Turkish Forum

Tag: Soner Cagaptay

  • Turkey’s “First Christian”

    Turkey’s “First Christian”

    Editor’s Note: Soner Cagaptay is Director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. He is the co-author, with Scott Carpenter, of Regenerating the U.S.-Turkey Partnership.

    By Soner Cagaptay – Special to CNN

    cross

    Amidst news of Turkey’s political turmoil – a parliamentary boycott led by the main opposition party has overshadowed the June 12th election victory of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP), and the Turkish political system faces a stalemate – a key development has almost gone unnoticed. On June 12th, the Turks elected the country’s first Christian deputy, Mr. Erol Dora, to the Ankara parliament (Meclis), literally making him Turkey’s “First Christian.”

    Mr. Dora’s election to the Turkish Meclis is a true breath of fresh air. Not counting a handful of Christians who were allocated legislative seats in the twentieth century due to legal quotas, Mr. Dora is the first Christian deputy elected to sit in the Ankara legislature.

    This is big news. Christians represent just 1/1000 of the country’s population. In a symbolic move, Muslim Turks have chosen to elect a Christian Turk to represent them.

    This development presents an opportunity for Turkey to come to terms with its rich Christian heritage. Moreover, it signals that the country’s opposed camps, clustered around the conservative AKP and its liberal-secular opponents in an almost homogenously Muslim Turkey, can learn to live together under a liberal roof.

    The first element of symbolism in Mr. Dora’s election is that he has de facto become the “First Christian” in Turkey, which was, as many say, “the first country in history to have a Christian majority.”

    Since Jesus, Turkish Christians have dwindled in numbers and the country’s Christian heritage has weathered a tumultuous and debilitating period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, with Mr. Dora in the Meclis, Christian heritage in Turkey has found voice, as well as a reminder of the country’s thriving, and once dominant, Christian past.

    However, the symbolism of Mr. Dora’s election does not stop there.

    Today, Turkey is about to draft its first civilian constitution. As the military drafted the country’s previous charters, all Turks agree that they need a new constitution. But the question remains: will this charter assure the opposing factions of the society, including those clustered around the AKP and its opponents, that they can live together?

    Since the AKP came to power in 2002, the struggle between pro- and anti-AKP groups has nearly torn Turkey in two. There have been coup allegations against the AKP followed by the Ergenekon case.

    The opposition says the government has used the case not only to prosecute coup allegations, but also to crack down on its secular and liberal opponents. In addition, the AKP has levied massive tax fines against independent media. Furthermore, the judiciary is split along ideological lines. Conservative and secular powers steadfastly attempt to destroy each other.

    This, then, is the recipe for the new Turkey: pro-AKP and anti-AKP Turks try to undermine each other out of mutual fear. Hence, the country’s new constitution must provide room for everyone. If the Turks, who are over 99 percent Muslim nominally, can elect a Christian to represent themselves, surely they can write such a constitution.

    To that end, the AKP must realize that secular, liberal Turkey, which comprises at least half of the country’s population, is too big to ignore. And the secular liberals must realize that, unlike a decade ago, Turkey has a large, established conservative-Islamist elite and political party with widespread support.

    Both halves of the country must work together toward a new constitution, lest Turkey suffer a split down the middle. That would be bad for the country – the only experiment in the world that unites Islam and democracy – and for those watching it.

    Mr. Dora faces a tall order, whether or nor he is aware of it. First, he is elected to the Turkish parliament representing a Kurdish nationalist party. Second, he is a Christian voted in by Muslim constituents. Third, he sits in a conservative-Islamist dominated legislature as the deputy of a secular party. Then there is the issue of politics versus violence. Mr. Dora’s party, the BDP, does not hide its sympathies for the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK), which employs violence and terror attacks.

    The list is not done yet: in fact, Mr. Dora is neither Turkish, nor Kurdish, but rather an ethnic Syriac. He embodies every dichotomy facing Turkey: Kurdish and Turkish, Christian and Muslim, secular and conservative, Islamist and liberal, and last but not least, political activism versus violence.

    Yet he also represents hope for Turkey’s future. Mr. Dora’s very election stands as a sign that Turks can live together if they take a hint from his election: drafting a liberal charter that accommodates the country’s many identities and political aspirations.

    The views expressed in this article are solely those of Soner Cagaptay.

    via Turkey’s “First Christian” – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.

  • Soner Cagaptay: NATO’s Turkey Problem

    Soner Cagaptay: NATO’s Turkey Problem

    BY SONER CAGAPTAY

    The quarrel between Ankara and NATO over the proposed missile-defense initiative suggests that Turkey is becoming the Alliance’s “opt-out” member in operations in Muslim countries. The governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has so far refused to host the missile shield because it is directed against potential threats from two fellow Muslim countries—Syria and Iran. The AKP considers itself the defender of a politically defined “Islamic civilization” and has recently moved closer to Damascus and Tehran.

    Having already provoked a crisis with Washington when it voted against Iran sanctions at the United Nations Security Council in June, the AKP will …

    via Soner Cagaptay: NATO’s Turkey Problem – WSJ.com.

  • Bring Back the Caliphate

    Bring Back the Caliphate

    Soner Cagaptay
    Wall Street Journal
    October 7, 2009

    The reaction in Turkey to the recent death of Ertugrul Osman, heir to the Ottoman throne and successor to the last Caliph, could not be more shocking. Islamists in kaftans and long beards gathered in Istanbul two weeks ago to bury the titular head of the world Muslim community, a scotch-drinking, classical music-listening Western Turk who until recently lived on New York City’s Upper East Side.

    The Islamists’ embrace of Osman, a descendant of the westernized Ottoman sultans, provides a periscope into the Islamist mind: Islamism is not about religion or reality. Rather it is a myth and a subversion of reality intended to promote Islamism, a utopian ideology. Osman, raised by a line of West-leaning caliphs and sultans, loved Ataturk’s Turkey, yet the Islamists abused his funeral and the memory of the caliphate, changing it into a symbol for their anti-Western, anti-secular and anti-liberal agenda.

    Were Ertugrul Osman alive and were the Ottomans around today, he would be Sultan Osman V and no doubt, he would be going after the fundamentalists who abused his funeral in an attempt to distort his legacy.

    Despite what the Islamists want the world to believe, the Ottoman caliphate was not anti-Western. The Ottoman Empire always interacted with the West — an interaction that goes all the way back to 16th-century Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who envisioned himself as the Holy Roman emperor. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman sultans and caliphs embarked on a program of intense reforms to remake the Ottoman Empire in the Western image to match up with European powers. To this end, the caliphs launched institutions of secular education, and paved the way for women’s emancipation by enrolling them in those schools. By the beginning of the 19th century, the sultans and caliphs of the Ottoman Empire embodied Western life and Western values. The last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, considered the Ottoman state a Western power with a Western destiny. An enlightened man and avid artist, the caliph’s sought-after paintings, including nudes, are on exhibition at various museums, such as Istanbul’s new museum of Modern Art.

    It is therefore wrong to represent the Ottoman Empire as the antithesis to the secular republic Ataturk founded in 1923. True, when Ataturk turned Turkey into a secular republic in 1923 by abolishing the Ottoman state and the caliphate, Ataturk did noteradicate the sultan-caliphs’ legacy. Rather, he fulfilled their dream of making Turkey a full-fledged Western society. Ataturk’s reforms are a continuation of the late Ottoman Empire — he merely pursued Ottoman reforms to their logical conclusion.

    Moreover, Ataturk was the product par excellence of the Ottoman Empire. He was raised in Salonika, the hub of cosmopolitanism and Western culture in the reforming empire. He studied in secular Ottoman schools, and he was trained in the Westernized Ottoman military.

    The debate over the Ottoman caliphate’s legacy has ramifications not only for Turkey, but also for contemporary Muslims and the Western world’s desire to counter radical Islamists. Years before emergence of al Qaeda, the caliphs produced an antidote against radical jihadists, a progressive vision for a Western-oriented Muslim society. The sultan-caliphs built the institutional foundations of this society, including the first Ottoman parliament and constitution of 1876, and planted in it seeds of Western values, such as secular education and women’s emancipation. Modern Turkey owes its existence as much to Ataturk as to the sultan-caliphs who were among the first to promote liberal and Western values in a Muslim society.

    Now, the Islamists want to usurp the caliphate and its legacy. The fundamentalists first distort the caliphate’s politics, reimagining it as an anti-Western institution. Then, they portray the revival of this invented caliphate as the ultimate political dream in an anti-Western ideology.

    Eighty years ago, the Ottoman caliph-sultans imagined a Turkey that is more akin to modern Turkey than to the Islamist society envisioned by al Qaeda or others who dismiss Ataturk’s dream of a Western Turkey and liberal values as anomalies. Ertugrul Osman himself told Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas shortly before his death that “the republic has been devastating for our family, but very good for Turkey.”

    Caliph Osman was Turkish by birth, Muslim by religion, and a Westerner by upbringing. I want my caliph back, and so should all Muslims who want deliverance from the distorted and illiberal world envisioned by the Islamists.

    Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

    ===============================

    Ertugrul Osman, Link to Ottoman Dynasty, Dies at 97

    By FRED A. BERNSTEIN
    Published: September 24, 2009

    Ertugrul Osman, who might have ruled the Ottoman empire from a palace in Istanbul, but instead spent most of his life in a walk-up apartment in Manhattan, died Wednesday night in Istanbul. He was 97.


    Enlarge This Image
    Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

    His Imperial Highness Prince Osman Ertugrul of Turkey and Princess Zeynep in their two-bedroom walk-up on Lexington Avenue.

    The cause was kidney failure, according to his wife, Zeynep, who was visiting Istanbul with him when he died.

    Mr. Osman was a descendant of Osman I, the Anatolian ruler who in 1299 established the kingdom that eventually controlled parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Osman would have eventually become the Sultan but for the establishment of the Turkish Republic, proclaimed in 1923.

    For the last 64 years, Mr. Osman — formally His Imperial Highness Prince Ertugrul Osman — lived in a rent-controlled apartment in a four-story building on Lexington Avenue in the East 70s. At one time he kept 12 dogs in his home, a two-bedroom unit up a narrow, dim stairway, and enlisted neighborhood children to walk them.

    Given the gap between what might have been and what was, Mr. Osman was often asked if he dreamed that the empire would be restored. He always answered, flatly, no.

    “I’m a very practical person,” he told The New York Times in 2006. “Democracy works well in Turkey.”

    In an interview for Al Jazeera television in 2008, he refused to say an unkind word about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who led the revolution that deposed his family.

    Ali Tayar, an architect from Istanbul and a friend, said in 2006 that Mr. Osman had “no ambitions to return, and he doesn’t want anyone to think he does.”

    “But he’s an incredibly important link to Turkey’s past,” Mr. Tayar added.

    Born in 1912, Mr. Osman was the last surviving grandson of an Ottoman emperor; his grandfather, Abdul Hamid II, ruled from 1876 to 1909. In 1924, the royal family was expelled by Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. “The men had one day to leave,” Mr. Osman said. “The women were given a week.”

    Mr. Osman attended school in Vienna and moved to New York in 1939. He returned to Turkey for the first time 53 years later, in August 1992, at the invitation of the prime minister. On that trip, he went to see the 285-room Dolmabahce Palace, which had been his grandfather’s home (and where he had played as a child). He insisted on joining a tour group, despite the summer heat. “I didn’t want a fuss,” he said. “I’m not that kind of person.”

    As a young man, Mr. Osman ran a mining company, Wells Overseas, which required him to travel frequently to South America. Because he considered himself a citizen of the Ottoman Empire, he refused to carry the passport of any country. Instead, he traveled with a certificate devised by his lawyer. That might have continued to work had security measures not been tightened after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In 2004, he received a Turkish passport for the first time.

    Mr. Osman married Gulda Twerskoy in 1947. She died in 1985. At a party in 1987, he met Zeynep Tarzi Hanim, an Afghan princess. Nearly 30 years his junior, she had been raised in Istanbul and was living in New York. They married in 1991. He has no other survivors.

    Mr. Osman often impressed interviewers with his dry wit and knowledge of trends in politics, architecture and pop culture. When Didem Yilmaz, a filmmaker, interviewed Mr. Osman for “Seeking the Sultan,” a short documentary film about him, she expected to find him bitter about his life’s trajectory. Instead, she said, she found him to be “kind, understanding and contemplative.”

    At one point, she added, he said to her knowingly, “If I had a bad life, it would be better for your film.”

    This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

    Correction: October 5, 2009
    Because of an editing error, an obituary on Sept. 24 about Ertugrul Osman, a descendant of Turkish royalty, misstated the length of time his second wife, Zeynep, lived with him in a Manhattan apartment and misstated the ownership of 12 dogs that lived there at one time. Ms. Osman has lived there since the couple married in 1991, not “for the last 64 years.” (Mr. Osman had lived in the apartment for that length of time.) And the dogs were owned by Mr. Osman, not by the two of them.

  • Is Soner Çağaptay Walking the tightrope between morality and subservience?

    Is Soner Çağaptay Walking the tightrope between morality and subservience?

    Op-Ed

    [An open letter to Newsweek]

    Is Soner Çağaptay Walking the tightrope between morality and subservience?

    by MEHMET YILMAZ*

    As an enthusiastic Newsweek reader, I would like to express my disappointment over a recent article titled “Behind Turkey’s Witch Hunt,” written by Soner Çağaptay

    I  would like to state at the outset that this article has surely cast doubt on your credibility as a renowned journal, for anybody who is familiar with the societies and politics of Turkey and the United States would instantly notice that most of the author’s arguments are flawed and were written with less than benevolent intentions. Evidently, by penning this article, the author has tried to ingratiate himself with certain circles in Turkey that have been trying to dilute and obscure the ongoing Ergenekon case, in which a significant number of white-collar people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in various terrorist activities, aiming to ultimately overthrow the government by plotting a military coup.

    The author’s main argument is that the current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government is trying use the Ergenekon case as a means to curb freedoms and more importantly to edge out people who seem to be opposing the AK Party’s policies. The author indicates that there is a symbiotic relationship between the AK Party and the Gülen movement, a pacific spiritual social movement which the author wrongly calls a “tarikat” (Islamic order), and that the Turkish National Police Department is nothing but a tool for the realization of the AK Party’s goals. The author implies that: i) The National Police Department works under the command of the AK Party government; and ii) The Gülen movement supports the AK Party; so iii) The Gülen movement must also support — and since it is a powerful movement, it must control — the National Police Department. Doubtless, the syllogism here is way too simplistic, lacking credible evidence to substantiate it. Still, in an effort to undergird his arguments, the author uses some statistical data selectively and manipulates them to serve his purpose. Such efforts indeed run counter to his expected goal as one cannot help but think that this article is nothing but a manifestation of the author’s lack of moral and ethical scruples. For example, in regards to the number of people who are under surveillance, he wrote the following: “On April 26, Turkey’s justice minister said that police intelligence listens to the private conversations of 70,000 people; almost one in every 1,000 Turks lives under police scrutiny today. In the United States, that ratio is one in 137,000.” The author is wrong about the numbers as evidenced by the justice minister’s response at the Turkish Parliament to an interpellation vis-à-vis the number of wiretappings. In his response, the justice minister stated that he has no statistics regarding the number of wiretappings and instead sufficed to say that 12,888 recordings from the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 had been destroyed.

    Although the abovementioned ratio, not the numbers, were articulated by Fethi Şimşek, president of the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), there are two problems with the citation of Mr. Şimsek’s statement. First, the author used the information in a self-serving manner, disregarding the fact that Mr. Şimşek also said the number of wiretappings in Turkey is not beyond European standards. Second, not only in this quote but throughout the article, the author deliberately used the term “police” in the discussions of surveillance of people’s private communications, when he is expected to know as a “Turkey expert” that the National Police Department is not the only organization involved in surveillance activities in Turkey. For instance, in Turkey all interceptions of wire, oral and electronic communications follow a legal process, i.e., applications are processed by the TİB; accordingly, not only the National Police Department, but also the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the gendarmerie are granted permission to implement these interceptions. In addition, in order to listen to the private conversations of 70,000 people simultaneously, there would be a need for 70,000 people. Since the number of officers in the National Police Department is about 200,000 and the majority of them are not involved in intelligence activities, it is practically impossible for all wiretappings to be done by the police.

    Moreover, in recent years there has been a significant improvement with regard to Turkish law enforcement agencies’ adherence to democratic policies and implementation, due perhaps, largely, to these agencies’ conspicuous efforts to adapt themselves to the globalizing world, as well as to the positive influence of the democratic reforms made for EU accession. Contrary to Çağaptay’s portrayal of the situation in Turkey, I feel confident in saying that the common perception among people in Turkey is that the National Police Department, especially, has been working meticulously to make sure that all wiretappings and other surveillance activities are done within the confines of the law. In fact, this kind of work in turn has borne fruit in the sense that the National Police Department was able to capture documents and tapes containing private information, conversations and video recordings that belong to nearly 2,500 prominent Turkish citizens. These data were illegally stored by an army general while he was working as the head of intelligence at the gendarmerie who aimed most probably to use those recordings for blackmailing purposes, or in other words, for his own “witch hunting.” In parallel, he was arrested based on his involvement in the Ergenekon group, allegedly a terrorist organization. But somehow, the author and the like choose to remain aloof to these facts and still try to obscure the Ergenekon case by saying that it is not possible to plot a coup with the “few” bombs that were found by the police, while the numbers indeed are flabbergasting.

    On the other hand, the author mentions that the ratio with regard to the people under surveillance is one in 137,000 in the United States while it is one in 1,000 in Turkey. This, however, is another demonstration of fact distortion by the author, given that in Turkey almost all interceptions are done because of terrorism-related crimes, whereas by a simple Google search, a careful and well-intentioned person would realize that people involved in terrorism-related crimes are not included on the list of people under surveillance in the United States.

    In fact there is an enormous body of literature, as well as serious debate, over the issue of unlawful wiretapping in the United States, which has reached alarming levels, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City. What is ironic, as much as stunning, is not only the distortion of the facts about the figures in the US, but also the author’s comparison of Turkey with the United States in the first place. For the notorious civil rights violations under the rubric of “pre-emptive” anti-terrorism measures by the quondam US administration led by former President George W. Bush left indelible marks on the US’s image as a benign hegemon or the leader of the free world, and his successor, President Barack Obama, the man of hope, and his security team’s efforts to restore that tarnished image seem only to be exacerbating the damage caused by his predecessor.

    To give an example, despite some positive initial attempts with regard to upholding individual rights and freedoms, President Obama has lately started to recoil from that position as he has recently suggested the notion of “prolonged detention” on a perilous premise that prolonged detentions are necessary for some people who cannot be incarcerated for their past crimes because the evidence may be tainted. When the euphemisms are stripped away, what President Obama suggested is “indefinite detention without charges” or “preventive incarceration,” which is nothing but the continuation of the same old policies of the Bush administration. Thus, as the author has been living in the United States for a long time and following the sociopolitical developments of the country as an expert at a well-known think tank, his indifference to the omission of terrorist-related crimes from the above-mentioned list and his selective usage of the data seem to be more than carelessness on the part of the author.

    All in all, while the author’s intention, by singling out the police from the group of organizations involved in the interception of private communications in Turkey, seems to serve his attempt to endear himself to the known circles via building a case by creating a link between the police and the Gülen movement — i.e., the former is controlled by the latter — you can rest assured that his unsubstantiated arguments have done nothing but marred the impartiality and credibility of your publication. Moreover, I have to admit that given the author’s perception of the Gülen movement, i.e., he claims not to share the sinister view of “most Turks” about this movement’s spiritual message, the abovementioned link that the author suggests between the police and the Gülen movement perplexes more than it clarifies the reader about the nature of that supposed link. While trying to manipulate the reader by portraying the movement as a pernicious one, mentioning that the court filed a case against Gülen and that Gülen left Turkey and settled in the US, he does not mention that Gülen was acquitted of the charges of creating an illegal organization for the purpose of overthrowing Turkey’s secular state and replacing it with one based on Shariah. This, too, stands as another example of the author’s selective use of information.

    On a penultimate note, I would like to attract your attention to the author’s attempt at offering remedies, which is even more problematic, as he suggests that “there is a way out of this conundrum if the AK Party turns Ergenekon into a case that targets only criminals.” Clearly, the author presents nescience, or simply acts pretentiously, about the notion of the independence of the judiciary and advocates instead the kibitzing of the ruling party with the ongoing legal process.

    Finally, as I urge you to triangulate the information presented in the articles of this author that you plan to publish in the future in your magazine, I hope that you will take this letter merely as constructive criticism.

    *Mehmet Yılmaz is the assistant editor-in-chief of Zaman daily.

    Source: www.todayszaman.com, May 27, 2009

  • 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.

  • Misreading Turkey

    Misreading Turkey

    Letters to Editor

    Thursday, February 5, 2009; Page A16

    Regarding Soner Cagaptay’s Feb. 2 op-ed, “Turkey’s Turn From the West”:

    Mr. Cagaptay’s piece contained grossly misleading information purporting to be evidence of Turkey’s turning its back on the West.

    Since 2002, the AK Party has pursued a vigorous regional policy that aims to correct an anomaly of the Cold War era. Turkey strives to reintegrate itself into the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Far from being a choice, this is a necessity because of our geography. Our outreach to our neighbors is not done at the expense of our relationship with the West. On the contrary, it is complimentary to it. Interpreting our regional policy as a shift in our orientation misses the sophistication behind our efforts to stabilize a troubled neighborhood. Mr. Cagaptay’s piece, unfortunately, smells of ill-intent or is simply another sample of his poor analysis of Turkey.

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has underlined on a number of occasions that he criticizes Israel’s policies in Gaza, not Israelis or Jews per se. Indeed, he has said that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity. Despite Turkey’s objections to the war in Gaza, Turkey values its partnership with Israel and intends to maintain this special relationship, which has benefited our nations for decades.

    SUAT KINIKLIOGLU
    AK Party Deputy Chairman
    for External Affairs
    Spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Committee
    in the Turkish Parliament
    Ankara, Turkey

    Source:  www.washingtonpost.com, February 5, 2009