once the “sick man of Europe”, is now “the only healthy man of Europe”, Turkish President Abdullah Gul was told at the UN Millennium Goals Summit last week, positioning it along with the Russian, and friends Iranian and Syrian to clean up the mess created by the British empire and its “democratic” offspring, the US and Israel.

While US and Israeli strategists continue to pore over mad schemes to invade Iran, Russian and Turkish leaders plan to increase trade and development in the Middle East, including nuclear power. From a Middle Eastern point of view, Russia’s eagerness to build power stations in Iran, Turkey, Syria and Egypt shows a desire to help accelerate the economic development that Westerners have long denied the Middle East — other than Israel — for so long. This includes Lebanon where Stroitransgaz and Gazprom will transit Syrian gas until Beirut can overcome Israeli-imposed obstacles to the exploitation of its large reserves offshore.

Russia in its own way, like its ally Turkey, has placed itself as a go-between in the most urgent problems facing the Middle East — Palestine and Iran. “Peace in the Middle East holds the key to a peaceful and stable future in the world,” Gul told the UN Millennium Goals Summit — in English. The world now watches to see if their efforts will bear fruit.

Eric Walberg writes for Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at .

, 30.09.2010

September 30, 2010
UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis “Executed” US Citizen Furkan Dogan

by: Gareth Porter, t r u t h o u t | Report

Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was aboard the Mavi Marmara when he was killed by Israeli commandos. (Photo: freegazaorg; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

Source: truth-out

The circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution. Furkan Doğan and İbrahim Bilgen were shot at near range while the victims were lying injured on the top deck. Cevdet Kiliçlar, Cengiz Akyüz, Cengiz Songür and Çetin Topçuoğlu were shot on the bridge deck while not participating in activities that represented a threat to any Israeli soldier. In these instances and possibly other killings on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces carried out extralegal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law, specifically article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Source: Human Rights Council Report, Page 38, Item 170

https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.pdf

September 28, 2010
Turkish president demands apology for flotilla at UN

By JORDANA HORN

Gul calls ‘Marmara’ raid an “unacceptable act in international law,”; calls on Israel to put an end to the “humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.”

NEW YORK – Addressing the General Assembly at the United Nations on Thursday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul referenced the May 31 Gaza flotilla incident and demanded both a formal apology from Israel as well as compensation for the victims.

Calling the deaths on the Mavi Marmara an “unacceptable act in international law,” Gul said Turkey is owed “a formal apology and compensation for the aggrieved families of the victims and the injured people” by Israel.

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Gul: Israel unable to act rationally

Gul referenced the flotilla incident in part of his remarks focusing on the political component of the General Assembly’s agenda, noting that there is “no shortage of regional issues” to be discussed.

“Peace in the Middle East holds the key to a peaceful and stable future in the world,” Gul said, addressing the body in English. “Unfortunately, the absence of peace there has had serious and adverse consequences for the rest of the world.”

It would be difficult to make progress toward permanent peace, Gul said, “unless we put an end to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.”

Gul attached significance to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s Panel of Inquiry into the May 31 flotilla incident, as well as the fact finding mission of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.

Gul said he is “pleased” with the Human Rights Council report, which he said offered “a solid legal framework for establishing the facts about the incident.” Many NGOs, including UN Watch and NGO Monitor, have deemed the work of the Human Rights Council panel irreparably biased against Israel.

Referencing Iran very briefly, Gul said there is “no alternative to diplomacy” in ensuring Iran’s conformity to International Atomic Energy Agency norms.

https://www.jpost.com/International/Turkish-president-demands-apology-for-flotilla-at-UN, 23.09.2010

September 24, 2010
Ahmadinejad tells U.N. most blame U.S. government for 9/11

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the 65th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, September 23, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar

By Louis Charbonneau

(Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations on Thursday most people believe the U.S. government was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, prompting the U.S. and European delegations to leave the hall in protest.

Addressing the General Assembly, he said it was mostly U.S. government officials and statesmen who believed al Qaeda Islamist militants carried out the suicide hijacking attacks that brought down New York’s World Trade Center — less than 4 miles from where the Iranian president was speaking.

Another theory, he said, was “that some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime.” Ahmadinejad usually refers to Israel as the “Zionist regime.”

“The majority of the American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view,” Ahmadinejad told the 192-nation assembly, calling on the United Nations to establish “an independent fact-finding group” to look into the events of September 11.

As in past years, the U.S. delegation walked out during Ahmadinejad’s speech. It was joined by all 27 European Union delegations and several other countries.

Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said Ahmadinejad chose “to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.”

White House spokesman Bill Burton said President Barack Obama thought the comments “utterly outrageous and offensive — especially in the city where the 9/11 attacks occurred.”

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the remarks were “outrageous and unacceptable.”

‘COVERED UP’

Ahmadinejad said some evidence that could support alternative theories had been “covered up” — passports located in the rubble and a video of an unknown individual who had been “involved in oil deals with some American officials.”

As he had in past years, the Iranian president used the General Assembly podium to attack Iran’s other archfoe, Israel, and to defend the right of his country to a nuclear program that Western powers fear is aimed at developing arms.

“This regime (Israel), which enjoys the absolute support of some Western countries, regularly threatens the countries in the region and continues publicly announced assassination of Palestinian figures and others, while Palestinian defenders … are labeled as terrorists and anti-Semites,” he said.

“All values, even the freedom of expression, in Europe and the United States are being sacrificed at the altar of Zionism,” Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian president previously raised doubts about the Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two and said Israel had no right to exist.

Tehran has been hit with four rounds of U.N. sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program. Obama earlier told the assembly the door to diplomacy was still open for Iran, but it needed to prove its atomic program is peaceful, as it says it is.

, 23 September 2010

September 24, 2010
United States laid ground for Ergenekon “Deep State” in Turkey

WMR has discovered a formerly Secret document from the U.S. Department of State that confirms the United States not only supported the Turkish military coup that ousted the nation’s democratically-elected government in 1980 but actively supported the military-imposed Turkish Constitution as “reformist.”

The citizens of Turkey recently voted in a referendum and approved 26 constitutional amendments that will transform Turkey into a democratic state without the threat of the military and national security state-affiliated judiciary trumping the power of the Parliament and the people. Neocons have condemned the referendum as a threat to secularism in Turkey and a move to an Islamic state. However, the neocons and their allies in Israel are concerned that a Mossad -and CIA-imposed Turkish “Deep State” has finally seen its power largely destroyed with the impending adoption of a new Turkish Constitution. The referendum, which passed with 58 percent of the vote, is a victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Many of the roots of the creation of the most recent variant of the Turkish Deep State, known as Ergenekon, can be seen in the State Department policy paper dated September 5, 1981, and titled “USG Policy toward Turkey.” When the State Department document was drafted, Turkey’s military junta leader, General Kenan Evren, was drafting the present Turkish Constitution. The 1981 Turkish military draft Constitution’s “reforms” were referred to in the State Department policy document’s author Lawrence Eagleburger, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs: “It is too early to judge whether the fundamental GOT reforms, now in place or in prospect, will succeed.” The document also talks about the “relief” provided to the United States by the 1980 military coup: “The military takeover of September 1980 brought temporary relief and for the moment broke the back of radical movements — including pro-Islamic ones — which had come to the fore in the 1970s.”

Eagleburger signaled his and the Reagan administration’s support for the Turkish junta because of the same bogus reasons that neocons today criticize the Erdogan government: the bogeyman of Turkish Islamic political power. Eagleburger warned that Turkey could “drift away from NATO and Western-style government; alignment with Middle East states which supply oil and markets; possibly even neutralism growing out of accommodations with the USSR.” Today, the neocons, Israelis, and their Ergenekon allies in Turkey argue the same points in demonizing the Turkish government: that Turkey is drifting from NATO, that it is turning to oil suppliers and markets like Iran, and has a growing relationship with Russia.

Eagleburger then outlines how the Reagan administration would cement U.S. ties with Turkey to prevent the above scenarios from being realized. He writes: “ . . . the Turkish-American relationship has no natural constituency in terms of shared history, economic interdependence, ethic or family ties. The absence of a ‘Turkish lobby’ in the United States is indicative.” Two of the recipients of the Eagleburger document would later help fill the void and help create the American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobby group patterned after their friends at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Those two recipients of the Eagleburger document were Richard Perle, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and Paul Wolfowitz, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. Other recipients of the Eagleburger policy document on Turkey included Robert Hormats, the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs [and who is now the Undersecretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs under Hillary Clinton]; Ronald Spiers, the director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1977 to 1980; and the prospective U.S. ambassador to Pakistan; Richard Burt, the Director of Politico-Military Affairs for the State Department; and Nicholas Veliotes, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

The nature of the bilateral U.S.-Turkish relations were described as a “best effort” to help Turkey in all respects, including an “understanding” of Turkey’s position in Greek-Turkish issues and dealing with “Armenian terrorism.” In 1981, Armenia was a constituent republic of the USSR. Today, it is “Kurdish terrorism” that plagues Turkey since Armenia is now an independent state with a natural and politically-powerful constituency in the United States. The Eagleburger document describes the Evren junta as perceiving the Reagan administration as making a “best effort” in providing financial support to Turkey from Washington’s “weighing in” on the “International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Saudis, and other potential donors.”

Eagleburger also warns of “nettlesome” issues that could adversely affect U.S. relations with the Turkish junta, for example, “Congressional badgering on Cyprus, on relations with Greece, on the pace of return to democracy, and an Armenian niche in the proposed Holocaust Museum.”

The United States, through an alliance with Israel and its influence peddlers in Washington, would ensure that the Turkish pace of democracy would not return to normal until the recent approval by the Turkish people of a new constitution that will eradicate the Turkish junta’s military “reforms” championed by Eagleburger and his band of proto-neocons in the Reagan administration in 1981. Attempts over the past eight years by Ergenekon to overthrow the AKP government failed and with the new constitutional changes, Ergenekon’s and Israel’s ability to influence events in Turkish politics have been curtailed, save for the continuing threat of covert Israeli provocation of terrorism involving the Kurds.

Source: Wayne Madsen Report, Sept 18, 2010

September 20, 2010