Turkey’s intriguing diplomacy

34 thoughts on “Turkey’s intriguing diplomacy”

1. Yes, Helena, it IS a dang shame the Turkish and Iranian governments show a heck of a lot more concern for the Gaza residents than all those dang US propped Arab regimes, combined.

2. Turkey is more important to Israel’s security than the rest of NATO put together, though it is unlikely that Tel Aviv recognises this.
   The appointment of Lieberman as the country’s chief diplomat is going to have consequences.
   The cunning bit of bullying that led to Abbas’s Goldstone Report coup is also having consequences, not only in Palestinian circles but also in Egypt (where, inter alia, Mubarak is not best pleased to see the unity deal collapse overrnight), and in Jordan where limits are being discivered, at last. And then, of course, there is Syria.
   One sometimes gets the impression that many Israelis think their country shares a border with South Carolina.
   On the other hand they do have the Kurds and Hariri on their side.

3. Oh what fun.
   I once listened to Radio Tirana during the period when the delightful Evner Hoxha was running Albania. I was really glad I was in the French Alps and could reassure myself that I had a solid grip on reality and that nobody had dopped a tab of acid in my beer as I listened to Enver’s interpretation of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.
   The spirit of Enver lives on however.
   I just had a peep to see if Caroline Glick at Jerusalem Post had worked herself up into as good a paroxysm of fury as the last time the Turks upset her. Then she called for them to be thrown out of Nato.
   Sadly she is still only protesting that absolutly nothing is going to happen to Haram Al Sharif and that it is all a paranoid fantasy of the Arabs. I would find it easier to believe her if the Israeli press didn’t insist on calling the place Temple Mount.
   So we have to wait with bated breath for the thunderbolts to hurtle towards Ankara.

4. Helena,
   than nearly all the Arab governments, combined!
   Helena you are right in your statement, but let not forgotten these regimes protected and some founded by your tax money to do so. this not knew each time people rise their voices they slap on their faces by most Americans or they telling us we are blaming US for all bad in our nation.
   Helena, your administrations lunched war on my country occupied my country on promises of freedom and democracy. after more than six years we ended with atrocities of our nation with proxy regime put in power midwife by Iran who believes in mullah rhetoric and extremists bad deformed version of Islam to bring a nation that was in 1980 on the top of the third world country list, what the US Secretary of state James Baker told Saddam’s Foreign Minster,Tareq Aziz, druing their meeting in Geneva in January, 1991, to discuss Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, namely, that “if Iraq did not comply with U.S. conditions “we’ll take you back to the pre-industrial stage.” Of course this statement was widely reported at the time. now US fulfil their promise now in Iraq.
   Helena your proxy regime that you accusing them about Gaza in same time they do not care about their own citizen, take this wildly reported case just two days ago I put all the details this what US rewards Iraqis and woman in Iraq.
   لا تحزني يا زهراء فكلنا عُراة مثلك
   شرف العلويات يهان
   اعتداء على اعلامية وسط بغداد

5. “I would find it easier to believe her if the Israeli press didn’t insist on calling the place Temple Mount.”
   Why shouldn’t the Israeli press call it the Temple Mount?

6. Derick, the reason that it is not called the Temple Mount is that the Jews themselves renounced the right to pray there.
   If you wish to suggest that the Muslim monuments be demolished and be replaced by the “Third Temple”, I would point out the status of Jerusalem as the third sanctuary in Islam. The Dome of the Rock is used everywhere as a symbol. As Juan Cole reminded us a few days ago, Muslims are a quarter of the world’s population. Offending a quarter of the world’s population is a brave action, that’s why Israel has not done it yet.

7. On the Turkish action with regard to the NATO exercise, this is popular in Turkey. It is not to say that the US embassy will not convince the Turkish government to change course. It is in the air.
   If the US forces the issue, I could imagine difficulties in Turkey. The last time I was in Istanbul, I saw very clearly the differences. In Galata, very European. Round the Blue Mosque, very Islamic. Long lines of Muslims waiting to enter an exhibition of the relics of the Prophet.
   If the US simply thinks it has to apply pressure, it is playing with fire. The Turkish military is pro-western, but the people are not.

8. Somehow the Turkish jets used to bomb the Kurds are not tainted, uh? Maybe the Turks should read Helena’s post on the lives of others or whatever she called that.
   They clearly exhibit the pattern of Arab states in the area of their people being more extreme than their governments, and I can see why the French are losing sleep over the idea of Turkey joining the EU. I know that AlexNo is obsessed with Juan Cole saying that 1 out of every 4 people is Muslim, in Paris it already probably is, and inviting the Turks in would turn it into another Ankara, with the new complication that now they are gravitating to Syria an Iran.
   The sheer numbers don’t mean much, they may collapse under their own weight, look at Pakistan and how the US/IMF had to prop them this year, or North Korea who can’t keep the lights on, or Syria with a big population and nothing productive nor GDP worth mentioning. Oil production is not proportional to population, and GDP, literacy, and prosperity are inverse to population size in these scenarios, and hopefully by the time they get to be a third of humanity their oil would run out, so my bet is the non-Islamic half of the globe. I am sure Cole will also live on my side but still make a buck selling books about how great the Islamic side is. Oh, Pirouz will also be on our side, but unlike Cole nobody would pay a dime for whatever he writes or thinks.

9. This may come as a shock to you Titus, but North Korea is not a Muslim country.

10. It’s called the Temple Mount because it is the site of the First and Second Temples. The rabbinical rulings saying Jews should not enter the area for fear of inadvertently descrating the Holy of Holies are irrelevant to the use of the name. I never suggested that the mosques be demolished and a Third Temple built, and neither has any Israeli government.

11. The US has a dependence on Turkish goodwill– especially in Central Asia!– that I think has been growing rapidly in the past couple of years. Remember Turkey’s unique value as a Muslim member of NATO. Turkey contributes some forces to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. (Israel, of course, doesn’t.) But beyond that, Turkish ‘soft power’, including of the moderately Islamist variety propounded by the AKP, is a huge force throughout Central Asia and an important bulwark against anti-US Islamist extremism.
    I think smart US decisionmakers (of whom there are some) already understand this– just as they understand that the ‘moderate’ form of Islamist political engagement pursued by the AKP and Fethullah Gulen is far, far better for regional stability than the repressive and aggressive form of ethnonationalism practised by the generals in decades past.

12. Friends, please keep the discussion to the topic of the main post!
    (Re the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, of course the chunk of land/foundation in question “is called” both things, by different sets of people. It doesn’t have just the one name.)
    And now, back to discussing Turkey, please…

13. Um Yes Turkey
    I expect State Department and the chaps in Tel Aviv will be having kittens about this.
    http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-189733-future-of-nuclear-plant-depends-on-turkish-russian-ties.html
    The fact that the construction and operation of the plant require advanced technology and a dependence on Russia for an extended period of time brought the issue of Turkey’s relations with Russia to the agenda. According to the same source, meetings have recently been organized in order to discuss these relations, as the project is expected to last some 50 to 100 years. At the meetings, problems caused by the lack of more than one bid in the tender have also been discussed
    I wonder who will enrich their Uranium?
    Turkey’s Energy situation is just a little dodgy at the moment as we are told we need to derate the generating power of dams by 25% to take global warming into account. The GAP project looks a bit optimistic in its projections of generating power.
    I wonder if the Turks still ship water to Israel or whether this has been cancelled due to the drought.
    The prospects for amendments to the Montreux Convention to allow large American warhips into the Black Sea look just a little fraught.

14. More good new from Turkey and Syria forge closer ties

15. And yet more Turkey.
    This independent thinking about their own enlightened interest is good to see. There will however be a lot of excitement if they take strong measures against the Iraqi Kurds. There is said to be a large amount of Israeli investment and “contractors” in Iraqi Kurdistan.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121000.html
    Syria said on Tuesday it would hold military exercises with Turkey, shortly after Turkey canceled maneuvers with Israel.
    Ankara’s decision, which was commended by Syria, revived fears of cooler relations between Israel and NATO member Turkey.
    “We held our first joint land military exercise (with Turkey) last spring. And today we have agreed to do a more comprehensive, a bigger one,” said Syrian Defense Minister Ali Habib, speaking at a news conference.
    Turkey, a secular Muslim country, has been a key ally of Israel, but ties have been strained over Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s harsh criticism of Israel’s three-week offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December and January.
    Whatever happened to the dingbat who published a book called “The End of History”

16. Helena
    Can we have a topic on Water and the drought?
    It bridges nicely from Turkey (so I am still on topic with ths post) which has the headwaters of Tigris and Euphrates and includes the problem that the Jordan has dried up which means people will be eyeing the Litani again.
    The Jordanians can’t wait for World Bank on the Red Dead scheme, because they need cooling for their reactor.
    There were two apoplectic pieces in Ahram a couple of weeks ago about people meddling with the headwaters of the Nile in Ethiopia.

17. Turkey’s alliance with Israel is tempered by its vital interest in preventing an independent or truly autonomous Kurdistan along with Syria and Iraq. As usual, America’s Kurdish policy is to extract as much benefit and stability as possible, while leaving Kurds subject to genocidal Arab regimes. A useful reminder that Turkey isn’t Europe, it isn’t even in the 20th century, except in its tools of oppression and the NATO membership sop is to bind Greece’s hands over Cyprus more than anything else.

18. I wonder whether Eurosabra’s slating of Turkey represents a wider held feeling in Israel. I do hope so. It means greater isolation of Israel, another country knocked off the already thin list of countries ready to deal with Israel.

19. The same dynamic as with Jordan and Egypt, the peace and the relationship hold as long as the government and the army seek alliance with the West. The people long to re-fight the last glorious war. 15,000 dead a small price to pay for the Canal. Perhaps 150,000 a small price to pay as long as Eilat is rubble.
    You think we are pieds-noirs and deserve only a pied-noir end, but remember that Palestinians are late arrivals to nationalism, with a weak civil society undermined by Islamism, no independent economy, technical infrastructure or health care system, thus resembling the pieds-noirs far more closely. It is possible that a one-state envelopment of Israel COULD wind up like South Africa, given the different tenor of Israeli political Islamism compared to Palestinian political Islamism, but then again I know about the small extra-parliamentary Arab-Israeli parties that could push coexistence, both Islamist and socialist, and you don’t.

20. Another Turkey, Iran foreign currency flow?
    Speculations about the foreign currency flow to Turkey have increased. Recently, there is a claim that chunks of gold were brought from Iran. While the government and bureaucracy denied the existence of chunks of gold, they can not explain unregistered foreing currency.

21. You really ought to attempt to get a grip upon yourself, eurosabra.
    And, when you have done so, perhaps you could explain what evidence you have of genocidal Arab governments? (The Lebanese Forces don’t count, since they were acting under Israeli orders.)

22. Sorry, Bevin, that Jewish state thing would be wanting “to get too much at the head of the queue”, eh? Halabja, much? The Kurds are too numerous, so no one really succeeds at wiping them out, it is just constantly tried.

23. This might be a casualty of the recent kefuffle
    http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-189952-israel-to-deliver-herons-by-end-of-2009-turkey-mulls-penalty-for-delay.html
    Speaking to Today’s Zaman, the official stated that the long-delayed delivery is expected to happen in November or December at the latest. “Turkey plans to impose a heavy monetary penalty on Israel for the delay. If this country refuses to comply with the penalty, then Turkey will head to the International Court of Commercial Arbitration,” noted the official. According to the official, the penalty could mount to $3 million or $4 million. Turkey and Israel have recently been at odds due to Israeli-made surveillance drones, known as Herons. Earlier this week Turkey cancelled long-expected NATO air force exercises, which Turkish officials explained as a retaliation for the delay.

24. Eurosabra, as much as you might like to think of it differently, the massacre at Halabja was not a result of an excess of Kurds. As it happens, it was a reaction to the provision of aid and comfort to the enemy during the war with Iran. While that does not mitigate the fact that it was a terrible crime, it is important to put these things in the correct context and not to pretend they were something other than what they were.

25. the provision of aid and comfort to the enemy during the war with Iran.
    Apologies if my comments drifted from maim topic here, but let clearer here.
    Shirin was right in her comment put I will add to it that the old regime warned the villages that Iraqi troops get fires from they are responsible for that, what happens at Halabja you need to read CIA and US Marine report who well documents the event at that time,
    Here MARINE CORPS HISTORICAL PUBLICATION,
    FMFRP 3-203 – Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War, 10 December 1990
    Let say US when invaded Iraq what the done to areas and house and villages that firing on US troops can any one tell us?
    Ok here what the done any house fire will be bombed of hit by missile will be taken off from the ground with all who live inside, villages that fired on US troops all the youths taken as detained some be killed some till now in US camps no one know why, moreover the gated communities scenarios as if cites made dived as small camps/ prisoners for Iraqis.
    All this is happing in Iraq no one open his mouth like Eurosabra with her comment “her while leaving Kurds subject to genocidal Arab regimes.”?
    If the Kurds was genocidal Arab regimes were you from US n Iraq or in Afghanistan?
    Eurosabra tone similar what Israeli consultants telling Kurds to say their case just like Israeli case more over they said Kirkuk city like Jerusalem for Israel

26. Apologies for broken link
    Iran-Iraq War (pdf)

27. Clinton chipped in!!!!!!!!!!..Americans are everywhere and want to have credit!! I do not personally think Americans want peace in this world..with their might they can be the best ambassadors of peace but…events and egoism overtakes them…….

28. ونقلاً عن تقرير أخر لوزارة الدفاع الأمريكية، تقول صحيفة الواشنطن بوست في 3 أيار/ مايو 1990 أن مجزرة حلبجة جاءت نتيجة القصف المتبادل بالأسلحة الكيميائية بين الجيشين العراقي والإيراني بهدف السيطرة على البلدة. ونستنتج من المصادر المختلفة في هذا السياق أن ما حدث في حلبجة هو بدء الجيش الإيراني بقصف حلبجة بالسيانوجين كلوريد بهدف السيطرة عليها، وهو ما أدى لوقوع القسم الأعظم من الضحايا الكردية المدنية، دون أن يكون تعمد استهدافهم هو الغرض، ولكن الجيش العراقي عاد وقصفها بغاز الخردل لتحريرها بعد أن وقعت المجزرة بالمدنيين الأكراد، ولذا فإن ضحايا الأسلحة العراقية كانت أساساً من القوات الإيرانية المهاجمة وقوات الطالباني المتحالفة معها. فلا يستطيعن كولن باول على الأقل اتهام العراق بذبح المدنيين في حلبجة، وإلا فليبدأ أولاً بتكذيب المصادر العسكرية الأمريكية في عهد بوش الأب الذي تقلد فيه منصباً عسكرياً رفيعاً …
    وعلى كل حال، ليس ثمة نفاق أكبر من إدعاء واشنطن أنها تحرص على الأكراد وهي التي جعلت من الدولة التركية أكبر مستورد للأسلحة الأمريكية في العالم عام 1994، أي العام نفسه الذي هرب فيه أكثر من مليون كردي إلى ديار بكر هرباً من البطش الذي أنزلته القوات التركية بالريف في كردستان المحتلة في تركيا.
    هل هاجم العراق الأكراد بالأسلحة الكيميائية في حلبجة عام 1988؟
    

29. I mean, if Turkey is canceling orders for drones from Israel, that’s the action of a petulant ally, not a country whose government wants it to become the next Iran. I know that the Turkish people might be upset about Gaza and Iraq, and produce crap like “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq”, but leaving the Turkish-Israeli alliance means becoming more like Egypt, more and more irrelevant to NATO and the EU, except as a source of sweated labor. I doubt the Turkish government intends that.
    Things may snap back into place a bit if a Kurdish-US alliance winds up confronting a Syrian-Turkish one. Turkey may want to re-think getting too close to Syria and Iran, which will want payback in the form of a license to kick around the Kurds, and some more Kurd-kicking from Turkey.
    I think Kemalism is a bit mendacious anyway, but if the Syrians prefer the 1923 line in the Golan, perhaps the Greeks should be allowed it in Asia Minor.

30. Eurosabra’s points in an earlier post are valuable particularly his/her description of the Palestinian state.
    They encapsulate the view of what a two state solution would offer to the Palestinians and following this logic leads me to favour a one state solution along with say Ilan Pappe or President Ghadafi.
    You think we are pieds-noirs and deserve only a pied-noir end,
    Following Robert Fisk’s argument in his book “The Great War for Civilisation” we are suffereing the consequences of decisions made nearly a hundred years ago by our grandfathers and great grandfathers.
    It is a worry that the Thirty Years War Started in Europe roughly a hundred years after the Treaty of Augsburg brought a modicum of settlement to the Religeous wars of the 16th century.
    This opens up two topics that might be valuable to debate in other threads (so Helena doesn’t jump all over me for getting off topic)
    One is what the results of a new “Evian Conference” would be regarding places for the immigrants and the Sabra to go if the Israeli state collapsed. “Evian” really is the great shame of the 20th century on half the world that we don’t talk about, preferring to blame the Germans. Would we take in the refugees or would there be a bias against taking the professional classes as after the shooting stopped in 1945 as Tony Judt points out in Postwar?
    The second stems from a remark in one of Shimon Peres blog pieces on Haaretz. He pointed out that Israel doesn’t have oil, but that Israel’s technologicaly competent Engineers and Technologists are in fact Israel’s oil.
    What would it take to have people, like perhaps Eurosabra, stay in Palestine and contribute to the new state? Palestinians despite their intelligence and competence are hadicappped because they don’t get the kind of education available at Technion or the Weizman Institute. If you inspect the curriculum at some of the Palestinian Universities you are struck by the need for exposure to and integration with leading edge R & D.
    The lesson of the Turkish breakdown is that the Gaza war broke the Israel brand, just as George Bush broke the USA brand.
    Once the brand goes, it is the beginning of a terminal decline and we Europeans will have to pick up the pieces in this arid corner of the great European lake currently called Mediterranean.

31. Frank,
    No, you want ME to pay. There isn’t going to be anything even REMOTELY like the Good Friday accords, although the Islamic Movement of Israel COULD have been convinced, perhaps, before the recent uprising, to accept a one-state solution that turned Jewish state institutions into religious ones, like the awaqaf, which, within Israel, are enjoying a court-regulated renaissance and creating a new category of inalienable Islamic religious property. I think it very unlikely that Hamas/PIJ would like to be a minority party under those conditions.
    I have read enough of the history of the Parti Communiste Algerien to know what happened to those Algerian-identified Europeans who stayed. Jean Sénac, for one.
    Only if Israelis and Palestinians were genuinely open to the building of a common life, with the common institutions (such as the Palestine Railway Union) resurrected, would a one-state solution have much chance of success. And besides a few APO parties, and maybe Hadash and Balad, there simply isn’t the ideological and social infrastructure for that. There was, particularly from 1925-47, and it was done in by the Irgun and, to a lesser extent, the Haifa mujahadin. I don’t see a situation in which a social if not socialist, non-nationalist middle brushes aside the extremes of the two currently-existing polities.

32. This includes some of the scenes from the Turkish TV series that have caused a certain amount of upset.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121602.html
    On first inspection it is tame compared to the depiction of the British Army in West Cork in the award winning The Wind that shakes the Barley.
    Definitely, however, a million miles from the Heroic Paul Newman and the Haganah in Exodus.
    Broken brand.
    But the existence of rational articulate sensible people gives cause for hope.
    Eurosabra says:
    Only if Israelis and Palestinians were genuinely open to the building of a common life, with the common institutions (such as the Palestine Railway Union) resurrected, would a one-state solution have much chance of success.

33. Ah they are attempting to put Humpty Dumpty backtogether again.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121626.html
    Humpty however doesn’t know how far he fell and doesn’t want to play
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121544.html
    The good Caroline explains, and seems to advocate a military coup.
    Moreover, it is only by being willing to recognize what makes an ally an ally and an adversary an adversary that the West will adopt policies that leave it more secure in the long run. A military-controlled Turkish democracy that barred Islamists from political power was more desirable than a popularly elected AKP regime that has moved Turkey into the Iranian axis. So, too, a corrupt Western-dependent regime in Afghanistan is more desirable than a Taliban-al-Qaida terror state. Likewise an unstable, weakened mullocracy in Iran challenged by a well-funded, liberal opposition is preferable to a strong, stable mullocracy that has successfully repressed its internationally isolated liberal rivals.
    Turkey is lost and we’d better make our peace with this devastating fact. But if we learn its lessons, we can craft policies that check the dangers that Turkey projects and prepare for the day when Turkey may decide that it wishes to return to the Western fold.

34. Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.
    http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1255547729496&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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