Turkish Forum English

Tag: US-Turkey relations

NATO or Israel?

James Joyner | June 03, 2010

Israel’s attack on a Gaza aid flotilla, killing nine, has earned near-universal condemnation, with even sympathetic observers terming it the act of a bully, tone deaf, staggeringly stupid, tactically incompetent, a major tactical blunder, a moral victory for Hamas, and an unqualified disaster for Israel’s reputation. But Israel is rather accustomed to international scorn and has every right to chart its own course. However, this latest incidence has potentially grave consequences for United States and its transatlantic allies.

Turkey, a founding member of the NATO alliance and heretofore Israel’s only friend in the region, is apoplectic.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu proclaimed Tuesday morning, ““Psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey.” As idiotic as that may seem — there were 9 deaths, not 3000, and the incident involved provocateurs flouting a naval blockage, not innocents in the Turkish homeland — the actions of his government indicate that the sentiment is genuine.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “state terrorism” and he told his parliament the Israeli assault violated “international law, the conscience of humanity and world peace.” Erdogan proclaimed the incident “a turning point in history. Nothing will be the same again.” Serkan Demirtas, writing in Hurriyet, sees “a long-term diplomatic war between Turkey and Israel” as “unavoidable.” Similar statements have been made by Turkish pundits and analysts, including those considered moderates.

Erdogan, noting what seems to be the end of the Turkish-Israeli alliance for the foreseeable future, proclaimed, “Turkey’s hostility is as strong as its friendship is valuable.” And veteran columnist Sami Kohen proclaims, “Turkey now is one of the sides in the Middle East conflict. It is quite clearly opposed to Israel.”

Erdogan also raised the specter of Article 5: “Citizens of member states were attacked by a country that was not a member of NATO,” he said. “We think that should be discussed in NATO.” Again, this is overblown. Whatever one thinks of the Israeli action, it was decidedly not an attack on Turkey “in Europe or North America.” And, while Article 6 makes provisions for extending the umbrella of protection to “forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Party” operating in the Mediterranean Sea, it rather clearly is intended to apply to the defense of colonial territories.

But security analysts Steve Hynd and Robert Mackey think this irrelevant and that if Turkey invokes the Charter, the U.S. will face a dire choice, indeed. As Mackey puts it:

Because if Turkey invokes the NATO charter and the US doesn’t react, then NATO is GONE. GONE and DEAD. Why? Because when the US was attacked on 9/11, the NATO charter was invoked–and that is why NATO troops are in Afghanistan today. 9/11 was proof that NATO was not just an ‘anti-Russian’ pact–that it applied anywhere. If the US doesn’t go along with a Turkish response…it will reveal NATO as being a “US pact”–that the entire alliance exists only to help the US. Oh, there will still be mutual defense treaties with the UK and maybe Germany. But that is just about it. And the US will have to go on its own in Afghanistan.

Legally, this strikes me as over-reach. But politically? At very least, Turkey’s continued membership in the alliance would be in question. They’ve already moved to distance themselves from the West in recent years. And, goodness knows, the European allies would be happy for any excuse at all to get out of Afghanistan.

All the major European powers have criticized Israel’s actions, with Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron all issuing stern statements. More interestingly, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has weighed in with uncharacteristically stern words:

I offer sincere condolences to the families of all victims and condemn the acts which have led to this tragedy. I add my voice to the calls by the United Nations and the European Union for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation into the incident.

As a matter of urgency, I also request the immediate release of the detained civilians and ships held by Israel.

While tame by op-ed standards, diplomats don’t use words like “victims” and “condemn” lightly.

National Interest senior editor Jacob Heilbrunn asks the right question: “Where does this leave Israel and America?”

Thus far, the Obama administration is keeping its powder dry, issuing a cautious statement expressing “deep regret at the loss of life in [the] incident, and concern for the wounded” while also stressing “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning’s tragic events as soon as possible.” That’s exactly the right position for the world’s superpower—and perhaps Israel’s only remaining friend—to take at the outset. But the facts are quickly coming in and it will be time to make tough calls.

In the meantime, stalling for time isn’t going to please anyone. Certainly not the Turks, who have already declared themselves “deeply unsatisfied” with the response.

Does it matter? American administrations have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel and against the international community dozens of times in the past. But the stakes are higher now.

Writing in this space, journalist and author Barbara Slavin declared, “Israel has scored an own-goal, shifting the narrative from Iran and its nuclear and human rights transgressions to Israel’s lack of regard for pro-Palestinian lives.” Former National Interest editor and current Naval War College professor Nick Gvosdev agrees, noting that the “argument that Iran is violating its international commitments and so should be sanctioned may be much harder to make.” And, as the Financial Times’s Gideon Rachman notes,

. . . a sanctions package against Iran is arguably as much in the interests of Israel, as in the interests of the US itself. The US may now feel that it has to go along with a UN condemnation of Israel to preserve the chances of getting its Iran resolution through. It would be a classic Israeli own goal, if their assault on the Gaza ships sank the choices of a new resolution on Iran.

Apparently, the impending World Cup has analysts thinking of soccer.

But Iran isn’t the only issue at stake. Turkey is a pivotal state bridging East and West, Christendom and Islam. The Christian Science Monitor’s Yigal Schleifer:

Ankara’s shift complicates a historic alliance between Turkey and the US, which has become more important in recent years. An air base in southern Turkey is one of the most important transit bases for ferrying troops and supplies to Afghanistan. Turkish mediation, meanwhile, had gotten Israel and Syria back to the peace table until that effort was aborted when the Gaza war broke out.

Increased tension between Turkey and Israel clouds one of the few sunny spots the US had previously enjoyed in the region.

The deterioration in the once-close relationship between Turkey and Israel has been mirrored by an equally precipitous rise in Turkey’s visibility and involvement in the Middle East, an area that it had kept at arm’s length for decades because of historical enmity and mutual suspicion.

Switching sports, the ball is now in Obama’s court. Will he handle this according to the national-security interests of the United States? Or will he continue a bipartisan tradition of subordinating our interests to Israel’s? My bet, alas, is on the latter.

James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. This essay was originally published by The National Interest. Photo credit: Getty Images.

June 3, 2010
Obama Again Avoids ‘G-Word’ In Armenian Remembrance Message

U.S. — US President Barack Obama speaks about reforming Wall Street and the financial reform bill in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York, 22Apr2010

24.04.2010

Emil Danielyan

Backtracking on a campaign pledge, U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday again declined to describe the 1915 massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide as he honored the victims of “one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.” (UPDATED)

As was the case in April 2009, Obama used instead the Armenian phrase Meds Yeghern, or Great Calamity, to mark the 95th anniversary of the start of the mass killings and deportations. “In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire,” he said. “Today is a day to reflect upon and draw lessons from these terrible events.”

“The Meds Yeghern is a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of the past,” he added.

Obama at the same time again made clear that he stands by his statements on the subject issued during the 2008 U.S. presidential race. “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” he said.

In a January 2008 statement to the Armenian community in the United States, Obama, then a presidential candidate, called the Armenian genocide “a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.” “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that president,” he said at the time.

Obama backpedaled on that pledge after taking office, anxious not to antagonize Turkey, a key U.S. ally. In his April 2009 statement on Armenian Remembrance Day, Obama implicitly cited the need not to undermine the U.S.-backed rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey. The process culminated in the signing of Turkish-Armenian normalization agreements in Zurich last October.

Obama’s latest message contains no explicit references to the normalization process that has stalled because of Ankara’s refusal to unconditionally normalize ties with Yerevan. It only voices support for continued historical dialogue between Armenian and Turkish societies.

“I salute the Turks who saved Armenians in 1915 and am encouraged by the dialogue among Turks and Armenians, and within Turkey itself, regarding this painful history,” Obama said. “Together, the Turkish and Armenian people will be stronger as they acknowledge their common history and recognize their common humanity.”

The current and previous U.S. administrations have strongly encouraged and even sponsored Turkish-Armenian contacts at various levels. The U.S. State Department was, for example, behind the establishment in 2001 of the non-governmental Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC).

TARC called for the unconditional normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations before being disbanded in 2004. It is also famous for commissioning a study on the events of 1915 from the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

In a 2003 report, the ICTJ concluded that the Armenian massacres “include all of the elements of the crime of genocide” as defined by a 1948 United Nations convention. Former U.S. President George W. Bush repeatedly cited the ICTJ study in his April 24 statements.

U.S. — President Barack Obama (L) greets Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, 12Apr2010

Obama on Saturday also paid tribute to the “remarkable spirit” of the Armenian people. “The indomitable spirit of the Armenian people is a lasting triumph over those who set out to destroy them,” he said. “Many Armenians came to the United States as survivors of the horrors of 1915. Over the generations Americans of Armenian descent have richened our communities, spurred our economy, and strengthened our democracy.”

These words will hardly placate influential Armenian-American advocacy groups that had strongly backed Obama’s presidential bid and now deplore his reluctance to use the word “genocide.” They have also criticized the Obama administration for opposing a congressional draft resolution affirming the Armenian genocide.

The Turkish government scrambled to halt further progress of the resolution after it was approved by U.S. House Foreign Affairs committee on March 4. Turkish leaders also warned Obama against uttering the politically sensitive word in his April 24 message. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested after meeting Obama in Washington last week that the U.S. president will heed the warning.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian seemed resigned to that as he addressed the nation Thursday on the future of the Turkish-Armenian normalization process. But he implied that Obama’s failure to term the 1915 massacres a genocide will not halt the decades-long Armenian campaign for genocide recognition.

“Our struggle for the international recognition of the Genocide continues,” said Sarkisian. “If some circles in Turkey attempt to use our candor to our detriment, to manipulate the process to avoid the reality of the 24th of April, they should know all too well that the 24th of April is the day that symbolizes the Armenian Genocide, but in no way shall it mark the time boundary of its international recognition.”

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/2023467.html

April 25, 2010
Armenian Genocide Vote Threatens US-Turkish Ties at Key Moment

Thursday’s vote by a Congressional committee condemning the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as “genocide” is almost certain to complicate U.S. ties with Turkey, a long-time strategic ally and increasingly influential player in the Middle East and central and southwest Asia.

The 23-22 vote by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives prompted the immediate recall of Turkey’s ambassador here and an announcement by Ankara that ratification of a pending U.S.-backed treaty with Armenia will be frozen.

And the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which sent several senior Turkish lawmakers and hired a high-priced public relations firm, as well as a former House speaker, to lobby against the resolution, is likely to take much stronger measures if it reaches the House floor later this year, according to both U.S. and Turkish analysts.

“We are seriously concerned that the adoption of this draft resolution …will harm Turkey-U.S. relations and impede the efforts for the normalization of Turkey-Armenia relations,” the Turkish embassy said in a release after the vote.

“This decision, which could adversely affect our cooperation on a wide common agenda with the United States, also regrettably attests to a lack of strategic vision,” it added.

After maintaining silence about the resolution for several weeks, the administration of President Barack Obama came out against it just hours before the vote – apparently too late to affect the final outcome, according to a number of lawmakers.

“We do not believe that the full Congress will or should vote on that resolution and we have made that clear to all the parties involved,” Clinton said during a press conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, Thursday morning in the administration’s first official statement on the issue.

The administration, which needs Turkey’s support on a slew of key issues, ranging from Arab-Israeli peace to Iran and Afghanistan, is likely to lobby hard against any effort by lawmakers to bring the resolution to the floor, despite the fact that both Obama and Clinton promised to support some version of it during their 2008 presidential primary campaigns.

At least half a million U.S. citizens, many of them concentrated in the electorally powerful state of California, claim Armenian ancestry.

The Armenian-American community, which is among the wealthiest and best organized of the many U.S. ethnic minorities, has long sought recognition of the 1915 death toll as a genocide. In 1975 and again in 1984, it succeeded in getting such resolutions passed by the House, although never in the Senate.

In 2007, the Foreign Affairs committee approved a similar “genocide” resolution. However, it was never referred to the floor of the House due to intense opposition by the administration of President George W. Bush backed by the powerful “Israel Lobby,” which has frequently intervened in Congress on behalf since the late 1980s when Ankara and Israel began building a strategic alliance.

But Israeli-Turkish ties have become increasingly strained in recent years, particularly since Israel’s “Cast Lead” military campaign in Gaza, which Erdogan strongly denounced in a heated exchange with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in late January last year, just days after the offensive had ended.

A number of subsequent incidents, most recently the apparently deliberate televised humiliation in January by Israel’s deputy foreign minister of Ankara’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, have added to the strains.

Indeed, some analysts here and in Turkey suggested that the resolution’s passage was due as much to the Israel Lobby’s failure to oppose it, as to the Obama administration’s delay in coming out against it. Several key lawmakers who are considered close to the Lobby, notably Gary Ackerman, Brad Sherman, and committee chair Howard Berman, spoke in favor of its approval.

“In the past, the pro-Israel community has lobbied hard against previous attempts to pass similar resolutions, citing warnings from Turkish officials that it could harm the alliance not only with the United States but with Israel…,” noted the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) Friday.

“In the last year or so, however, officials of American pro-Israel groups have said that while they will not support new resolutions, they will no longer oppose them, citing Turkey’s heightened rhetorical attacks on Israel and a flourishing of outright anti-Semitism the government has done little to stem,” it asserted.

The resolution, which was introduced by a California Democrat, calls on the president to use the annual presidential statement on the 1915 mass deaths next month to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide.”

Turkey has argued that the Armenian deaths were a great tragedy played out under the chaotic conditions of World War I when the collapsing Ottoman Empire was under attack on many fronts, including internally in the form of a Russian-backed Armenian insurgency.

Unlike most of its predecessors, the Erdogan government has indicated a willingness to review the events of that time, possibly even in cooperation with Armenia with which it agreed only last September to establish diplomatic relations and re-open borders that have been closed since 1993.

It was hoped that that agreement, which was mediated by Switzerland with strong backing from Washington, would be quickly ratified by both countries and lead to the resolution of the territorial dispute between Armenia and oil-rich Azerbaijan over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh.

Despite U.S. urging – most recently in a conversation between Obama and Turkish President Abdullah Gul Wednesday – Erdogan has insisted that implementation of the treaty is dependent on progress in resolving the territorial dispute. Ankara’s decision to freeze the ratification process in the wake of Thursday’s committee vote here could deal a lethal blow to the treaty’s prospects.

In the four years since the committee last voted out a genocide resolution, Turkey’s strategic importance to Washington has significantly increased.

In addition to having the largest army among the European members of NATO and having recently increased its troop contribution to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, Turkey continues to permit the U.S. access to key military bases on its territory, provides critical supply routes to Iraq, and acts as an increasingly important transit route – bypassing both Russia and Iran – for Caspian and Central Asian oil and gas.

Ankara’s influence and involvement in the Arab world, particularly in Iraq and Syria, have grown sharply in recent years, and its friendly ties with Iran have positioned itself as a potential mediator between Tehran and the West.

Turkey has thus far resisted U.S. pressure to host a radar base that would be part of larger regional defense network designed to intercept Iranian missiles and to vote for stronger economic sanctions against Tehran on the U.N. Security Council, of which it is a member.

Some sectors, particularly those most closely associated with Israel here, have become increasingly concerned about Turkey’s growing orientation toward the Muslim world under Erdogan, who heads the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), in both its foreign and domestic policies.

Indeed, neoconservatives, whose views often reflect those of Israel’s Likud Party, have been attacking Erdogan and the AKP with growing fervor in recent months, accusing them of a systematic effort to weaken Turkey’s traditionally secular institutions, notably the once-dominant armed forces.

In a column coincidentally published Friday by the neoconservative Wall Street Journal, Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish-born specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), accused Erdogan of transforming Turkey into a “police state.”

At the same time, hard-line neo-conservatives, such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Journal’s editorial board, opposed the genocide resolution precisely because of fears that it will serve only to further poison bilateral relations with a country whose geo-strategic importance to Washington and its Israeli ally is simply too great.

www.antiwar.com

March 6, 2010
Turkish Diaspora Manages To Dismiss Us Congress’s Resolution On “armenian Genocide”

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

The United States, Washington, Aug. 25 /Trend News, N.Bogdanova/

The political circuits of Washington DC and US based Turkish Diaspora organizations are not accepting seriously the Armenian initiatives concerning “Armenian genocide” in the US Congress and local law-making organizations, one of leaders of the Turkish Diaspora in California Karahan Mete toldTrend News.

For example, during the last several months Armenians tried to put through three resolutions in California State’s local Congress, but US based Turkish organizations (TCCA, Turkish Defense Fund, ATAA, TAAF, PAX Turcica, TAAC, Turkuaz, TADF) managed to dismiss those three resolution projects, Mete said.

He mentions that, the State of California, where Armenian and Greece Diasporas are dominant – is the center for Armenian’s anti-Turkish activities.

Close relationship between Turkish Diaspora and Senator Darrel Steinberg helped to hinder implementation of a resolution project number AJR 14, which was dedicated to the issue of “Armenian genocide”, and was aimed to keep the “Armenian genocide” on agenda, Mete said.

The Turkish Diaspora also prevented Armenians’ another resolution number SB 234, which was aimed to propaganda the “Armenian genocide” issue in California’s schools.

The first version of this resolution meant that any Armenian could go to a school and talk about what happened in 1915 to his relatives, Mete said.

But in the last version (revised by the Turkish Diaspora) only those ones who participated in 1915 events can do these kinds of lectures at schools.

“And as nearly none of the participants are alive it seems impossible,” told Mete.

The third resolution project still remains on California Senate’s agenda under the number AB 961, and it is aimed to prohibit the cooperation between local government and organizations which are working with Turkey.

The Turkish Diaspora is working hard in Washington DC on dismissing the discussion of “Armenian genoside” in the US Congress during the up-coming fall session.

Besides the Turkish organizations, the Congressional Caucus on Turkey also works closely with this issue, Congressman Ed Whitefield (Co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on Turkey) office told Trend News.

According to Congressman Whitefield’s office, in an open editorial about US-Turkey relations the law-maker says that with Turkey’s record as such a steadfast ally to the U.S. during troubled times; it would be a dangerous misstep to unnecessarily risk alienating the Turkish people. Yet, efforts are, once again, afoot in the U.S. Congress to label the deaths of ethnic Armenians during the final days of the Ottoman Empire in World War I as genocide.

He stresses that, “This sort of proclamation, which bears no legal effect, would almost certainly be seen as a slap in the face to Turkey and a harpoon to U.S. relations with the country”.

According to Congressman, the “Armenian genocide” issue remains a matter of debate by historians, making it foolish, arrogant, and dangerous for politicians to make historical claims for political points”.

Ed Whitefield also adds that with the two countries (Turkey and Armenia) already working in step to resolve their differences and advance their relationship, U.S. involvement in the situation appears unnecessary and intrusive.

Turkish Weekly

August 25, 2009