Secretary of State John F. Kerry will head to Turkey before the end of this week to discuss the continuing Syrian conflict, which has just entered its second year.
Photo by: J. Scott Applewhite Secretary of State John F. Kerry (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
A Turkish official confirmed the upcoming meeting with the Reuters news agency and said it will likely take place before Sunday.
The meeting comes as The Guardian reports another 100 people were killed in a Damascus neighborhood by warplane strikes. The death toll in the ongoing conflict has been estimated at 70,000, the United Nations reported.
Mr. Kerry’s stop in Turkey is part of a Western Europe and Asian visit. And his talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be closely watched. The United States sees Turkey as a crucial player for helping rebel fighters oust Syrian President Bashar Assad and implement a new government.
“Mr. Kerry will visit Turkey,” said the unnamed Turkish spokesman in the Reuters report. “The date is not clear yet but possibly it will take place either on Friday or on Saturday.”
The State Department did not comment in the Reuters report.
via Turkey: John Kerry to talk about Syria with PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan – Washington Times.
Turkish Airways Flight 34 arrives at Bush Intercontinental Airport / Photo credit: Brent Clanton
Houston is adding depth to its reputation as an international city of trade with the establishment of direct-service air travel to Istanbul, Turkey via Turkish Airlines.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker welcomed an entire delegation of Turkish dignitaries to Bush Intercontinental last night to usher-in a new age of commerce between Houston, Texas and Turkey.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker welcomes the Turkish Trade Delegation to Bush Intercontinental Airport / Phot credit: Brent Clanton
“It’s a bridge in the world, and it’s bridging the cultures, bridging the economy, and making it possible for us as Americans, and them as Turkish people, to communicate and do business for the future,” enthused Farouk Shami, Chairman of Farouk Systems Group, on hand to greet the first 777 flight to arrive direct from Istanbul.
Shami has done his homework, and with today’s signing of trade agreements with Houston and Turkey, he’s ready to do more business abroad: ”We’ll be working with two electronics tools for environmental beauty there,” Shami says. ”The economy is great in Turkey, and one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. I think we can share knowledge on how to improve our economy, as well.” Shami has already made three trips to Turkey to set up manufacturing and other alliances. ”There’s a big market that I can expand Farouk Business Systems into that,” he says.
When Turkey was shunned by the rest of Europe, the country turned eastward, and developed trade with partners in Asia and beyond. That’s turning into good fortune for Texas, with trade agreements opening the gates for more commerce…and easier access with Turkish Airways’ direct flights.
Houston’s Turkish Consul General, Cemalettin Aydin, says, ”It’s quite big because this flight will, I think, connect Houston to, I believe, one of the most-dynamic places in the middle of three continents, that is, Turkey, between Europe, Asia and Africa.”
Turkish Airways will operate four direct flights a week, increasing to six a week in July. Shami is looking forward to the trade reciprocity: ”Turkish Delights, for sure,” he laughs. “That is most-popular, you know, and they sell lots of hundred of millions of that, and we like sweets. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind.”
via Houston Welcomes Turkish Airways’ Direct Service to Istanbul | News 92 FM.
Patriot missile installation is pictured at a positions near the city of Kahramanmaras, Feb. 23, 2013. Germany’s defence minister inspected Patriot missile batteries close to the Syria-Turkey border. (photo by REUTERS/Axel Schmidt) Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/american-middle-east-policy-turkey-nuclear-bombs.html#ixzz2PDsVinVg
By: Kadri Gursel for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse. Posted on March 31.
In recent years when the AKP government gave priority to developing strategic ties with the Baath regime, the neo-Islamic political class that rules Turkey did not think of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles in the Syrian army inventory as a strategic threat against Turkey.
About This Article
Summary :
Turkey once sought a nuclear-free region but now covets the protection from its neighbors that is afforded by US nuclear bombs, writes Kadri Gursel.
Original Title:
Middle East Policy Under Protection of American Bomb
Author: Kadri Gursel
Translated by: Timur Goksel
They thought at the time that Turkey, by using its soft power, was actually transforming Syria and even on the verge of integrating it. Visas were abolished between the two countries and contacts reached unheard of levels.
For example on Dec. 22-23, 2009, in “The First Session of the Turkey-Syria High Level Strategic Cooperation Council” held in Damascus, 50 accords, memorandums of understanding and cooperation protocols were signed by two countries on education, culture, commerce, security, health, irrigation, agriculture, mass housing and other fields.
We are talking of the not too distant past, when many were gushing with praise for Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s patented political strategy of “Zero Problems With Neighbors.”
The joint communique of the meeting had a paragraph that revealed an interesting paradox:
“The parties, agreeing on the necessity of purging the Middle East from nuclear weapons, have reviewed latest developments on the ongoing dialogue in the context of Iran’s nuclear program. With the conviction that all countries have the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes we have emphasized the importance of finding a diplomatic solution to this question.”
The paradox that called for clarification was NATO-member Turkey, jointly with anti-West Syria, declaring its wish for “a Middle East purged of nuclear weapons.”
“Nuclear weapon-free Middle East” was one of the themes of the anti-Israel policy that peaked between the Davos confrontation of January 2009 and the Mavi Marmara events of May 2010. Basically, there was nothing strange with that expressed wish. Everyone, at least a vast majority, would want to see the Middle East cleansed of nuclear weapons. But when it is Turkey that asks for it, one has to pause and think. Turkey is one of two countries in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons on its soil. That Israel is a nuclear power is a secret known to all in the world. That Turkey has American B61 nuclear bombs on its territory is also known by all, but disregarded.
The difference between Turkey and Israel is that the nuclear bombs deployed at Incirlik base near the southern city of Adana are not Turkish but American property. These are air-launched gravity bombs and their quantity changes “according to need.” B61s are the forward deployed elements of the nuclear umbrella the US provides for its NATO allies.
B61s were deployed at Incirlik during the Cold War years to balance Soviet tactical nuclear weapons and they are still there. According to reliable sources, Turkish pilots are not trained on B61s and Turkish F-16s don’t have the capability of delivering B61s.
In addition to Turkey, these bombs are deployed in territories of four other US allies: Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy. All, except Italy, now don’t want these weapons on their soil.
But there is no likelihood for Turkey to adopt such a position. To the contrary, actually.
The B61s that are still offsetting the Russian tactical nuclear weapons, as they were in the past, now have an increasingly important role for Turkey in the new Middle East geopolitics: To deter Syria and Iran. The Syrian situation is well known. Since the uprising and the civil war than ensued in Syria, Turkey, which until recently tried to transform that country with its soft power and strategic cooperation, is now resorting to all possible means, except to openly declaring war, to topple the regime in Damascus and replace it with a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated fraternal regime. Turkey, aware that its approach is seen as hostile, is now wary of Syria’s chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. Against this threat, Ankara asked for NATO protection and the Western alliance deployed Patriot batteries around three cities close to Syria.
On the other hand, despite all objections, Iran is making headway in becoming a new nuclear-armed power of the Middle East. No doubt a nuclear-armed Iran will constitute a strategic imbalance for Turkey in the Middle East geopolitics. For a long time, as a political choice prompted by the “zero problems” policy, Turkey ignored this threat. The engine of Ankara’s “zero problems” approach to Iran was to advocate a solution to the international crisis brewing around the Iranian nuclear program that would ensure a change of the global nuclear order, to the benefit of developing powers like Turkey.
Three years ago on May 14, 2010, the declaration that Turkey, at that time challenging the global nuclear order, pronounced to the world from Tehran (along with Brazil and Iran) was a part of this strategy. Acting with the same philosophy, on June 9, 2010, Turkey voted against a UN Security Council resolution that called for aggravated sanctions against Iran’s suspicious nuclear program.
Three years after the Tehran Declaration and the negative vote at the Security Council, Turkey, far from challenging the global order, is feeling more secure under the protective wings of precisely that order against a threat from Iran.
It was Turkey’s Syria policy that led to this situation.
On March 19, in a workshop on “Emerging Powers and the Global Nuclear Order” organized jointly by Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [CEIP] and the University of Brasilia at Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, this subject too was discussed. Turkey-based nuclear weapons were debated in the context of AKP’s ambitious Middle East policy.
Sinan Ulgen, the Director of Istanbul-based Economy and Foreign Policy Research Center [EDAM], who submitted a paper to the workshop, said:
“Ankara, (…) believes that the continued presence of NATO nuclear weapons deters chemically armed Syria and, potentially, a nuclear-armed Iran in the future.”
Turkish officials continue their quiet support for nuclear weapons. While reluctant to discuss these weapons in public, Ankara’s actions suggest that Turkey is taking steps to ensure that it retains the capability to host and deliver US tactical nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Despite taking on a more passive nuclear posture since the end of the Cold War, the current difficulties in the Middle East will likely affect Turkey’s thinking about nuclear weapons. As the Syrian civil war worsens, and Ankara continues to grapple with how to deter a Syrian chemical weapons attack, Turkey could opt to harden its support for the forward deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe.”
Ulgen noted that divergent views of Iran and Turkey for solutions in Bahrain and Syria had led to tension between Ankara and Tehran, and this prompted Turkey to withdraw the public support it gave to the Iranian nuclear program.
Turkey, along with treating Israel as whipping boy in 2009-2010 and pressing it with the call for a ‘’Nuclear-free Middle East,’’ is now sharing a new ‘’joint threat” with Israel at a different plane: Iran and its nuclear program.
Certainly a peculiar historic twist.
Let us repeat: This is all because of Turkey’s Syria policy.
As Ozdem Sanberk, a senior, retired Turkish diplomat often says, foreign policy is the art of managing contradictions.
Turkey is hard pressed to manage the phenomenal contradictions between its new and ambitious policy in the Middle East and the NATO membership it needs to alleviate its military capacity deficit.
Kadri Gürsel is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse and has written a column for the Turkish daily Milliyet since 2007.
MONTREAL — Slapping a Canadian Maple Leaf on your backpack when travelling abroad may have its perks, but Craig Klinkhoff has found an even better way to make friends in foreign lands.
He’s one of the young Montrealers behind Hockey Without Borders, a Canadian non-profit organization that aims to support fledgling ice-hockey programs in the unlikeliest of places.
“No matter where I went with my hockey equipment, when I’m meeting people from a local hockey community, they embrace you immediately,” Klinkhoff, 23, said in an interview.
Craig Klinkhoff, left, and Matthew Robins, ambassadors for hockey without borders, fool around at a hockey rink in Montreal, Tuesday, March 12, 2013. (Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS) Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/hockey-night-in-turkey-canadians-promoting-sport-in-unusual-places-1.1217219#ixzz2P9NtvqWQ
Hockey Without Borders, a Canadian non-profit organization, aims to support fledgling ice-hockey programs and now has programs in Serbia, Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“You meet people that are so different from you culturally, even in some cases they don’t speak any English, but they treat you like you’re best friends.”
Founded in 2011, the organization now has programs in Serbia, Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
While those are hardly hockey hot spots, Klinkhoff says the sport has a small but devoted following in each country. The idea is to send over young Canadian coaches to help the locals improve their existing program.
It’s not, Klinkhoff emphasized, to push hockey on communities with no interest in the game.
“We don’t go somewhere and say, ‘You’re going to play hockey now,”‘ he said. “We go because a local organization or club has asked us to help a hockey program.”
The project was started on an informal basis a few years earlier by another young Canadian, Fred Perowne.
The native of Sherbrooke, Que., and former U.S. college player developed strong ties while playing in Serbia’s professional league in the early 2000s.
Perowne ended up playing for the country in international competition and worked as an assistant coach for its junior teams, bringing over several other Canadians to help out.
The idea for Hockey Without Borders grew from there.
The organization now has three coaches in Serbia, working with roughly 100 young players, another two in Sarajevo working with 60, while 20 youngsters took part in a recent program in Turkey.
Organizers for Hockey Without Borders say the program isn’t just about sport — and that it offers valuable life lessons for everyone involved.
“We’re elevating people’s games abroad, but we’re also helping to grow individuals,” said Matthew Robbins, 24, a longtime friend of Klinkhoff.
“We see hockey as this incredible tool to teach other things in life, like leadership.”
As an example, Robbins pointed to the experience of a young man in Turkey who credits hockey with changing his life.
It’s far from common to spot a hockey stick or skates in Ankara, a bustling city of 4.3 million people, but a small segment of the city’s youth has gotten the bug, Robbins said.
Can Acar, 23, said hockey helped turn his life around.
“I used to be so lazy that I didn’t even leave my house for one month or more,” Acar said in a video produced by Hockey Without Borders.
“After I started hockey… it makes my life better.”
The program in Ankara is run with the help of the local Police Academy hockey club, which has a team in the Turkish hockey league. It’s designed to expose the players to English and offer a glimpse into a world beyond their own.
“This is a social program that allows people to get out and learn life skills from playing,” Klinkhoff said.
“The hockey community is where they form their friendships.”
The calibre, meanwhile, ranges widely.
Most of the players in Turkey only have a few years’ experience on the ice. While many draw from the experience of playing roller-hockey, Klinkhoff said they would struggle against a decent rec-league team in Canada.
In Serbia, the skill level is rapidly improving and the country recently won the Division II under-18 World Championships, he said.
The facilities also vary.
In Sarajevo, the locker rooms are in the complex from the 1984 Olympics but the ice surface was moved to a dome in the adjacent parking lot. Players have to put skate guards on and walk about 100 metres to get on the ice.
Hockey Without Borders is hoping to set up more programs in future — but for now, it’s concentrating on keeping things running with those already underway.
At the moment, the funding comes almost entirely from the volunteer coaches themselves, who must pay for their own flight abroad.
The organization has agreements in place with host clubs to provide an apartment and food, along with coaching-related expenses. It is trying to line up private and corporate sponsors to subsidize the cost of air fares for the coaches.
“Hockey Without Borders is only about a year and a half old,” Klinkhoff said.
“We think it’ll be an attractive program to donate to if one believes in the many benefits of hockey.”
via Hockey Night in Turkey? Canadians promoting sport in unusual places | CTV News.
If Netanyahu wants rapprochement with Ankara, he must do more than apologize for the Mavi Marmara killings
By PHILIP GIRALDI • March 29, 2013
One of the surprise results of President Barack Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East was the last-minute phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey that took place from a hastily set-up trailer near the Tel Aviv airport as Obama was about to leave.
The two nations had once cooperated closely and were generally viewed as strategic partners, but the Turks had begun to distance themselves from Israeli policies in early 2009 when the Turkish prime minister confronted Israel’s President Shimon Peres at a January international meeting in Davos. Referring to the slaughter of Gazan civilians earlier that month during Operation Cast Lead, Erdogan told Peres, “you know well how to kill.” In the one-hour discussion of Gaza that was moderated by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Peres was allowed 25 minutes to speak in defense of the Israeli attack. Erdogan was given 12 minutes. During the debate, Peres pointed accusingly at Erdogan and raised his voice. When Erdogan sought time to respond, Ignatius granted him a minute and then cut him off, claiming it was time to go to dinner. Erdogan complained about the treatment and left Davos, vowing never to return. Back in Turkey, he received a hero’s welcome.
The bilateral relationship then hit zero when, in June 2010, the Israelis boarded the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara in international waters. The Mavi Marmara had only humanitarian supplies on board, but the Israeli naval commandos from the elite Shayetet 13 unit were met by a number of Turks wielding improvised weapons made from the ship’s rails and deck chairs. The Israelis killed nine Turks, one of whom was also an American citizen; most were shot execution-style. Israel could have defused the crisis by admitting it had erred, apologizing, and offering to pay reparations, but refused to do so. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had personally directed the operation, claimed that the Israelis were acting in self-defense.
The Turkish connection was important because Turkey was the only predominantly Muslim country with which Israel had a truly friendly relationship. But Israel is much less important to Ankara. The prior warmth was based on common interests uniting the Israeli and Turkish militaries that never quite penetrated to the government level in Ankara, where Israel’s destabilizing role in a region that Turkey was increasingly seeing as its backyard was watched carefully. The military’s ability to influence events waned when the Turkish National Security Council, a powerful remnant of the last military coup consisting of high-ranking officers, was effectively delegitimized and broken by Erdogan. He also ordered the arrests of hundreds of senior officers who might or might not have been conspiring to overthrow him.
What is important to Erdogan is that Ankara’s strained relationship with Israel has created problems in Washington. Since the split, there have been numerous articles, mostly written by neocons, criticizing Turkey’s democratic credentials and its self-confident Islamic identity while asking whether the country is really “part of the West.” In the September 16, 2011 Washington Post Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, opined that Erdogan
now directly challenges our major alliance in the Middle East, and how far he will go is unclear … By threatening to militarily contest Israel’s blockade of Gaza … the Turkish government has laid down a serious challenge to American policy … Obama’s meeting with Erdogan on Tuesday is crucial. He can take a few important steps. He should immediately deploy 6th Fleet ships from Norfolk to the Eastern Mediterranean to signal that the United States will not tolerate even inadvertent naval clashes. He needs to make clear to Erdogan that the United States will not side with Turkey against Israel and that Turkey’s current strategy risks undermining regional stability.
In the same month, seven United States senators sent a letter to President Obama stating that
Turkey is shifting to a policy of confrontation, if not hostility, towards our allies in Israel and we urge you to mount a diplomatic offensive to reverse this course. We ask you to outline Turkey’s eroding support in Congress … and how its current ill-advised policy towards the State of Israel will also negatively reflect on U.S. Turkish relations and Turkey’s role in the future of NATO.
But the White House has never taken its eye off the ball regarding Turkey. Turkey is without any doubt the key player and most essential ally for the United States in the entire Near East region. It is frequently cited as an example of how democracy can function in a predominantly Islamic country. It is the NATO member with the largest army after that of the U.S., fought in the Korean War, has fully supported every U.S. intervention in its backyard save only Iraq in 2003, and shares long borders both with Syria and Iran. Whatever happens in Syria will largely be shaped by what Ankara decides to do, and President Obama knows it. Israel is understandably concerned about what might come out of the Syrian farrago and knows it too, so Obama was able to convince Netanyahu that if he wants to sit at the table when critical decisions are made about Syria, accommodating Turkey and Erdogan would be a necessary first step. So it was most definitely in Israel’s own interest as well as that of Washington to mend fences with Erdogan.
Netanyahu faced considerable internal opposition within his new coalition to making the call that Obama personally brokered. Netanyahu’s former Moldovan bouncer Avigdor Lieberman, who until recently provided comic relief as a foreign minister, immediatelydenounced the prime minister’s apology as a “serious mistake” before saying, “Such an apology harms IDF soldiers’ motivation and their willingness to go out on future missions, and strengthens the radical elements in the region. Worse still is the fact that the apology also affects Israel’s uncompromising struggle for righteousness, morality and for the morality of its soldiers.”
There was also considerable opposition from Turkey. Erdogan responded to the call somewhat reluctantly, according to Turkish sources, and only because Obama was involved. He accepted the Netanyahu apology but demanded that it first be put in writing before giving his verbal consent, reportedly because he did not trust the Israeli Prime Minister to stick with whatever wording might be agreed upon over the phone. The official Israeli version subsequently appeared in several forms in English on the Israeli Foreign Ministry website before it was agreed to by Ankara. It now reads that “Israel regrets … [due to] a number of operational mistakes … the loss of life or injury.” It agreed to “conclude an agreement on compensation/nonliability. Prime Minister Netanyahu also noted that Israel has substantially lifted the restrictions on the entry of civilian goods into the Palestinians territories, including Gaza…”
The Israeli and U.S. media initially reported that the two countries would restore full diplomatic relations, but that is incorrect. Erdogan has instructed his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, to establish a fair level of compensation for the families of the Mavi Marmara victims as well as for the shipowners, a sum likely to exceed $20 million, before improving ties in any way. And he has not committed to returning his ambassador to Tel Aviv. Turkey is also monitoring compliance with the pledge to ease entry to Gaza and the West Bank. Davutoglu reportedly sent a strongly worded message to Netanyahu regarding Israel’s new restrictions on Gazan fisherman, which went into effect two days after the three heads of government spoke on the phone.
Israel has also taken note of an independent announcement by Turkey that Erdogan would visit Gaza and the West Bank in April, while there have been rumors in the Turkish media that the current Turkish consul general in Jerusalem, Sakir Ozkan Torunlar, will be re-designated ambassador to Palestine, meaning full recognition of the Palestinian State, with all that implies.
Possibly most important of all is the fact that the Erdogan-Netanyahu agreement did not explicitly mention legal liability. In June 2012 Israel’s own state controller investigatedthe Mavi Marmara incident and, though absolving the military, noted “essential and significant flaws” in the operation as directed by Netanyahu. A simultaneous United Nations investigation called the use of force in the raid “excessive and unreasonable.” The Turkish Justice Ministry completed its own inquiry in the summer of 2012, resulting in criminal charges being filed against four senior Israeli military officers. That trial is scheduled to begin later this year with more than 500 witnesses prepared to provide eyewitness testimony for the in absentia proceedings. It all means that the rapprochement engineered by President Obama between Israel and Turkey is still very much a work in progress, and it is Ankara that is best placed to dictate the course of further developments.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reiterated yesterday that he admires Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, and Turks in his first press conference in the Pentagon, daily Hürriyet has reported.
“Well, I’m glad to know my standing is significant in Turkey. But – and I admire the Turks and the government, and Atatürk and I have over the years noted Atatürk in different speeches I’ve given, not just in Turkey, but the United States. He did something that was very significant that has had a very important sustaining legacy in the world. And sometimes we — we in the West don’t fully appreciate what Atatürk did.” Hagel said in response to a question.
Turkish-Israeli rapprochement critically important to the region
“The recent rapprochement between NATO member Turkey and major non-NATO ally Israel was critically important to the region,” Hagel said.
“It does affect Syria,” he said. “It does affect the neighbors in developing more confidence, I would suspect, among the neighbors in that area that Turkey and Israel will once again begin working together on some of these common interests.”
Former Republican senator Chuck Hagel was sworn in on Feb. 27 as the new U.S. defense secretary.
