Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has told Israel not to attempt to stop an upcoming supply flotilla to Gaza next month.
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday, Davutoglu said Israel should not repeat “the same mistake” it made last May by preventing an earlier supply flotilla from reaching Gaza last May. He said that no one nation owns the Mediterranean.
Turkey said it had received a request from Israel to help stop a flotilla to Gaza scheduled for late next month by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, but the government said it could not stop them. The activist group says it is hoping to have 15 ships in what it calls the Freedom Flotilla 2.
Last year’s incident began when a six-ship flotilla with 10,000 tons of supplies ignored Israeli warnings and tried to break its three-year-old blockade of Gaza.
Israel’s military says its forces intercepted the flotilla, and commandos opened fire in self-defense when they were attacked by the activists. Nine Turkish activists were killed and seven Israeli soldiers were wounded.
Relations between Israel and former ally Turkey have been strained since the incident. Turkey has laid out a set of conditions to help normalize relations between the two countries, including an apology and compensation. Israel has refused to apologize.
via Turkey to Israel: Ankara Has No Control Over Gaza Flotilla | Middle East | English VOA.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu a former academic, prefers slightly more neutered catchphrases like "strategic depth" and "interdependence" to describe its involvement in the Middle East. Adem Altan / AFP
“You are a resister of the 25th hour,” the leader of the European Parliament’s Green faction told Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, during a February debate on the upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit may as well have been talking about the reaction of the West as a whole. With the White House refusing to call for Hosni Mubarak’s resignation until the last moment, and with the EU having failed, yet again, to articulate a clear stance, only a few western countries found themselves on the right side of history when Mubarak’s rule finally came to a close.
That one of those countries was Turkey, a Nato member and an EU candidate, and that the person who articulated its position was none other than its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is more of a surprise than meets the eye.
Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AKP) government has never placed a high premium on human rights and democratisation with regard to the Middle East. Stability – the one word that Turkish officials mentioned more than any other whenever they spoke of their country’s policy towards the region – seemed to override all other concerns. It became, essentially, a byword for non-interference. Turkey buried its head in the sand during the violence that followed the flawed 2009 presidential election in Iran, calling the electoral dispute, as well as its fallout, an “internal matter”. It turned a blind eye to human-rights abuses and autocratic rule in places like Syria and, for that matter, Egypt. Finally, it has looked the other way in Sudan, with Erdogan himself insisting that there has been no genocide in Darfur and that, in any case, a Muslim – in this case, Sudanese president Omar al Bashir – “could not perpetrate such a thing”.
Turkish policymakers have tried to shield themselves from the criticism that such statements and policies have inevitably provoked in the West and, to a lesser extent, in Turkey itself, by citing the importance of discretion.
“We’re certainly not going to promote human rights and democracy the way the American neocons have,” Suat Kiniklioglu, the spokesman for the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told me a year ago. “If the aim is to produce results, we find it more effective to speak face to face. We prefer to talk to them behind closed doors rather than criticising them through media outlets.”
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s tireless foreign minister, sounded a similar note when he told a Turkish journalist that “we tell our counterparts the importance of being respectful of human rights. But we don’t do it in public; this is a requirement of sincerity.” (What Davutoglu forgot to mention was that Turkey had made an exception for Israel, repeatedly – and very publicly – chastising its government for its treatment of the Palestinians.) Asked whether Turkish diplomats really raised human-rights issues with their interlocutors in countries such as Syria or Iran, Kiniklioglu said that they did – but that “it’s not at the top of our agenda”.
via In throwing its weight behind Egypt’s protests, did Turkey overbalance? – The National.
Brussels – Turkish officials expressed frustration at the lack of progress made on their country joining the European Union on Tuesday, as the EU-Turkey Association Council met in Brussels – for the 49th time since the two sides first sought closer relations.
‘It shows deep-rooted relations, but it also clearly shows that Turkey is still kept waiting,’ Turkey’s EU affairs minister, Egemen Bagis, said. ‘The relations are not at a point desired by Turkey or the European Union.’
Countries that apply for EU membership have to bring their laws in line with EU rules in 35 areas, known as chapters. Since Turkey began accession discussions in 2005, it has opened talks on 13 chapters, adding at least one to the list every six months.
But almost 10 months have now passed since the opening of the last chapter, after the foreseen start of talks on competition was postponed because of what the EU said was insufficient progress from Turkey in the area.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said Tuesday that he hopes the competition chapter can be opened by the end of June.
The near-halt of the accession negotiations, however, has also been due to Turkey’s involvement in the Cyprus dispute and Franco-German opposition to its application.
‘There is no technical problem, there’s a political problem,’ Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu argued on Tuesday. ‘No matter what the barriers before us may be, Turkey is determined to work towards full membership in the European Union.’
EU officials, meanwhile, welcomed the passage last year of 26 constitutional amendments that were designed to strengthen democracy and individuals’ rights in Turkey, and were expected to result in far-reaching changes to the country’s powerful judiciary.
Both Fule and Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi – whose country holds the rotating EU presidency – called it ‘a step in the right direction.’
They also stressed, however, that ‘substantial’ progress is still needed in areas such the freedoms of expression, religion and the media, as well as normalization of ties with Cyprus.
Fule additionally called on Turkey to allow a ‘rich, fair and open’ political campaign ahead of elections in June.
He said the two sides also had a ‘frank’ dialogue over the issue of easing visa restrictions for Turkey – a move fervently desired by the country, but that EU diplomats have described as unlikely, with France and Germany reportedly leading opposition to the measure.
Davoglu argued that EU visa regulations for Turkey are ‘not fair.’
‘The time when Turkish people feel least European is when they wait in line for a visa,’ Bagis added. ‘We would like this unjust and illogical implementation to come to an end.’
via Turkey bemoans lack of progress on EU accession talks – Monsters and Critics.
Some Thoughts on Currently Conflictual Issues in Turkey
11.40 – 12.30 William Park
The Origins, Nature and Prospects of Turkish Foreign Policy
under Ahmet Davutoğlu
12.40 – 14.20 Lunch
14.25 – 15.15 Deniz Duru
Coexistence in Burgaz, Princes Islands of Istanbul: Living
and Negotiating with Ethnic, Class and Religious Differences
15.20 – 15.45 Figen Phelps
Dame Ninette Valois and Turkish Ballet
15.50 – 16.15 Özlem Güçlü
New Cinema of Turkey: What is ‘new’? Why is it not ‘Turkish’?
16.20 Tea
16.35 Annual General Meeting
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Rezan Muir, Secretary
Turkish Area Study Group
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Twenty-second Spring Symposium
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Saturday 7 May 2011
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As our aircraft rose steeply from the lightless gloom of Baghdad Airport, Ahmet Davutoglu looked down, and reflected.
“The people of Iraq suffered a lot,” he said. “We need to take lessons from that.”
Despite protests at home, Mr Davutoglu says Turkey is now fully on board the Nato-led operation
Turkey has been a member of Nato since 1952, a loyal US ally that sent soldiers to fight and die to the Korean War, and was the eastern frontier of the alliance during the Cold War.
The sense of being an isolated outpost of Western military power anchored its foreign policy for decades. But for the past 10 years, Mr Davutoglu, an academic and passionate student of geopolitics, has turned Turkey’s foreign policy on its head.
Old allies like Israel, the US and the EU were downgraded. New relationships were forged with eastern and southern neighbours, relationships built on trade and business. He called it “zero problems with neighbours”.
So the past two months, when the entire neighbourhood has been in turmoil, have been very tough for Turkey. Suddenly it is unclear who it should be doing business with in the Arab world.
Which helps to explain the twisting policy shifts. At one point Turkey seemed fervently opposed to international intervention in Libya. Today, it is a strong advocate of a Nato-led mission.
Nato sensitivities
But it has not reached that point without some tough bargaining with other members of the alliance.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
As the only Muslim country [in Nato] for many decades, we have certain sensitivities regarding Nato operations in neighbouring countries’ Muslim societies”
End Quote Ahmet Davutoglu Turkish Foreign Minister
“Our reservations were about unilateralism”, said Mr Davutoglu. “As the only Muslim country [in Nato] for many decades, we have certain sensitivities regarding Nato operations in neighbouring countries’ Muslim societies.
“We said that Nato can participate if there are two principles fulfilled: One is a UN Security Council resolution; second is regional ownership, especially participation of the Arab League and individual Arab countries.”
He cited Iraq and Afghanistan as places where perceived Western indifference to civilian casualties had badly damaged the credibility of international military operations there.
Turkey would only sign up to an operation in Libya with a clear command structure, he said, that did not allow for unilateral actions by individual countries – a reference to the early attacks by French aircraft on Col Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, which Turkey strongly condemned.
Mr Davutoglu says Turkey is now fully on board the Nato-led operation. Its support is vital.
Unlike in the past, today Turkey is admired in the Middle East, for its economic success, its robust democracy and its ambitious foreign policy.
Its endorsement gives the intervention in Libya much-needed credibility among a sceptical Arab public. But any significant civilian casualties from air attacks would damage that credibility, something Turkey is especially keen to avoid.
Embargo enforcer
Turkey’s foreign minister is also urging other participants at the London summit on Libya to move their attention on from military action to what kind of political settlement might be possible after the fighting stops.
Turkey has been in regular contact with Col Gaddafi since the start of the crisis there, trying to persuade him to step down.
It had no success, but Mr Davutoglu believes a ceasefire and some kind of agreement between the two sides is preferable to continued armed conflict.
Members of pro-Islamic groups with a poster of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, attend a protest against foreign intervention in Libya outside the US embassy in Ankara, Turkey, 27 March 27 2011 Despite protests at home, Mr Davutoglu says Turkey is now fully on board the Nato-led operation
He argues that Turkey’s long-standing trade links with Libya, its relations with both the Gaddafi side and the opposition, and its experience in evacuating around 30,000 of its own citizens and those of other countries, give it unique advantages to lead operations like setting up humanitarian aid corridors.
Turkey has sent five navy ships and a submarine to enforce the arms embargo, and the parliament has authorised the despatch of Turkish troops for possible peace-keeping roles.
Travelling to London with Mr Davutoglu it was clear the extraordinary events of the past two months have not dented his bubbling confidence in his country’s ability to ride the wave, and benefit.
He has been more hyperactive than ever, constantly on the move, continually talking to political leaders in all the countries affected by the Arab Spring.
Turkey, he says, is backing the process of peaceful democratic transformation, and is telling Arab leaders that.
Still, the new landscape is a worrying one for a country that has profited so well from the close ties it built with the very regimes now under threat. Syria, which shares a long border with Turkey, is a particular concern.
Mr Davutoglu assured me his government was giving the same message to President Bashar al-Assad that it has given to every other autocratic leader in the region – that he must embrace reform, or risk being swept away by it.
But privately Turkish officials fear a sectarian war, or a wider Middle East conflict, if Mr Assad is forced out.
Ahmet Davutoglu may go down as one of the most important foreign ministers of modern times, with many successes to his credit.
But the so-called “zero problems with neighbours” policy needs a new name.
via BBC News – Libya: Turkey’s FM Ahmet Davutoglu outlines policy.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Saturday delivered a speech in a conference on “Turkey’s Policies for Engagement in the Contemporary World” in Istanbul, co-hosted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the British think-tank, Wilton Park.
“The time has come for a political change and transformation in the Middle East. We want security and freedom at the same time. Turkey will be in service in order to ensure that this difficult task of maintaining security and freedoms is achieved. We should desire for others what we desire for ourselves. In this sense, Turkey supports changes to end that in the transformation process in the Middle East,” Davutoglu told the conference.
Davutoglu said ways to secure political change was as much important as the task itself.
“The method is also very important. Change should come without causing instability. We want change, one which would not give way to political instability but maintain public order,” he said.
Davutoglu says Turkey wants to create a new region on friendship, good neighborhood
Turkey’s foreign minister said on Saturday that Turkey wanted to create a new region based on friendship, good neighborhood and integration.
Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey’s target was not to have only two or three sovereign countries in its region in 2023–when the Turkish Republic would celebrate the 100th anniversary of its foundation.
“Every person is equal in this region, and we are sharing the same geography,” he said in a Wilton Park conference on “Turkey’s polices for engagement in the contemporary world” in Istanbul.
Davutoglu said Turkey wanted a comprehensive security, stability and freedom in 2023.
Also, the minister said Turkey was eager to become a full member of the European Union (EU), but at the same time it wanted to boost its relations with the Middle East, Russia and the United States.
Davutoglu said Turkey was also willing to become an active power in its geography.
