Category: Turkey

The very well-informed Craig Murray has a great piece about this on his blog today. (HT: Mondoweiss.)
Murray’s bottom line:

There are already deep misgivings, especially amongst the military, over the Afghan mission. There is no sign of a diminution in Afghan resistance attacks and no evidence of a clear gameplan. The military are not stupid and they can see that the Karzai government is deeply corrupt and the Afghan “national” army comprised almost exclusively of tribal enemies of the Pashtuns.
You might be surprised by just how high in Nato scepticism runs at the line that in some way occupying Afghanistan helps protect the west, as opposed to stoking dangerous Islamic anger worldwide.
So this is what is causing frost and stress inside NATO. The organisation is tied up in a massive, expensive and ill-defined mission in Afghanistan that many whisper is counter-productive in terms of the alliance aim of mutual defence. Every European military is facing financial problems as a public deficit financing crisis sweeps the continent. The only glue holding the Afghan mission together is loyalty to and support for the United States.
But what kind of mutual support organisation is NATO when members must make decades long commitments, at huge expense and some loss of life, to support the United States, but cannot make even a gesture to support Turkey when Turkey is attacked by a non-member?
Even the Eastern Europeans have not been backing the US line on the Israeli attack. The atmosphere in NATO on the issue has been very much the US against the rest, with the US attitude inside NATO described to me by a senior NATO officer as “amazingly arrogant – they don’t seem to think it matters what anybody else thinks”.

One of the many inhumane aspects of Israel’s murderous raid on the aid flotilla Monday has been its tardiness in releasing the names of the killed and wounded and its holding of nearly all the kidnapped flotilla participants incommunicado in massive, specially organized temporary prisons. This has left family members of most participants in anguish, not knowing if their loved ones were among those killed and injured.
Turkey has now been able to extract from the Israelis the names of four Turkish flotilla participants who were killed Monday. They are:

İbrahim Bilgen,
Ali Haydar Bengi,
Ali Ekber Yaratılmış and
Muharrem Koçak.

RIP, friends Bilgen, Bengi, Yaratılmış, and Koçak, and my heartfelt condolences to your families.
By the way, that report in Today’s Zaman that i linked to there has a lot more information about the detained flotilla participants. Turkey has done an exemplary job of trying to protect the interests of those of its nationals who were participating in the flotilla. It would be great if all other governments, including my own, could do such a good job.
Though the Israeli authorities at first threatened to “prosecute” those flotilla participants whom it accused of having used violence against the soldiers who attacked the ships– and they were keeping all participants in detention on the pretext they needed to “screen” them regarding such charges– it now appears they have backed down completely, at least in the case of the Turkish participants.
As I wrote here yesterday, there is a powerful current in international law that holds that it is Turkey, as the nation that flagged the Mavi Marmara, that should have jurisdiction over any incidents of violence that occurred aboard the ship while it is in international waters… and of course, the assault against it by armed Israeli commandos is one such act of (great) violence that could and should be investigated and punished by Turkey.
Meanwhile, we should appeal to Israel and all other governments to get the names of those killed, injured, and detained released as soon as possible– and of course, to get all those persons immediately released from their illegal detention, as well.

The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler reported this about Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu , who’s been in Washington today:

With anger and sarcasm, … Davutoglu lashed out Tuesday at Israel’s attack on a Gaza aid flotilla and by extension the Obama administration’s reluctance to immediately condemn the assault that left at least nine civilians dead.
“Psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey,” Davutoglu told reporters over breakfast in Washington before going to the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton…
Davutoglu displayed a map showing that the attack took place 72 nautical miles off the coast of Israel, far beyond the 12-mile sovereign border.
… he said that in Turkey’s view, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has full authority under [last night’s UNSC presidential statement] to order an international probe. He noted that the incident took place in international waters so Israel has no right to declare it can conduct its own inquiry.
“We will not be silent about this,” he said. “We expect the United States to show solidarity with us. . . . I am not very happy with the statements from the United States yesterday.”

More from his meeting with Clinton soon, presumably.
Turkey is of course the only majority-Muslim member of NATO, and therefore plays an important role in the counsels of the military alliance, which is currently engaged in a complicated and dangerous shooting war in Afghanistan. Israel is notably not a member of NATO.
NATO this morning held an emergency meeting at its Brussels headquarters to discuss the raid, at Turkey’s request. Afterwards, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussens said in a statement that

he condemns the acts “which have led to this tragedy” and offered condolence to families of the victims killed in the incident.
“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,” he added.
Rasmussen also called for “the immediate release of the detained civilians and ships held by Israel”.

In Turkey meanwhile, the excellent Turkish daily Today’s Zaman has lots of good reporting about the raid and its political fallout.
One Turkish woman who was on the Mavi Marmara, Nilüfer Çetin, was released and speedily returned to Turkey because she had a young child with her. (She’s the wife of the ship’s engineer.)
TZ reported that,

“I was one of the first victims to be released because I had a child,” she told reporters, but “they confiscated everything, our telephones, laptops are all gone.” Her husband… is still being held by Israeli authorities.

That same article contains this:

Greek peace activist Dimitris Gielalis, who had been with the flotilla, said: “They came up and used plastic bullets. We had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method you can think of, they used.” He said the boat’s captain was beaten for refusing to leave the wheel and had sustained non-life-threatening injuries, while a cameraman filming the raid was hit with a rifle butt in the eye.
Mihalis Grigoropoulos told reporters at Athens International Airport that Israelis rappelled from helicopters and threw ropes from inflatable boats, climbing aboard, adding that there was teargas and live ammunition.
“We did not resist at all; we couldn’t, even if we had wanted to. What could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard? The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic bullets and were stunned with electric devices,” he said.

Interesting to have had Turkish and Greek activists working alongside each other on the Freedom Flotilla project, eh?
This TZ article is also really interesting. It contains a lot of excellent commentary from leading Turkish intellectuals into the political fallout the murders can be expected to have. Its headline? “Turkish Israeli-relations will never be the same.”
Among many significant quotes it contains are these:

Soli Özel from Bilgi University says the worst-case scenario has come to pass and will lead to a revision of Turkish-Israeli relations, which were already strained by Israeli actions in Palestine over the years.
“The power balances in the Middle East will never be the same again. Israel’s legitimacy was very weak anyway and now this legitimacy will be discussed even more. The world will react to that,” he told Today’s Zaman.

Fwiw, Ozel is one of Turkey’s most prominent Jewish intellectuals.
The piece ends with this:

Professor İlter Turan from Bilgi University says Israel is in a panic and that this is why it has been engaging in controversial acts which are against international law. “Israel is most likely to tell the world that it was right. But, it is certain that there will be sharp international reactions directed at Israel. I think it will be hard for Israel to find support around the world,” he told Today’s Zaman.
However, according to political scientist Doğu Ergil from Ankara University, so long as the US continues to see Israel’s acts as legitimate, Israel will continue to carry out such bloody acts. “Israel is now over in moral terms in the eyes of the people of the world. The world should oppose Israel’s inhumane acts,” he noted.
İnal Batu, a retired ambassador, also questions the US’s stance on Israeli acts. “I wonder what kind of warnings the US delivered to Israel before this incident. Turkey should have influence on the US when it comes to this issue,” he said.