President Abdullah Gul sent a reconciliatory message to neighboring Armenia on Saturday, saying Turkey is “no enemy” to any country in its region, as he mulled a possible landmark trip to Yerevan.
The conflict between Georgia and Russia shows the need for “early measures to resolve frozen problems in the region and… prevent instability in the future,” said Gul in televised remarks in the central city of Nevsehir.
“This is our understanding on all problems. We are no enemy to anyone in the region,” he said, reiterating a Turkish proposal to set up a regional forum for stability in the Caucasus.
Gul’s conciliatory remark came in response to a question on whether he would accept an invitation by Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian to go to Yerevan in September to watch a World Cup qualifying match between Turkey and Armenia. He replied he was still evaluating the invitation.
Ankara has refused to establish diplomatic ties with Yerevan since the former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991 because of Armenian efforts to secure international recognition of Armenian massacres under the Ottoman Empire as genocide. In 1993 Turkey shut its border with Armenia in a show of solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, then at war with Armenia, dealing a heavy economic blow to the impoverished nation in the strategic Caucasus region.
Diplomats from Turkey and Armenia met secretly in Switzerland in July in a fresh effort to normalize ties following three rounds of talks in 2005 and 2006. No progress is so far publicly known.
Turkish and Armenian leaders have meanwhile met on the sidelines of international gatherings, including a Black Sea regional summit in Istanbul last year.
Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has ordered troops to pull out of Georgia starting from noon local time on Monday (18 August), following calls by French and German EU leaders over the weekend.
French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, secured the promised withdrawal in a telephone call to Moscow on Sunday, in which he threatened “serious consequences” unless Russia retreats to positions held before fighting broke out on 7 August.
Georgia: Russian tanks entered on 7 August (Photo: prezydent.pl)
“If this ceasefire clause [on pre-7 August positions] is not applied quickly and in its entirety, I will convoke an extraordinary council of the European Union to decide what consequences to draw,” he explained later in a statement in French daily Le Figaro.
“I expect a very fast, very prompt withdrawal of Russian troops out of Georgia,” German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said at a press conference in Tbilisi on Sunday. “Georgia will become a member of NATO if it wants to – and it does want to,” she added, AP reports.
On Monday morning, Russian troops remained dug-in just 35 kilometres from the Georgian capital, as well as holding the Georgian Black Sea ports of Poti and Senaki while roaming freely up and down the country’s main roads.
Troops also deployed SS-21 earth-to-earth missiles in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia, the New York Times says, with the rockets capable of striking Tbilisi.
Russian soldiers and Russian-backed South Ossetian paramilitaries have spent the past few days destroying Georgian military bases and infrastructure, as well as looting homes and roughing up ethnic Georgian civilians.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said that Georgia can “forget” about its territorial integrity, indicating that troops might stay in South Ossetia and a second pro-Russian, rebel province – Abkhazia – for the long term.
The UN refugee centre estimates the conflict has displaced 98,000 people in Georgia proper and a further 60,000 people in South Ossetia. Hundreds of civilians are also thought to have died.
“We will have to determine if the Russian intervention against its Georgian neighbour was a brutal and excessive response,” Mr Sarkozy wrote in Le Figaro. “In which case…there will be inevitable consequences for its relations with the European Union.”
EU’s eastern front
EU foreign ministers meeting last week put off until 5 September a debate on whether to impose diplomatic sanctions, such as suspending talks on a new EU-Russia strategic treaty or a future visa-free travel deal.
Former communist EU states, backed by the UK and Sweden, want a strong line on Russia, worrying that the Georgia incursion could be the start of a wider campaign to undermine pro-western countries in Russia’s old sphere of influence.
A flash poll by the Pentor institute in Poland said that 49.8 percent of Polish people are scared of a potential Russian military attack in the next few years.
Ukraine president, Viktor Yushchenko, has also offered the west the use of Ukrainian radar facilities in the hope of obtaining security guarantees in return, with an EU-Ukraine summit tabled for 9 September.
The country’s Crimea peninsula has a large ethnic Russian population and well-organised separatist movements. Meanwhile, Russian generals dismissed as “nonsense” a recent Ukrainian law limiting the movements of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which is stationed in the region until 2017.
Sanctions unlikely
But Germany and Luxembourg have already spoken out against isolating Russia – one of the EU’s biggest energy suppliers – as a result of the Georgia war.
“I do not advise…any knee-jerk reaction such as suspending talks on a partnership and cooperation agreement [with the EU],” German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said in an interview with weekly Welt am Sonntag. “Our interest in this is as great as Russia itself. Talks in the NATO-Russian Council are essential too. Because we need open lines of communication.”
Speaking in Moscow on Friday, Ms Merkel also took a softer line than in Tbilisi, saying “Some of Russia’s actions were not proportionate…[but] it is rare that all the blame is on one side. In fact, both sides are probably to blame. ”
“We must stick to the partnership with Russia, even after these recent events which of course do not please us,” Luxembourg foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
“There will be no consequences of this conflict,” a diplomat from a former communist state told EUobserver. “It’s almost as if Germany and Russia had a meeting and said ‘this is our territory and this is yours, you can do what you like there’.”
Tevfik Ziyaeddin Akbulut, the chairman of the parliamentary Commission for Interior Affairs, has warned European countries that have failed the test of sincerity with respect to counterterrorism and called on them to stop lending support to terror.
Last week Ankara discussed secret support lent to terror by certain European countries, and Turkey is now preparing to file a complaint with the UN against the Netherlands and Belgium.
The death of Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) leader Dursun Karataş at a hospital in the Netherlands was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Turkey. A member of the Cabinet said the Netherlands had previously rejected Turkey’s demands to return Karataş to Turkey, claiming that he was not in the Netherlands. [HYPOCRISY IS A HOMAGE THAT VICE PAYS TO VIRTUE -H]
Turkey discovered that Karataş had been in the Netherlands for cancer treatment for six months, during which Dutch Interpol did nothing about it. After receiving official statements explaining their inaction, Turkey will file complaints against the Netherlands and Belgium vis-à-vis their tolerance toward the DHKP/C.
Belgium had its share in the recent crisis as it had pursed a similar policy with respect to Fehriye Erdal, a key suspect in the 1996 murder of Özdemir Sabancı. The same Cabinet member argued that no country has immunity to be tolerant toward terror and other crimes against humanity, recalling that Germany and France had in the past shown similar indifference and that they had paid a heavy price for it.
The government official argued that the Netherlands had been caught red handed. “They did not provide the slightest piece of information about Karataş, who was being treated at a hospital in Arnhem for several months, and this is unacceptable and unjustifiable. Likewise, Belgian authorities’ attitude concerning the terrorist Erdal cannot be explained by human rights or law. How can you justify the protection afforded to terrorists who killed innocent people? These two countries are openly violating the European Convention on Extradition,” he said.
Ankara will demand that the UN must be more sensitive about tolerance afforded to terrorists as this undermines Turkey’s counterterrorism efforts.
Turkey will inform the UN of such cases in detail. The release of Erdal by Belgian courts was an act that undermined Turkey’s faith in Belgian justice. Belgium turned a deaf ear to Turkey’s repeated warnings and did not extradite Erdal. It also gave political asylum to Zübeyir Aydar, the top Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) figure in Europe.
Karataş had been apprehended but released by German and French authorities. After he was caught by German police in Cologne on March 3, 1993, and later released, he was caught by the French police on Sept. 9, 1994 in France and he was released pending trial after four months.
One leftist politician was not content with Karataş’s designation as a leftist. “Their hands are stained with blood, as they sold their ideology to terrorism. It is very disconcerting that an organization that was subcontracted by the international terrorist and fascist Ergenekon organization can still be called a leftist organization,” he said.
The DHKP/C’s suspected assassination of Yaşar Günaydın, the public prosecutor of the İstanbul State Security Court (DGM), may be connected to the Ergenekon case, as Günaydın was investigating the failed assassination of former President Turgut Özal. Günaydın had launched an investigation into Workers’ Party (İP) leader Doğu Perinçek, who will be tried in the Ergenekon case, for concealing evidence.
No one is innocent
Disappointment about the country’s performance at the Olympics has given rise to several interesting assessments. A deputy from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) voiced an interesting shortcoming on Turkey’s part. “We discuss the performance of our athletes. But the Olympics represent a big international organization. How many Turks are working for this international event?” he asked.
The MHP deputy noted that Turkey did not have a strategy for training qualified personnel for such international organizations. “There are so many international organizations that do not employ any Turkish citizens. There are only individual cases of employment. However, even small European countries have made it an official policy to train personnel for such organizations. In our country, neither the state nor the nongovernmental organizations or universities do this. We are nonexistent in these organizations. But do we have efforts to sponsor athletes? I am unaware of any institution that sponsors athletes for international sports events. Do we provide facilities for education and training facilities for our kids who have potential for success at the Olympics?” he added.
Left may boost Turkish sports
Deputies from left-wing parties were not eager to make comments about the country’s performance at the Olympics.
One journalist attributed this to leftist parties being distant to sports, which he said was a significant deficiency for them.
A former deputy from leftist politics said such a comment was not fair and argued that only left-wing parties could boost Turkish sports. “I say this clearly: Unless leftist parties take the initiative, only coincidence will determine whether this country will have universal sportsmen or not. For success at the Olympics, you need to train your athletes starting from childhood. But you cannot give special training to children before the age of 15. This disastrous heritage of the Feb. 28 [1997 unarmed coup] process cannot be abolished by rightist parties. Only leftist parties can introduce an exemption for sports to the Compulsory Education Law,” he said. We will wait and see whether leftist parties will have the courage to propose an amendment to this law to boost Turkish sports.
The Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation “Dashnaktsutun” has recently made a statement, calling the government of their country to raise the issue of signing a legal document on non-application of military force against Nagorno Karabakh.
“Armenian side should protect its national and state interests in the negotiation process more clearly and demand from the parties to sign a document on non-application of force”, says the statement. (more…)
The United States opposed any gas deal between Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, and his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul. Bulent Kilic / AFP
TEHRAN // Iran and Turkey had differing views about how the two-day working trip of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, could serve their national interests, but neither side seems to have accomplished much of what they had hoped, analysts say.
Abdullah Gul, his Turkish host, had been eyeing the possibilities of establishing a mediatory role for Turkey between Iran and the West, despite pressure from the United States and Israel not to host the Iranian president.
Before and during the visit, which wrapped up on Friday, the Turkish media largely focused on Mr Gul’s mediation initiative. His success in establishing such a role for Turkey, a Nato member, could have greatly strengthened his Islamist Justice and Development Party’s position in Turkey, which pits him and his party against his secular opponents, who had opposed the visit, the analysts said.
“It was clever of the Turks to attempt to assume such a mediatory role,” said Mohammed Atrianfar, a high-ranking member of Iran’s reformist Servants of Construction Party and a journalist. “Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West is of such international importance that many countries will be very willing to mediate between Iran and the West if Iran shows interest in backing away from the position it has had over the past three years.”
Iran might prefer to talk about suspending uranium enrichment, which can be used to help build an atomic bomb, in direct negotiations with major European powers, and perhaps might not see the point of involving Turkey in the process, Mr Atrianfar said.
At a joint press conference during his visit, the Iranian president praised Mr Gul’s support for dialogue and diplomacy as the solution to the nuclear problem, but he did not signal any change in the position he has maintained.
In an interview with CNN before his trip, Mr Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran’s nuclear issue was neither a technical nor a judicial one, and that no mediation from Turkey was required.
Iran insists that all its nuclear activities meet the regulations set by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory.
Ali Majedi, a former Iranian deputy foreign minister in economic affairs and a former ambassador to Japan, said he does not believe that Turkey or any other country could play a mediating role between Iran and the West.
“Some countries may convey messages between Iran and the West, but given the circumstances in Iran, it seems too far-fetched to me that any country, including Turkey, would be able to play an actual and effective mediating role,” Mr Majedi said.
Turkey has shown support for Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme to meet the country’s energy needs. But analysts believe it would be wrong to assume that Turkey will go any further than offering its support.
“Turkey’s long-term strategic interests are defined within their relations with the West. They are a member of Nato and are trying to join the European Union. They can only be interested in maintaining their good relations with Iran,” Mr Atrianfar said.
If Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West intensifies, Turkey and most other countries will avoid spoiling their relations with the West for the sake of economic relations with Iran, Mr Majedi believes.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s government had been hoping to sign a natural gas deal with Turkey, one that would allow Iran to export its own gas as well as gas bought from Turkmenistan to Europe through a pipeline in Turkey. The Iranian president was accompanied by Parviz Fattah, Iran’s oil minister, on his visit to Turkey. Iran hoped to close a gas deal worth $3.5 billion (Dh12.9bn) with Turkey.
The two countries failed to reach an agreement over differences on pricing and conditions for investment. Mr Ahmadinejad and his Turkish counterpart said reaching a deal of this kind is time consuming and that negotiations would continue.
The Iranian media said that if signed during the visit, the gas deal could have been considered a defeat for the United States and its allies and a victory for Mr Ahmadinejad.
The United States had opposed the deal and warned Turkey of consequences of signing the deal with Iran.
A deal of this kind could strengthen the position of Mr Ahmadinejad domestically, too. He has been under heavy criticism from his political opponents in Iran for the economic failures of his government, including the inability to attract foreign investment.
During Mr Ahmadinejad’s visit the two countries signed five protocols, including one on co-operation against terrorism. The two countries have for years worked together in this regard and share intelligence on armed separatist Kurdish groups.
“The issue of Kurds is a matter of national interest to both Iran and Turkey regardless of what governments rule in these countries. Security co-operation in this regard will therefore always be desirable and sought by both sides,” Mr Majedi said.
ISTANBUL (IRNA) — Iran and Turkey on Thursday signed five protocols for security, economic and cultural cooperation.
The five cooperation protocols were signed after talks between Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul in Istanbul.
Under the protocols, drafted in the Persian, Turkish and English languages, the two neighbors will cooperate in campaign against organized crimes, terrorism and drugs transit, environment protection, and transportation.
A memorandum of understanding was also signed in the ceremony for cooperation between Iranian and Turkish national libraries and archives.
Iranian president visited Turkey on Thursday. He returned home on Saturday.
Ahmadinejad said Iran seeks to increase trade deals with Turkey to 20 billion dollars within four years.
