Category: Syria

Turkey Wants to Resume Talks on Iranian Nuclear Program

Turkey Wants to Resume Talks on Iranian Nuclear Program

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 9 Issue: 6

January 10, 2012

By: Saban Kardas

Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, paid a crucial visit to Tehran on January 6, amidst the increasing confrontation between Iran and the West. The visit mainly provided an opportunity to address bilateral issues, as it followed a heated debate in recent months which questions whether Turkey and Iran were involved in an undeclared rivalry in the Arab Spring. The two countries’ diverging positions on Syria, Turkey’s decision to host NATO’s early warning radar, as well as differences on the Palestinians’ quest for recognition, arguably pitted the two against each other. The confrontational mood was further worsened by harsh statements against Turkey by Iranian politicians and high-ranking officials (EDM, October 11, 2011).

As such statements even led to direct threats voiced by some Iranian lawmakers and military officers, indicating that Iran might take military action against NATO facilities in Turkey, Davutoglu was prompted to convey his uneasiness and demand an explanation. Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, visited Ankara in an effort to allay Ankara’s growing concerns. Reiterating the two countries’ friendship, Salehi sought to assure his Turkish counterpart that such remarks reflected personal opinions and did not represent official Iranian policy on Turkey (Anadolu Ajansi, December 14, 2011).

Ankara also downplayed such threatening remarks as personal opinions, in an effort to maintain channels for dialogue with Tehran. Though not hiding the differences of opinion on regional issues, Davutoglu and other Turkish officials prefer to focus on issues of converging views and continue to view Tehran as a major stakeholder in the region whose cooperation is essential. More importantly, Davutoglu is keen to reassure his Iranian counterparts that Turkey will not take part in any direct military action against Iran, which seems as a calculated move to comfort Tehran and convince it to steer away from the path of escalation.

With such considerations in mind, Davutoglu paid a working visit to Iran on January 6, to meet Salehi and other Iranian officials. Davutoglu worked hard to stress the defensive nature of the ballistic missile shield and reiterated that Turkey would not let its territory be used in any attack against Iran. The two ministers also agreed to continue to discuss regional issues, and meet at least twice each year (Anadolu Ajansi, January 5).

Beyond the immediate Turkish-Iranian frictions, Davutoglu addressed a number of regional issues with Iran. Foregoing the speculations of rivalry, Davutoglu invited his Iranian counterparts to work together in order to address the escalating tensions in the region, which some claim could lead to Sunni-Shiite sectarian divisions. In the last two days, because the uprising in Syria, the ongoing political crisis in Iraq, and the situation in Bahrain involve some sectarian elements, Davutoglu increasingly refers to an imminent danger of sectarian conflict and warns against a new Cold War in the Middle East (Dogan, January 8).

Moreover, the uncertain future of the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program, especially in view of US sanctions policy and the Iranian brinkmanship in the Strait of Hormuz is a growing concern for Turkey. Ankara recognizes Iran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear technology, but also invites the country to be more transparent about its ongoing program and allay concerns on the part of Western powers.

Since the talks held between Iran and the P5+1 in Istanbul one year ago, diplomatic channels were largely closed. In order to push things forward on that front, Davutoglu seems to have attempted shuttle diplomacy. In the wake of his Tehran trip, he announced that he was in touch with Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, on this issue. Davutoglu raised expectations by maintaining that both parties were ready to resume nuclear talks in Turkey. Earlier, Salehi also expressed his readiness to return to nuclear talks in a suitable time and venue agreed upon by the parties, adding that Turkey would be the best option (Anadolu Ajansi, January 8). Commenting on this development, US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, said that the US remained in consultation with Turkey over Davutoglu’s trip and agrees with Turkey’s goal of bringing Iran back to the negotiating table and complying with its international obligations, though they might differ on tactics. She also emphasized Washington’s readiness to resume discussions, though adding that Iran has yet to formally convey its decision to start the talks (Today’s Zaman, January 7).

Adding urgency to the matter, the United States and its European allies are initiating a new wave of sanctions to pressure Iran on the economic front. The sanctions recently approved by President Barack Obama involve penalizing the financial institutions doing business with Iran as well as halting oil imports from Iran, by targeting its Central Bank. Turkey abides by the sanctions regime introduced by the UN Security Council in the summer of 2010, but refuses to implement the unilateral Western sanctions on the grounds that they are non-binding. However, there has been growing US expectation for Turkey to join the new sanctions, while Ankara seeks an exemption, given its oil and gas imports from Iran, requiring it to work with Iranian financial institutions.

A visit by a US delegation led by Deputy Secretary of State, William Burns, to Ankara on January 9, offered an opportunity to discuss these issues. During his talks with Turkish officials, the US delegation, among others, solicited Turkey’s support for unilateral sanctions. Prior to the meeting, some senior US Congressmen and diplomats visited Turkish government officials and bureaucrats, underscoring the importance attached to this issue (Haberturk, January 9).

Commenting on the visit, Nuland dismissed the argument that Turkey opposes US policy on Iran. She emphasized that the US acknowledges Turkey’s sensitivities given Ankara’s trade ties, but the two sides will continue their dialogue on how to maximize the pressures on Iran to force it to comply with its international obligations (Haberturk, January 10). Turkish sources also reported that Ankara does not want to see a further escalation of the already heightened tensions in the region (Sabah, January 10).

Uneasy at the growing escalation, Ankara seeks to dampen tensions through a reassertion of its facilitator role and engaging the parties, without taking any side. Once again, Turkey is walking a diplomatic tightrope due to its difficult neighbor’s relations with the West.

https://jamestown.org/program/turkey-wants-to-resume-talks-on-iranian-nuclear-program/

January 11, 2012
Assad: No one can harm ties between Syria and Turkey

Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has met in Damascus with members of the Turkish political party Saadet, said that “no one can influence” the ties between the two nations, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

The head of the Turkish delegation, Mustafa Kamalak, stressed during the meeting that the “Turkish people stand by Syria” in its crisis. He expressed opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, and said he hoped the relations between Turkey and Syria are to be repaired. (Roi Kais)

via Assad: No one can harm ties between Syria and Turkey – Israel News, Ynetnews.

January 9, 2012
Live Chat | Faces of Revolution: Syrians in Exile

The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, then swept through Egypt and Libya, among other countries.

In March, the winds of change began to blow in Syria, as pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets in opposition to President Bashar al-Assad.

Thousands of Syrians have fled their homeland amid violence for neighbouring Turkey.

The CBC’s Terence McKenna travelled to the Syria-Turkey border to visit those refugees. Their stories will air Monday night in a special feature on The National at 10 p.m. ET (10:30 NT) on CBC-TV; 9 and 11 p.m. ET/PT on CBC News Network.

Before then, he’ll take your questions about the situation in Syria and the plight of its refugees in a live chat on Mon., Jan. 9 at 1 p.m. ET.

via Live Chat | Faces of Revolution: Syrians in Exile – World – CBC News.

January 8, 2012
A Turkish Assad?

By GRAEME WOOD

ISTANBUL — Which is scarier: a government that hunts down and kills dozens in cold blood, or a government that hunts down and kills dozens by accident?

Left, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.Left, Reuters; Jamal Nasrallah/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLeft, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

On Thursday, Turkey admitted to being the second type of government, just as over the last few months Syria has demonstrated itself conclusively to be the first. Turkey’s mistake, which it acknowledged sheepishly, was to launch air-strikes on Wednesday against about 35 men hiking along unmarked trails between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turkish military says it thought the men were terrorist members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.). But evidence found near the corpses suggested a more benign activity: the men were smugglers evading onerous Turkish and Iraqi customs duties on diesel and tobacco at the official crossing point of Habur. They carried Kools, not Kalashnikovs.

In the past, Turkey’s Kurds have responded to incidents like this one by protesting in the streets and public squares, with a little bit of armed struggle from actual terrorists on the side. Last night in Istanbul, Kurds and their allies went to the streets. On Istliklal Avenue, in Beyoglu district in central Istanbul, at street corners normally reserved for upper-class shoppers in winter chic, riot police stood huffing into their hands to chase away the cold, waiting for violence that never came. But news agencies reported that in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, crowds threw stones and Molotov cocktails, and stores were shuttered for the day.

After violence in the southeast, recriminations and confrontations like these are common. But there’s a notable change of vocabulary this time. Whereas Kurds once looked to the West and patiently tried to master the human rights language of the European Union, now at least some of them are looking south, to the more urgent and concrete language of protest movements in the Arab world. And in adopting that rhetoric, the Kurdish leaders are making missteps.

“A leader who kills his own people has lost his legitimacy,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in September. Now Selahattin Demirtas, the Kurdish member of parliament who heads the Peace and Democracy Party, finds Erdogan’s words delicious. “Now I say the same thing back to him,” Demirtas said. “This was no accident: it was a massacre.” Demirtas, whose party is the sole legal political voice of the Kurds in Turkey these days, said he considered the killing caused by Wednesday’s air strike to be an Assad-level crime.

It’s a preposterous and self-discrediting comparison: Erdogan and Assad resemble each other in little more than their mustaches. The first people to acknowledge the differences between the two should be the Kurds themselves: Erdogan’s government has in many ways improved upon the nationalist Turkish governments of yesteryear, and the Kurds of Syria have always suffered far more grievously than the Kurds of Turkey. In the P.K.K. camps of northern Iraq, Syrian Kurds are overrepresented — the result of especially zealous oppression by the Assad regime.

It’s hard to begrudge a movement as aggrieved as the Kurds’ this moment of hyperbole. But let’s hope that the Kurds will reconsider their annexation of Arab Spring analogies. A movement that has spent the last couple of decades mastering the art of patience shouldn’t now sideline its own cause with a faulty comparison to a more desperate one.

Graeme Wood is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He has lived and traveled in the Middle East for most of the last 10 years.

via A Turkish Assad? – NYTimes.com.

January 3, 2012
Qatar Creates Anti-Syria Mercenary Force based in Turkey

Qatar Creates 20000 strong Anti-Syria Mercenary Force based in Turkey, Israeli Media Reports.

Damascus /NationalTurk – Qatar finances and arms radical intervention force based in Turkey to activate it in Syria with the purpose to defeat the government of Tyrant president Bashar al-Assad reports the Israeli website DEBKAFile.

According to this report, which Cham Press Agency echoes today, that paid contingency made of mercenaries from several countries of the region plus radical Syrian from Muslim Brotherhood had named it Syrian Army of Liberation, DEBKAFile says.

Shock ! Qatar mobilizes merc army in Turkey to overthrow Assad regime in Syria

The statements specifies that the paid force by Doha had been mobilized in battalions and military brigades in camps in Turkish territory, with the consent of the Ankara government near the Turkey Syria border.

This month Syrian border guard had miscarried four infiltration attempts of armed groups, the last of them at dawn on Wednesday in Idleb, which left dead and wounded to the aggressors supported by a gang in Syrian territory.

Armed bands raid to Syria from Turkey?

A dispatch from Syrian SANA news agency taken from the authorities’ declarations of the northern province informed they seized the group a great quantity of weapons, military uniforms and modern communication devices.

The information from the Israeli media adds that Qatar decided to boost a plan after the defeat and dead of the Libyan leader Muammar El Gaddafi as the mercenary army took part in raids in Libya to support the demise of Muammar Gaddafi.

via Qatar Creates Anti-Syria Mercenary Force based in Turkey.

December 31, 2011
Turkey’s businessmen rue government stance on Syria
By Jonathan Head BBC News, Gaziantep

The Sanko Park Mall is quiet on Fridays, the day Syrians used to come
Continue reading the main story
Syria Crisis

Arab mission test

Idlib ‘massacres’

Russia’s support

Civil war fears
There is a joke going around business circles in the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep these days. “We no longer have zero problems with our neighbours,” it goes, “we now have zero neighbours without problems.”

It is an ironic reference to the new foreign policy championed by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), which was given the title “Zero Problems With Neighbours” by its architect, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

This aimed to eliminate the historic tensions which had kept Turkey in a state of hostility with all its neighbours, and rebuild relations based on trade.

It was a roaring success. Trade with the Middle Eastern region expanded quickly, especially with Iraq and Syria, the two Arab countries on Turkey’s south-eastern border.

Closer political ties followed. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan established a close personal rapport with President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the two countries abolished visas, and a flood of tourists came both ways across the border.

‘Nobody comes’

The events this year have turned that policy on its head.

After initially trying to persuade President Assad to embrace reform, the Turkish government is now leading those countries calling for him to go. The free trade agreement has been torn up. Tourism has all but stopped.

Gaziantep, sixth largest city in Turkey, has been one of the biggest losers from the Arab uprisings

Gaziantep was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the new foreign policy, and it is now one of the biggest losers from the Arab uprisings.

It is now the sixth largest city in Turkey, with important textile, construction material and food processing industries that have thrived on access to Middle East markets. New housing is being built all over the city.

Its hotel and retail businesses did just as well out of Syrian visitors.

The two-year-old Sanko Park Mall, the most luxurious in the region, was built largely to cater for Syrian shoppers. It is strikingly quiet on Fridays, the day the Syrians used to come.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If you have a problem with your neighbour, you try to fix it”

Mehmet Ali Mutsfoglu Gaziantep businessman

“Before the Arab Spring the city was full of Syrian people here for the weekend, staying in the hotels a couple of days, shopping, spending money,” says Mehmet Ali Mutafoglu, whose family runs Akteks, one of the city’s big textile firms.

“But now, since the critical situation between the two governments, nobody is coming over to Turkey.”

Akteks owns two factories in Aleppo, in northern Syria, and has seen its business contract by 30-40%.

Exports stalled

It is not just the collapse of trade with Syria which has hit Gaziantep’s manufacturers.

Many of the city’s exports to other Middle Eastern countries go through Syria, which has a border with Turkey stretching more than 800km (500 miles).

That route has become more dangerous and expensive. New fees are being imposed on Turkish trucks, and they have occasionally been shot at by Syrian troops.

Turkey shares an 800km-long border with Syria

“Almost 80% of our business with Syria has stopped,” says Adnan Altunkaya, whose family owns a big food and drinks producer.

“It’s because of the border. There’s no security, and you often don’t get paid at all.”

“Sometimes they close the customs gates, and your trucks are stuck there – then you have to pay, and that increases the cost of transport.”

At the Besler group, one of Turkey’s biggest food processors, they have started exploring alternative routes for their products.

Kemal Cakmak, one of the five brothers who founded the company, now runs their giant pasta factory, using the high-quality durum wheat that grows in this part of Turkey.

He says some trucks are now going to the Middle East via Iraq, although this is a much longer and more expensive route.

Mr Cakmak is also going to try sending a consignment of pasta to Lebanon on ships that the government has promised to help exporters.

‘No dialogue’

These entrepreneurs are all natural supporters of the AKP. It is the most business-friendly party in modern Turkish history, and its economic record is the key to its electoral success.

Turkish officials have explained that they had no choice but to back the Syrian opposition

So its decision to turn its back on President Assad has left some Gaziantep businessmen bewildered.

“If you have a problem with your neighbour, you try to fix it,” says Mr Mutsfoglu.

“You don’t cut all the connections with your neighbour. But now there’s no dialogue between Turkey and Syria. It’s not good for the countries, it’s not good for business, it’s not good for the people living in the cities.”

Turkey’s Economy Minister, Zafer Caglayan, who came to open a new office for the regional exporters’ association, brushed these concerns away.

Most trade with Syria was continuing, Mr Caglayan said, and the government was looking for alternative routes for exports. He trusted the people of Gaziantep to be patient, he added.

But the alternatives – going by ship or through Iraq – were dismissed by most of the manufacturers I met as too slow and too expensive. They would make their products uncompetitive, they said.

In the main food market, traders were feeling the loss of Syrian business, but here there was more sympathy for the government’s position.

Gaziantep’s factories are exploring alternative export routes and markets for their products

Many of them agreed that Turkey must take a stand in support of the protesters in Syria.

With a decisive third election victory under its belt last June, the AKP can probably afford to take risks with its entrepreneurial supporters.

Turkish officials have explained that they had no choice but to back the Syrian opposition.

They believe President Assad’s days are numbered, and that the events of 2011 have taught Turkey that it must put itself on the right side of history.

But this does mean the “Zero Problems” foreign policy, which has shaped Turkey’s relations with its neighbours for a decade, has been shelved for now, and it is not clear yet what will take its place.
December 25, 2011