Turkish Forum

Category: America

  • Azerbaijan Seeks To Thwart Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement

    Azerbaijan Seeks To Thwart Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement

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    Turkey has been one of Azerbaijan’s firmest allies, and backed plans for bringing its oil and gas to Western markets.

    April 06, 2009

    Senior Azerbaijani officials have reacted with anger and threats to media reports that Turkey will soon sign a landmark protocol with Armenia paving the way to the establishment of formal diplomatic ties and the opening of the two countries’ shared border.

    Baku has long insisted that any such formal agreement by Turkey on closer relations with Armenia should be contingent on key concessions by the latter on the terms for a solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

    Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who assured the Turkish parliament last November that “today Turkish-Azerbaijani unity is a stabilizing factor in the region,” was quoted by the Turkish daily “Hurriyet” as threatening on April 1 to suspend natural-gas exports to Turkey, a threat tantamount to cutting off his nose to spite his face in light of the fall in world oil prices to half the $80 per barrel on which Azerbaijan’s state budget expenditure for 2009 was predicated.

    Then on April 6, “Hurriyet” confirmed a report published two days earlier in the online daily zerkalo.az that Aliyev has cancelled his participation in the NATO Dialogue of Civilizations conference in Istanbul on April 6-7, despite efforts by Turkish President Abdullah Gul and the U.S. State Department to persuade him to attend.

    Baku’s anger derives in large part from the perception that it has been stabbed in the back by the country that it has, despite periodic disagreements, long regarded as its closest ally, partner, and protector. That perception is rooted partly in the very close ethnic and linguistic ties between the two states, and partly in their close cooperation over the past 15 years in the export to Western markets of Azerbaijan’s Caspian oil and gas. (Both main export pipelines run via Georgia to Turkey.) In addition, Ankara has provided guidance and advice to the Azerbaijani military.

    But most crucially of all, it has until now unequivocally backed Azerbaijan’s hard-line position with regard to resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, pegging any real rapprochement with Armenia to a solution of that conflict on Azerbaijan’s terms. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov was quoted as telling journalists in Tbilisi on April 2 that if Turkey does not insist as a condition for opening the border that Armenia first withdraw its troops from at least some of the seven districts of Azerbaijan they currently occupy contiguous to the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic, “this would be detrimental to Azerbaijan’s national interests.”

    Informed analysts have identified as one of the reasons why Ankara has responded positively to repeated overtures over the past two years by Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian frustration that Turkish foreign policy was being held hostage by Azerbaijan’s unyielding position with regard to the Karabakh conflict. On April 5, Interfax circulated a question-and-answer with Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian, who said that “the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations should have no preconditions, and it is with this mutual understanding that we have been negotiating with the Turkish side. Normalization of relations has no linkage to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”

    On April 6, however, “Hurriyet” reported, quoting unnamed “reliable sources,” that the Turkish-Armenian draft protocol contains the wording “sufficient progress on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is required before the opening of the [Turkish-Armenian] border,” and that President Aliyev is seeking clarification of what precisely is meant by “sufficient progress.”

    The Azerbaijani presidential administration told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service on April 6 they have no idea what the “Hurriyet” article was referring to. But as of mid-afternoon Baku time on April 6, Aliyev had not left for Istanbul.

    Speculation that Azerbaijan is out to thwart the signing of the anticipated Turkish-Armenian protocol was fuelled by the unexpected visit to Baku on April 3 by U.S. Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Matthew Bryza for talks with President Aliyev and Foreign Minister Mammadyarov. Bryza was quoted as telling journalists on his arrival that Washington believes that “the positive changes in the region, that is achieving results in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the warming in Turkish-Armenian relations, should proceed parallel with one another.”

    Bryza also reaffirmed the prediction made in late February by Ambassador Bernard Fassier, the French co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group that seeks to mediate a solution to the Karabakh conflict, that President Aliyev is likely to meet with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian on the sidelines of the EU summit in Prague on May 7-8. When that time frame was first made public, it seemed probable that the meeting between the two presidents was intended to finalize the so-called Basic Principles for resolving the conflict that have been on the table for the past three years.

    During their talks in Moscow in early November with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Aliyev and Sarkisian reaffirmed their shared commitment to reaching a solution to the conflict that would reflect those principles. Bryza, who is the U.S. Minsk Group co-chairman, told RFE/RL in late January that the co-chairs were hoping that the Basic Principles would be signed in early summer, possibly in June. The Basic Principles entail a withdrawal of Armenian forces from five of the seven occupied Azerbaijani districts; “special arrangements” are to be instituted for the strategic Lachin Corridor that links the NKR with the Republic of Armenia, and for the district of Kelbacar that similarly lies between them.

    Bryza’s estimated time frame for the signing of the Basic Principles may, however, be derailed if Azerbaijan continues either to try to pressure Turkey, or to insist on a separate agreement on the withdrawal of Armenian forces as a preliminary to endorsing (or not) the remaining Basic Principles.

    Not that Aliyev has any real leverage he could bring to bear. Speculation that Azerbaijan might withdraw its support for the planned Nabucco export pipeline for Caspian gas (from which Turkey would derive considerable profit in transit fees) and opt instead for the planned White Stream pipeline (the brainchild of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, it would run across the Black Sea bed from the Georgian terminal at Supsa to a Ukrainian port) seems far-fetched, although it cannot be ruled out completely. The Georgian government signed a memorandum of mutual understanding on April 3 with the White Stream Pipeline Company in which the two sides affirmed their commitment to that project, Caucasus Press reported.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Azerbaijan_Seeks_To_Thwart_TurkishArmenian_Rapprochement/1603256.html

  • Obama rebuilds bridges with Islam

    Obama rebuilds bridges with Islam

    Published: April 6 2009 19:34 | Last updated: April 6 2009 19:34

    It is extraordinary to think that an American president should have to make a public speech in a friendly Muslim capital explaining that the US is not at war with Islam. Yet after eight years of the Bush administration and its misguided policies in the broader Middle East, the Pew Global Attitudes Project registered a collapse in support for the US in Nato-allied Turkey to 9 per cent.

    There, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, a majority had come to believe that the US, through its policies in Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and, above all, Iraq, was indeed at war with Islam. The beneficiaries of this political disaster have been Islamists in general and jihadi extremists in particular.

    Barack Obama’s deliberate choice of Turkey for his first state visit to a Muslim country is the start of what will be a very long and arduous attempt to turn back the tide.

    Why Turkey? Not just because it is a Nato ally. Not just because it is the geographical bridge between Europe and Asia. Not even just because it is a Muslim democracy. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), is the marriage of an evolved form of political Islam with democracy. The Muslim world’s first, as it were, Christian Democrats are admired in a broader Middle East mired in various forms of extremist-incubating tyranny – not as a model, but as a success.

    That is why the AKP’s electoral victory against Turkey’s overmighty generals in 2007, and score-draw against an attempted coup by the judiciary in 2008, are milestones not just for Turkey but the region.

    For a US with fewer lines of communication in the region, moreover, Turkey’s open channels – to Syria, Iran and Hamas as well as to Israel or Saudi Arabia – could be valuable.

    Turkish support will be important in securing an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, and as a supply platform for and ally in Afghanistan. A US president who opposed the Iraq war is well-placed to dispel the mistrust caused by Turkey’s refusal to allow the Bush administration to use its soil for the invasion – and, indeed, to retrieve a relationship that Washington had frittered away.

    Mr Obama sensibly pledged to support Turkey’s promising rapprochement with Armenia. Ankara, especially as it pursues a problematic entry into the European Union, will have to confront Ottoman Turkey’s role in the mass murder of Armenians from 1915 onwards, and establish whether it was centrally directed. But the US Congress’s push to get this declared a genocide is grandstanding that would benefit the nationalist right in Turkey – and blow up a valuable Muslim bridge to the EU and the US.

  • Turkey: Bridging the divide

    Turkey: Bridging the divide

  • Editorial
  • Tuesday 7 April 2009

    • It is an inconvenient truth that the two most influential countries in the Middle East are both non-Arab – Iran and Turkey. But some hope must lie in the fact that Barack Obama yesterday chose to make Turkey the focus of an attempt to bridge the gulf between Islam and the west. Alighting on Turkey as an example of the deal that can be struck between the US and the Muslim world is as bold in foreign policy terms as it is risky in domestic ones. There are plenty on the right who would seize on Mr Obama’s self-identification as an American who has Muslims in his family. But to choose the Turkish parliament as the venue to say that his country is not and never will be at war with Islam is the mark of a man who is showing increasing confidence on the world stage.

    The French president and the German chancellor, who have bolted the door to Europe, have dropped the ball on Turkey. They have yet to see what Mr Obama has already understood. Turkey’s biggest asset is its geopolitical role, and it is using it intelligently. The president, Abdullah Gul, has gone to Armenia on the first visit by a Turkish leader in the two nations’ bitter history. Ankara is also trying to transform its relationship with Iraqi Kurds. Turkey mediated indirect talks between Syria and Israel, and when the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, telling the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, that he was killing people in Gaza, Turkish flags went up all over Palestine.

    At a time when Washington is reviewing its policy on the stalled Israeli-Arab peace process, Mr Erdogan’s message that Hamas must be represented at the peace table carries weight. Not least it gives Israel, which maintains close ties with Ankara, cause for concern. If any country can reinforce the message to Mr Obama that the current status quo is untenable it is Turkey.

    Mr Erdogan is not without his domestic problems. His Justice and Development party won about 39% of the vote at recent local elections, well down on the 47% it got two years ago. It was 36% in Istanbul and the coastal cities, a clear sign that he must listen to the progressive areas of his country. He has relaunched moves to widen ethnic and religious freedoms, and promised to work on a new and less authoritarian civilian constitution. Turkey is always reforming and never reformed, and Mr Erdogan may have personally lost faith in the ultimate goal of seeking accession to the EU, no thanks to Mr Sarkozy. Turkey is not a model country, any more than any other is. But it is a telling example. It undermines the western notion that Islam and modernity are somehow fundamentally incompatible, and it does have useful regional contacts. Next stop Iran.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/barack-obama-turkey-east-west

  • US not at war with Islam

    US not at war with Islam

    Obama reaches out to Muslim world

    President says US ‘will never be at war with Islam’

    By Patrick Cockburn in Istanbul

    President Obama praised Turkey for moving towards an accord with Armenia during a press conference with Abdullah Gul in Ankara yesterday

    “I like Obama because he is half-Muslim and everybody here hated Bush because of what he did in Iraq,” said Kassim, a Turkish driver, as he sped past the ornate Ottoman palace on the Bosphorus where Barack Obama is due to speak today.

    Mr Obama has already gone a long way towards restoring Turkey to its former position as a crucial American ally in the region. Relations soured after the Turks refused to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    Yesterday, in a speech to the Turkish parliament, Mr Obama reached out to Turkey as an ally and to the rest of the Muslim world with the assurance that the US “is not and will never be at war with Islam”.

    Kassim had already decided that it did not matter what Mr Obama’s religion was. What mattered was that many of his policies “seem to show that he wants the same things that we do”. This attitude is a radical change from a few years ago when an opinion poll showed only 9 per cent of Turks had a favourable opinion of the US.

    In his address to the Ankara parliament before travelling on to Istanbul, Mr Obama also called on the EU to admit Turkey as a member. France has strongly opposed its inclusion and enthusiasm for EU entry has fallen among Turks. Nevertheless the long-term aim of joining is important in making Turkey less autocratic and reducing the role of the Turkish army in taking crucial decisions.

    Mr Obama danced around contentious issues such as the 1915 Armenian genocide and the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. “My views are on the record and I have not changed those views,” he said during a press conference with President Abdullah Gul, referring to his pledge during the US presidential election campaign to describe the killing of Armenians during the First World War as genocide.

    The word Mr Obama did not use yesterday was “genocide” and he went on to praise Turkey for moving towards an accord with Armenia and a reopening of the border which has been closed since Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan in 1993.

    Mr Obama showed similar delicacy in referring to Turkish Kurds, praising signs of greater official tolerance towards them such as a Kurdish-language TV channel. But he then swiftly denounced the PKK Kurdish guerrillas, against whom the Turkish army has fought a long war, as “terrorists.”

    Turkish leaders were surprised that Mr Obama, who had shown little interest in Turkey previously, should have chosen to visit their country at the end of his European tour.

    The decisive factor was probably Turkey’s geographical position, since it has common borders with Iraq, Iran, Syria and Georgia. About 70 per cent of US supplies to Iraq go through Turkish ports or airspace, or travel via Turkish roads. With the American military’s supply routes to Afghanistan through Pakistan increasingly under threat, the use of Turkish airspace and airbases is again important.

    The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had already shown his eagerness to get along with the incoming US administration by withdrawing Turkey’s veto of the appointment of the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as Nato’s secretary general.

    Turkey objected to his appointment because of his failure to apologise for the cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed published in a Danish magazine in 2005. Mr Rasmussen has since promised to be more sensitive to Muslim sensibilities, a promise which, since Turkey has the largest army in Nato after the US, he will probably have to keep.

    Mr Obama went through the ritual yesterday of visiting the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish secular state, while today he will visit Hagia Sophia, the great Byzantine church in Istanbul and the nearby Blue Mosque, as well as speaking at a UN-sponsored conference on reducing religious and ethnic divisions.

    Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is clearly revelling in Mr Obama’s praise of Turkey and of the AKP’s cautiously progressive and Islamic policies. No other Turkish party is a serious political rival to the AKP, which won power in 2002. It lost some ground in municipal elections on 29 March but this setback was largely in terms of its inflated expectations.

    The army’s ability to manipulate the state from behind the scenes has not disappeared but is not as strong as it was. And although the international financial crisis is having an effect on the Turkish economy it has not yet had a devastating impact.

    One of George Bush’s key failures when he invaded Iraq was not persuading Turkey to allow him to base an American invasion force in the country. Over the proceeding five years, Turkey increasingly pursued friendlier policies towards Iran, Russia, Sudan and Hamas.

    The Turks are now delighted to discover that their policies are very similar to those adopted by Mr Obama.

    Source:  www.independent.co.uk, 7 April 2009

  • Helal Obama

    Helal Obama

    Today's front page from the Hurriyet newspaper. (Kevin Sullivan/The Washington Post)
    Today's front page from the Hurriyet newspaper. (Kevin Sullivan/The Washington Post)

    By Liz Heron and Utku Cakirozer

    On President Obama’s second day in Turkey, the country’s top newspapers are examining expectations for his visit and noting the effect of Obamamania on a population that has been deeply skeptical of the U.S. in previous years. Newspaper Web sites are analyzing Obama’s historic speech to the Turkish Parliament, with most carrying the full text translated into Turkish.

    A front page headline in the popular newspaper Hurriyet proclaimed, in English, “Welcome Mr. President.” The newspaper’s message to Obama seemed to reflect the way many Turks feel about Obama’s visit: “You are in a country that is a friend of the United States. However, you broke our hearts during the last 8 years. Now it is time to fix it.”

    Taraf is reporting the findings of a recent poll: 52 percent of Turks have confidence in Obama, a major shift from Turks’ negative feelings toward President Bush. “If [Obama] runs, he can even win the elections in Turkey,” Taraf writes.

    Hurriyet compared excitement over the president’s visit to the famous Rorschach inkblot test: “Everybody sees, or wants to see, something else in the flurry of meetings” Obama will attend Monday. While Obama will reach out to the current government, Turkey’s opposition leaders are hoping his visit will give them a chance to raise concerns over issues they deem problematic, including the controversial question of how to handle the country’s ethnic Kurdish population.

    Milliyet led with President Obama’s call to European leaders in Prague to let Turkey be a member of the European Union, but notes that French leader Nicholas Sarkozy has kept up his opposition to Turkey’s membership.

    Pro-government and Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak is focusing on another dimension of President Obama’s call to European leaders in Prague, reporting on his request that they make peace with Islam by letting Turkey in the EU.

    Another major daily, Sabah, praised Obama’s call to the EU leaders, calling him “Helal Obama.” Helal is a common Muslim term used to describe good things. Sabah called the visit a “symbol of hope in Turkey.”

    All the other major dailies — Vatan, Radikal and Cumhuriyet — ran similar headlines highlighting Obama’s support for Turkey’s EU membership.

    Zaman notes Obama’s promise during his speech to Parliament to stay out of Turkey and Armenia’s effort to restore relations, which have been strained since 1915 because of intense disagreement over whether the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians just after the first World War. Obama said it was not up to him to resolve the dispute, but praised ongoing negotiations between the Turks and Armenians to resolve many long-standing problems.

    Source:  voices.washingtonpost.com, Apr 6, 2009

  • EU must not shut the door

    EU must not shut the door

    Ankara is not yet ready, but the benefits of such a union would be great

    [Leading Article]

    Tuesday, 7 April 2009

    Barack Obama yesterday wrote in the visitors’ book at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of his hope to strengthen relations between Turkey and America. But, judging by Mr Obama’s speech the previous day, what the US President wants just as much is a strengthening of relations between Turkey and the European Union. The second wish is, by some distance, the more controversial.

    Mr Obama’s unambiguous expression of support for Turkey’s bid for EU membership in Prague on Sunday did not go down well in Paris or Berlin. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, were quick to pour cold water on the idea that this predominantly Muslim nation of some 80 million citizens is destined to enter the European family.

    It was unwise for President Obama, as an outsider, to wade into such rough waters. And Washington cannot easily gloss over the fact that Turkey has made little progress towards fulfilling the criteria of entry since the EU agreed to open accession talks with Ankara five years ago.

    It is true that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has tried to inject some life into the process in recent months, travelling to Brussels for talks with the EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and appointing a close aide to be full-time negotiator on accession.

    But the reforms Ankara needs to enact to prepare Turkey for EU membership remain on the shelf. The influence of the military within Turkey’s political institutions is still strong. Prosecutions against those deemed to have “insulted Turkishness” continue to be brought. And Ankara refuses to open Turkey’s ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus.

    There are doubts about the ruling AKP party too. The Turkish prime minister’s objections in recent days to the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the next secretary general of Nato send an unsettling message about Ankara’s willingness to play politics with religion. The Danish prime minister’s fault in the eyes of Mr Erdogan was his failure to be suitably condemnatory of the offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by some of his country’s newspapers in 2006. Turkey’s need to fall back on funding from the International Monetary Fund raises concerns about the ability of the EU to absorb such a potentially unstable new economic partner too.

    And yet Mr Obama was right to emphasise the desirability, in principle, of Turkey entering the European family. Turkish membership would be a tremendous boost for relations between Europe and the Muslim world. At a stroke, the EU would be transformed from looking like a white, Christian club, to an alliance of free-trading democracies.

    And the influence of the mostly moderate Muslims of Turkey might even help to counteract the spread of separatist Islamism in the likes of Britain and the Netherlands. Nor should we forget that the lure of membership gives Europe great scope to push for reform within Turkey, even if the results so far have been less than many hoped for. The process is almost as valuable as the result.

    President Obama might have been a little indelicate in throwing Washington’s full backing behind Ankara’s EU bid, but we should be in no doubt about one thing: it is not in the interests of a single European to see the door slammed in Turkey’s face.

    Source:  www.independent.co.uk, 7 April 2009