Report: Turkish officials say flotilla was episode “between friends.”
Turkish officials in the US reiterated that they are committed to maintaining friendly ties with Israel despite ongoing diplomatic tensions between the two countries, according to a report Thursday by Turkish newspaper Zaman.
According to the report, Turkish diplomatic sources disclosed the content of talks held between Turkish Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu and several senior US state and defense officials to the media.
Tensions between Israel and Turkey rose in the wake of the IDF raid on the Turkish Mavi Mamara ship trying to break the Gaza blockade, during which nine Turks were killed on May 31.
The sources explained to US officials that the Mavi Marmara incident was an episode “between friends,” Anatolia news agency reported.
It was the first time that Israel had experienced such an incident with a country that it had good diplomatic relations with, the Turkish sources noted, adding that the impact of the Mavi Mamara incident was heightened due to this, the Zaman report continued.
The report also noted that the Turkish officials said that “the incident had nothing to do with Turkey’s relations with the Israeli state or with the Jewish people, but rather was an issue with the Israeli government.”
If Israel had apologized for the incident and agreed to give compensation then things would have begun to go well sooner, the sources reportedly told the US officials.
News flash for market copycats: Harvard didn’t ‘dump’ its Israeli shares, it adjusted its portfolio.
By Eytan Avriel
Last week the money-management crowd on Wall Street had another shock: Harvard University’s investment company sold its holdings in Israeli shares.
The story began with a routine report. The Harvard Management Company, which has tens of billions of dollars under management and a reputation for terrific yields, published the state of its holdings in the second quarter. The sharp of eye noted that while in the first quarter the company had tens of millions of dollars in Israeli shares, in the second quarter all these holdings had gone. To add insult to injury, the company bought Turkish shares.
Among the Israeli holdings it sold were $30 million in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and a few million in Check Point Software Technologies and Cellcom.
The road to drama was short. Was the selloff politically motivated? Did it have anything to do with the Turkish flotilla? Pro-Palestinian groups crowed. There was a precedent: In 2002 a group of 39 Harvard professors signed a petition calling for a cessation of investment in Israel.
Harvard did not delay in responding. The real reason for the Israeli stock selloff, said its spokesman, was that Israel had been upgraded to a developed market: Its shares are no longer considered an investment in emerging markets. Harvard even said it still owns Israeli shares, but they are in portfolios managed by external investment companies, so they did not appear in the report.
Since there is no reason to doubt Harvard’s credibility, we can sum up the uproar in one word: Groundless.
America’s universities did not decide to dump Israeli shares. There are no grounds for worry: There is no wave of selling by foreign investors, neither for political nor technical reasons, because the adjustment to the change in Israel’s status is complete.
Copying from the best
The selloff of the Israeli shares did not come to light by chance. Investors follow each other’s moves, mainly the moves of the big boys with good names. Everybody wants to know what George Soros and Henry Paulson are buying and selling.
George Soros Photo by Bloomberg
It’s natural. Who wouldn’t want to know what orders Yitzhak Tshuva handed down this morning? Or Bank Hapoalim, Nochi Dankner and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz for that matter. Wouldn’t you like to know what they’re up to so you can tweak your portfolio? You can’t know: That information isn’t in the public domain, not in any immediate sense.
In Israel, for instance, the list of assets held by provident funds is released at a five-month delay. In the United States, the law requires investment bodies to publish their holdings within 45 days of a quarter’s end.
We find that the Harvard Management Company invests mainly in emerging-market shares, usually via indexes. Its biggest holdings are in Brazil and China, followed by South Korea, South America, India and Russia.
Soros owns a vast pile of gold and has reduced his holdings in American shares. Other investment mavens such as Steve Cohen, Carl Icahn, David Einhorn and Jeff Vinik have bet hugely on oil-drilling stocks, which some market animals think will soar after being hammered by the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the subsequent collapse in BP’s share price.
But anybody who plays follow the leader in investments should be wary. First of all, again, movements are revealed at a lag. Publication of these movements will affect the market, and it’s entirely possible that when the hordes follow in their wake and asset prices increase, the big boys will sell.
Also, the information is partial at best. American law requires disclosure of holdings in American securities, not in foreign securities, commodities, options and many other assets. A fund manager can easily create an illusion of a holding in a certain asset when in practice he bet against it.
Third, nobody can assure that once a star, always a star. Even the big boys come a cropper now and again. It’s like sitting in an exam and copying from the guy next to you. You don’t know whether his answers are the right ones, and you don’t know if what he’s really trying to do is throw you off track.
A demonstrator holds a banner reading, 'Freedom to Palestine' during a protest outside the Greek parliament
ATHENS — Greece moved Wednesday to reassure Arab allies over the strength of its friendship, following an improvement in ties with Israel after a landmark visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Improved Greek-Israeli ties were “for the good of Greece and all of the Middle East region… and do not exclude our close cooperation with the Arab world, and particularly our Palestinian friends,” Dimitris Droutsas, Greece’s Deputy Foreign Minister, said in an interview with radio station Flash.
“Our rapprochement with Israel is not opposed to our traditional relationship of exceptional trust with the Arab world,” he said, adding that the improvement in ties had been discussed with “all our friends in the Arab world”.
Meetings on Monday and Tuesday with the visiting Israeli prime minister were “very useful and entirely successful because we achieved the fixed objectives: deepening of relations and cooperation with Israel,” Droutsas said.
“The cooling of relations between Turkey and Israel is not a reason for the political rapprochement with Israel,” Droutsas said, adding that Greece would look at all opportunities in foreign policy.
The minister said bilateral discussions had focused on security, military cooperation and economic cooperation. He also reiterated the importance of Israeli tourists to the Greek economy.
Netanyahu’s visit was the first by an Israeli head of government to Greece, which has traditionally been pro-Arab and did not recognise the Jewish state until 1991.
The move to increase security and strategic cooperation comes as diplomatic ties between Israel and neighbouring Turkey have soured in the wake of an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May that left nine Turks dead.
You can gauge the importance of Turkey to the western world by the fact that both Barack Obama and David Cameron gave speeches to the Turkish parliament in Ankara within months of taking office.
The west cares about Turkey because it is a hinge state between east and west and a rare example of a majority Muslim state that is also a secular democracy. Turkey is a neighbour of both Russia and Iran, and is also a member of Nato. It has a rapidly growing and dynamic economy. And yet these days Turkey is also increasingly a source of anxiety to the west.
The country voted against new UN sanctions on Iran and has a dangerously antagonistic relationship with Israel. But it is Turkey’s faltering effort to join the European Union that has come to symbolise the country’s uncertain relationship with the west.
“Talking Turkey” is meant to mean speaking frankly and getting to the heart of the matter. But, in the European Union, “talking Turkey” has become a synonym for double-talk and evasiveness.
Since 2005, the EU and Turkey have been negotiating a treaty that is meant to get Turkey into the EU – a prospect that was first dangled in front of the Turks in 1963. But Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, have made it clear that they oppose Turkish membership. The Turkish government says it still wants to “join Europe”, yet its foreign policy betrays understandable impatience.
So perhaps it is time really to “talk Turkey” – and to be frank. It would indeed be a wonderful thing if Turkey were to join the EU. But if that is to happen, Turkish membership has to be agreed on a new basis. It cannot involve total free movement of people between Turkey and the rest of the EU.
At present, citizens of all the current 27 members of the EU enjoy visa-free travel around the union – and can move to any other country to work. There are transition arrangements for recent members such as Bulgaria and Romania, which mean that complete free movement of people will not kick in until they have been in the club for seven years. But the rules are clear. Eventually, all citizens of the EU have to enjoy equal rights.
It is those rules that will have to change if Turkish accession to the EU is ever to become a reality. Creating special rules for the Turks would be denounced as unfair, and even racist. But, as long as Turkish membership raises the prospect of mass emigration to the rest of the EU, it will be impossible to sell it to western European voters.
This stark fact has been pretty clear since the enlargement of the EU to central Europe triggered large-scale migration westwards. The British government infamously suggested that about 13,000 Poles would move to Britain to work after Poland joined the union. The real number was well over half a million. The French government is currently controversially deporting gypsies who have moved to France, following Romanian accession to the EU. The surge in the vote for the radical, anti-immigration right in the recent Dutch elections demonstrated that mass migration, particularly from Muslim countries such as Turkey, is unpopular enough to transform domestic politics in some western European countries.
In the face of all this evidence, European politicians would simply be irresponsible to press ahead with negotiations to bring Turkey into the European Union without addressing the issue of immigration. In the long run, they will not do it. In the short run, they take refuge in double-talk and hypocrisy.
On his recent trip to Ankara, Mr Cameron carefully positioned himself as a champion of Turkish membership of the EU, claiming that he was “angry” that Turkey was being so badly treated. The very next day, Mr Cameron re-iterated his determination that the number of immigrants coming into Britain should be sharply reduced. Logically, he cannot have it both ways.
Western European leaders would doubtless argue that now is not the time to deal with these contradictions and hypocrisies. Even on the best-case scenario, Turkish membership is still many years off. The difficult issues can be dealt with later.
But that is far too complacent. The fact is that Turkey is an important country whose relations with the west are deteriorating fast.
It would be a gamble to try to revive the Turkish-EU conversation by finally facing up to the question of immigration. The Turks might walk away in a huff. But even without complete free movement of people, Turkey would still have a great deal to gain from joining the EU.
As the second most populous nation in the union – and perhaps soon the largest – it would have a huge weight in the framing of European law, and a big delegation at the European Parliament. Turkey would also get the financial and structural aid that the EU lavishes on poorer, new members. It would have unfettered access to the European single market, a big say in the framing of EU foreign policy and the legal and diplomatic protections that come with EU membership. Under the new deal Turkish citizens would not get the automatic right to work anywhere in the EU; but they could expect travel to become significantly easier.
Membership of the EU, without complete free movement of people, is a deal Turkey might choose to reject or accept. But, at least it is an offer that could be made in good faith.
Sometimes Turkey really is a bridge between west and east
Turkish foreign policy
How can Mr Davutoglu help you?
IN JUNE 2006, days after a young Israeli private was captured by Hamas, Israel’s ambassador to Turkey paid a midnight visit to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister. Gilad Shalit was feared to be gravely ill, perhaps even dead. Could Turkey help? Phone calls were made and favours called in. Mr Shalit turned out to be alive, and his captors promised the Turks they would treat him respectfully.
Turkey’s relations with Israel, once an ally, have worsened of late, and hit a fresh low in May, when Israeli commandos raided a Turkish ship carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza, killing nine Turkish citizens. Yet Turkey continues to lobby Hamas for Mr Shalit’s release.
Turkey’s falling out with Israel has sparked a flurry of anguished commentary in the West about its supposed eastward drift under the mildly Islamist Justice and Development party, which has governed the country since 2002. Concern over its cosy relations with Iran, despite that country’s refusal to suspend suspect nuclear work, has run particularly high. Yet nobody complained in April 2007 when Turkey brokered the release of 15 British Royal Navy sailors who had been seized by Iran.Similarly, France was delighted in mid-May when a personal intervention by Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, secured the release of Clotilde Reiss, a French teacher being held in Iran on spying charges.
Turkey is the first stop for thousands of political refugees from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia. These include Mohammed Mostafei, an Iranian lawyer who took up the case of Sakineh Ashtiani, a woman facing death by stoning in Iran for alleged adultery. Mr Mostafei fled to Turkey earlier this month after receiving death threats (he has since gone to Norway). Now Turkey has discreetly taken up his client’s case (although Iran has turned down a Brazilian offer of asylum for Ms Ashtiani). It is also pressing Iran for the release of three American hikers who were arrested, on suspicion of “spying”, near the Iraq border a year ago and who have been rotting in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison ever since.
Turkey’s mediating skills have even aroused excitement in Africa. Mr Davutoglu recently revealed that Botswana had sought his help in fixing a territorial dispute with Namibia. Flattered though he was, however, Mr Davutoglu confessed that, for once, he was stumped.
http://www.economist.com/node/16847136?story_id=16847136&fsrc=rss, Aug 19th 2010
The Mavi Marmara ship, the lead boat of a flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip which was stormed by Israeli naval commandos in a predawn confrontation, sails into the port of Ashdod, Israel, 31 May 2010 (file photo)
Israeli military police have arrested a defense force officer who allegedly stole computers from the Gaza-bound aid flotilla intercepted by Israeli commandos in May.
Officials say the officer is suspected of stealing as many as six laptop computers, some of which were sold to other soldiers. News reports say some of the soldiers who allegedly purchased the computers are also under investigation.
In May, nine pro-Palestinian activists on a Turkish ship were killed after Israeli commandos boarded vessels attempting to deliver aid directly to Gaza, in violation of an Israeli blockade.
The incident increased tensions between Israel and Turkey.
Israel had commandeered several Turkish ships that were part of the flotilla. However, earlier this month it allowed the ships’ operators to sail the vessels back to Turkey.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
https://www.voanews.com/a/israeli-soldier-accused-of-gaza-flotilla-theft-101068174/172255.html, 19 August 2010
