Turkish Forum

Tag: Simon Peres

  • Iran, Azerbaijan, And Turkey: Zero Problems? Zero Chance

    Iran, Azerbaijan, And Turkey: Zero Problems? Zero Chance

    Iran, Azerbaijan, And Turkey: Zero Problems? Zero Chance

    1756BC07 A691 4E52 87BC FB1C41EB49C4 mw800 mh600 sMajor General Hasan Firuzabadi, the chief of the armed forces general staff, claimed he’d been misquoted.

    August 18, 2011
    By Robert Tait
    It hardly looked like the embodiment of a quiet-neighborhood policy.

    First Iran’s top military commander warned Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, in language that brooked no diplomacy that he faced a “grim fate” for betraying “Islamic principles.”

    Then the head of an influential committee in Iran’s parliament announced that the de facto head of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Murat Karayilan — a man sought by Turkey for “terrorist” activities — had been captured by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the Kandil Mountains.

    Unsurprisingly, each story created a stir in the countries next door — before promptly being denied by Iran.

    Major General Hassan Firuzabadi, head of Iran’s general staff, had not in fact declared that “the people’s awakening cannot be suppressed” or accused Aliyev’s government of “giv[ing] freedom to the Zionist regime [Israel] to meddle in [his] country’s affairs,” according to a statement issued by the Iranian Embassy in Baku. Nor had he accused Aliyev of giving “command to bar Islamic rules.”

    Such quotes — despite their wide attribution — were the result of a “media misunderstanding,” the statement said.

    So too, it seems, were reports carried by Iranian news agencies of Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, announcing the arrest of Karayilan, widely seen as the PKK’s No. 2 figure behind Abdullah Ocalan, currently serving a life sentence in Turkey.

    With the Turkish media in a frenzy and Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, calling his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi for clarification, Iran again backtracked. Borujerdi told Turkey’s ambassador to Tehran that he had been misquoted and had actually said that “it would be better had [Karayilan] been captured,” according to the Istanbul newspaper “Today’s Zaman.”

    A Warning Shot?

    So was it all just an unfortunate communication breakdown?

    Not in the view of many Azerbaijani and Turkish observers, who believe it followed a well-trodden path of Iran’s Islamic regime playing diplomatic hardball. Nor did it wash with Azerbaijan’s government, whose relations with Tehran have long been tense.

    Firuzabadi’s purported remarks prompted the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry to deliver an official protest to the Iranian Embassy in Baku.

    Then Azerbaijani police arrested three members of the banned Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (AIP), a radical group that Baku claims is funded by Tehran with the aim of creating instability.

    The three — party Deputy Chairman Arif Qaniyev, Ramin Bayramov, the editor of an Islamist news site, and party member Abgul Suleymanov — were initially charged with illegal possession of weapons and drugs.

    But in fact the arrests — and Firuzabadi’s comments — had a wider context. A joint statement from the Azerbaijani National Security Ministry and Prosecutor-General’s Office said they were also suspected of “hostile activity against Azerbaijan” — apparent code language for being in the pay of Iran.

    Iran’s Islamist Front

    Accusations by Azerbaijan of Iranian interference, voiced periodically since the Azeris’ independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have intensified recently.

    Baku has accused Tehran of being behind an increasing number of protests against Aliyev’s secular, Western-backed regime. These include demonstrations organized on Facebook in March and a rally staged outside the Education Ministry in December 2010 in response to the Azerbaijani ban on Islamic hijab in schools.

    Islamic Party head Movsum Samadov called for Ilham Aliyev’s downfall.

    Azerbaijan’s official nervousness led to the arrest earlier this year of the AIP’s leader, Movsum Samadov, who vehemently criticized the ban and then called on his website for Aliyev to be toppled.

    Azerbaijani political analyst Arastun Orujlu says the latest arrests, unlike Samadov’s, are directly related to Iran’s actions and aimed at sending a signal to Tehran. While the Azerbaijani authorities “cannot arrest Firuzabadi,” they can arrest “those whom they consider to have close ties with Iran. By this way they also send a message to Iran.”

    Vafa Gulzade, president of the Baku-based Caspian Policy Studies Foundation and a former Azerbaijani national-security adviser, believes Iran yearns for an Islamic republic to be established in Azerbaijan.

    “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran immediately began an aggressive policy against Azerbaijan,” Gulzade says. “First, it was an attempt to export the Islamic religion, Hizballah-style, to Azerbaijan. A lot of Iranians came to Azerbaijan and spent a lot of money and arranged cells of Hizballah in the whole territory of Azerbaijan. Iran is continuing this job, to create in Azerbaijan cells and to support groups of Azerbaijanis for Iranian groups.”

    Sharing Suspicions

    Baku’s suspicions are fueled by the strong ethnic, religious, and cultural links between Azerbaijan and Iran. The modern Azerbaijani state was once part of Iran before being annexed by Russia in the 19th century. Nearly nine out of 10 Azeris share Iran’s official Shi’ite Islamic faith. And most tellingly, Azeri — a language close to Turkish — is spoken by around a quarter of Iran’s population, mainly in the northern provinces bordering Azerbaijan.

    Yet these common bonds mean the suspicion cuts both ways. Iran feels threatened by Azerbaijan’s close alliance with Tehran’s two arch-enemies, the United States and Israel, and with NATO. Azerbaijan provides around 20 percent of Israel’s oil supplies while Baku recently purchased Israeli weapons worth an estimated $300 million.

    For Tehran, such links provide its Western foes with the perfect launching pad to foment division within its own population.

    As the Texas-based think tank Stratfor noted in March: “Tehran…is concerned about Baku’s use of its links to certain parts of Iran’s ethnic Azerbaijani population to sow discord within Iran and serve as a launching point for the West into Iran. Tehran most recently accused Baku of such actions in the Green Movement’s failed attempt at revolution in 2009. Geopolitically, the two countries’ strategic interests often clash. Iran has strong ties with Armenia (Azerbaijan’s foe), while Azerbaijan has good relations with the West, and political and military ties to Israel — both of which are uncomfortable for Iran.”

    Israel’s Shimon Peres visits Baku — and makes Tehran nervous.

    The idea that Israel could use the Azerbaijanis as a potential fifth column against Iran echoes a similar suspicion voiced in the past about Israeli infiltration of the Kurdish populations in Iran and Iraq. Indeed, senior officials with Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, have spoken openly of having a presence in Iran’s Kurdish areas.

    The truth of this, according to Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born political commentator with Israeli citizenship, is hard to establish. “According to reports in the Israeli press, Israeli military training and communication companies were active in Kurdistan a number of years ago but whether they or the Mossad continue to be there is unclear,” he told RFE/RL in an e-mail.

    “Iraq as a whole is an area of interest for the state of Israel, because of its importance to the Arab world, Iran, and the United States. It would be natural and logical for Israel to want to have influence there,” Javedanfar continued. “Whether it can is another question. With Israel’s increasing diplomatic isolation, more countries in the Middle East are moving away than toward Israel under [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu.”

    Iran: ‘The Kurds For Syria’

    But according to Sadraddin Soltan, a Baku-based analyst on Iranian affairs, Tehran is pressuring Azerbaijan to send a signal to Baku’s more powerful ally, Turkey, over one of Iran’s key foreign-policy preoccupations, Syria. The Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has, along with the United States, bitterly criticized the brutal suppression by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — Iran’s close friend — of mass protests against his rule.

    “Tehran is irritated by all these developments. Iran is closely following NATO-Azerbaijan, U.S.-Azerbaijani ties,” Soltan says. “Through Firuzabadi’s statements, Iran is exerting pressure on Turkey and the U.S. [and sending the message] that it can create obstacles to their ally Azerbaijan, just as they [the Turks] press the Syrian regime.”

    The same belief has gained ground in Turkey to explain Iran’s recent behavior over the recent phantom PKK arrest. The claim followed reports of recent Iranian incursions into Iraq to root out members of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), a militant Iranian-Kurdish group (allied to the PKK) that had been mounting an effective sabotage campaign.

    Even more pertinently, according to Turkish commentators, is that it preceded an anticipated offensive by Turkey in the coming weeks against PKK strongholds. Intelligence cooperation against Kurdish militants has been part of a general rapprochement between Ankara and Tehran in recent years. Knowing Turkish intentions to act against the PKK, some believe, Iran saw its chance to indulge in some underhand diplomacy.

    “Iran is sending a message to Turkey,” wrote Markar Esayan in “Today’s Zaman.” “A message saying it is willing to take action against the PKK in return for concessions by Turkey regarding the Syrian issue. To Turkey [the message is] you have a dominant role in the uprisings in Syria, which is an indispensible ally to us in the region. If you give up on Syria, we will deal with the PKK together; otherwise, we will become allies with the PKK.”

    RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service contributed to this report from Baku

  • Talking Turkey About Israel

    Talking Turkey About Israel

    Philip Giraldi *

    The Israeli invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of civilians was such an egregious error in judgment that the usual suspects are working overtime to make it all look like a heroic defense of democratic values. The expected beneficiary of the “defensive action,” the ruling Kadima Party, so miscalculated that it is now likely to lose today’s election, with the Israeli electorate convinced that an even more extreme right-wing government is the only solution to the moderate right-wing bungling.

    Israel will likely choose hard-right nationalism by electing Bibi Netanyahu as the next prime minister. Netanyahu has never let any values, democratic or otherwise, stand in his way in his quest for a Greater (Arab-free) Israel encompassing all of the West Bank and running from the Litani River in Lebanon in the north to the Suez Canal in the south. He has already promised that if elected he will not turn any occupied land over to the Palestinians.

    There have been numerous signs that the world is no longer buying into the Israeli creation myth, even in the United States, where the suffering of the Gazans, neatly concealed by most of the mainstream media, nevertheless produced an outpouring of sympathy. The beleaguered little state of Israel founded as a homeland and refuge for the victims of persecution in Europe has become a regional military superpower ruled by a corrupt political class, with a socialist economy kept afloat by the U.S. taxpayer. Israel continues and even expands its occupation of the lands of its neighbors and engages in the brutal suppression of those who resist. Far from seeking a political solution that would create two states side by side, it has deliberately aborted every genuine peace initiative and now seeks absolute regional hegemony, pressing forward with racist policies that marginalize its own citizens of Arab descent. Most of the world has finally realized that claiming perpetual victimhood as a shield against criticism does not work very well when you can muster Merkava tanks, helicopter gunships, and white phosphorus against a civilian population.

    The sharp exchange between Israeli President Shimon Peres and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Davos on Jan. 29 exemplifies Israel’s public relations problem and also casts light upon what steps the Israeli government and its friends in the United States are taking to counteract the negative press. Media reports suggest that Israel preceded its attack on Gaza by alerting a network of supporters to post comments on blogs, saturating the Web with the Israeli government’s justification for its action. This was evident on a number of blogs, including Huffington Post and the Washington Note. Many of the posters were Israelis, and it is believed that a number of them were active-duty military personnel selected for their fluency in English and other European languages as well as their familiarity with the Internet.

    The coverage of the Erdogan-Peres exchange was carefully managed in the U.S. media, but less restrained in Europe and the Middle East. In a one-hour discussion of Gaza moderated by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, an odd choice for such an important discussion, Peres was allowed 25 minutes to speak in defense of the Israeli attack. Erdogan and two other critics on the panel were given 12 minutes each. The YouTube recording of the debate shows 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.

    Four days later the Washington Post featured an op-ed entitled “Turkey’s Turn From the West” by Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish-born, American-educated academic who is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). WINEP was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Cagaptay is also on the board of the American Turkish Friendship Council, one of several Turkish lobbying groups that are supportive of the Israel-Turkey relationship. A review of Cagaptay’s writings reveals that he is AIPAC’s go-to guy for any argument that Turkey is becoming more anti-Western and religious.

    That Cagaptay is a genuine expert on the country of his birth is clear, but his view on developments there is very much shaped by who pays him. He finds anti-Semitism lurking everywhere in Turkey and being “spread by the political leadership.” He is astonished by Erdogan’s assertion at Davos that Israel is “killing people.” He finds inexplicable the prime minister’s belief that there was “Jewish culpability for the conflict in Gaza” and that the “Jewish-controlled media outlets were misrepresenting the facts.” For good measure, Cagaptay believes it “doubtful whether Turkey would side with the United States in dealing with the issue of nuclear Iran,” and he sees a regrettable Turkish “solidarity with Islamist regimes or causes.”

    AIPAC’s Turkey expert might be surprised to learn that most of the world, which saw the images of dying Palestinian children on nightly television, would probably agree with Erdogan. Israel planned its invasion of Gaza six months in advance, timed the assault for maximum political benefit for the ruling party and to engage the incoming U.S. president in its policies, committed war crimes against a largely defenseless civilian population, and then kept journalists out of the combat zone so it could lie about everything that it was doing. The U.S. media in particular chose to ignore the carnage and present the Israeli point of view. Though it would be unfair to claim that the media is controlled by any ethnic or religious group, it is certainly true that Jewish organizations mobilized to make sure that pro-Israel commentary far exceeded any reporting of Palestinian suffering.

    Cagaptay likewise fails to see what the rest of the world sees regarding Iran. No one admires Iran’s government, but America’s European allies, not just Turkey, will not support yet another war in the Middle East, even if Tehran does move closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon. Turkey’s development of closer ties with the Islamic world, which Cagaptay tellingly insists on calling “Islamist,” is also an understandable response to being repeatedly snubbed in its bids to join the European Union, something that even WINEP’s reliable scholarly claque surely knows to be true.

    Efforts to control and spin the narrative, to turn black into white, have been unrelenting since the Israelis decided to attack Gaza. Cagaptay is only a part of that effort, but his smearing of Turkey and its elected leaders is unfortunate, particularly as his newspaper audience probably knows little about Turkey and will assume that the analysis is credible. Anyone who knows Turks well knows that they are an exceedingly stubborn and honorable people who will invariably say what they think to be true. Prime Minister Erdogan spoke the truth in Davos and has been speaking the truth about the invasion of Gaza. Attempts to label him anti-Semitic and to denigrate the Turks in general will certainly have some impact, most certainly on the U.S. Congress, which will rapidly fall into line and comply with AIPAC’s instructions on an appropriate punishment. But Israel’s attempt to portray itself as always the victim of a global anti-Semitic, anti-Western conspiracy just will not stand any more, no matter how many Soner Cagaptays are paid by AIPAC to write for the Washington Post.

    Source: www.antiwar.com, 10.02.2009

    * Philip Giraldi is a former officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency who became famous for claiming in 2005 that the USA was preparing plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons in response to a terrorist action against the US, independently of whether or not Iran was involved in the action. He is presently a partner in an international security consultancy,  Cannistraro Associates.