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Europe

Gül: Ties with US would collapse if arms to PKK claims confirmed

2007-07-17

Turkish-US relations would break apart if rumors of US supply of arms to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq are proven correct, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül said. Former PKK members fleeing camps in northern Iraq have recently said in their testimonies to security officials and prosecutors that members of the terrorist group in Iraq were being supplied with US weapons. Gül earlier said that Turkey has formally requested an explanation from Washington over the claims and officials said Ankara's concerns were not based solely on confessions of the former PKK members. Asked whether Ankara has evidence to support claims of the former PKK members, Gül said in an interview with private Kanal A television on Sunday night that there has been no confirmation of the charges. "We have not confirmed anything. But there is such an allegation and there are convincing confessions," Gül said, emphasizing that the charges were being investigated. "We have requested information [from the US]." He said if the US really supplies arms to the PKK, this would eventually be revealed. "If such a thing happens, our relations would break apart," he said. But he added that the allegations could well be part of a plot to undermine Turkish-US ties and said it did not seem logical for the US to supply weapons to the PKK in Iraq openly. "But since there is such an allegation, we have to investigate it," he said. The foreign minister said Ankara was aware that weapons supplied to the Iraqi army sometimes turned up in PKK hands amid the chaos in Iraq. "Of course the US military and several European countries give weapons to Iraq as there is a new army being built there. Some of these weapons could end up in PKK hands and indeed we found out that some of the PKK weapons seized were those that had been given to the Iraqi army in good faith." The US classifies the PKK as a terrorist organization and has pledged to take steps to counter the threat it poses to Turkey. But few tangible outcomes have emerged from its fight against the group. Impatient with US slowness, Ankara has warned it could carry out a cross-border operation to strike the PKK bases in northern Iraq. Gül declined to comment when he was asked whether there could be a cross-border operation in the next month, but added everything could change depending on the circumstances.

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Iraq

'Turkish tanks cannot cross into northern Iraq'

2007-05-29

Amid ongoing domestic debates focusing on the likelihood of a military incursion by Turkey into northern Iraq to stop infiltrations by PKK terrorists, a senior Iraqi Kurdish official says the world will not allow such an action, claiming Turkish tanks and panzers cannot cross into the north. Safin Dizai, a senior official from the Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and a close aide to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, underlined that Turkish tanks would not be allowed to cross into northern Iraq, Turkish news reports said yesterday. Dizai pointed to the ongoing domestic debates in Turkey about a possible cross-border operation to crack down on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) camps based in northern Iraq in the face of ongoing attacks inside the country. Dizai admitted that Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish administration in the north were not currently on friendly terms and underlined Turkey would be unable to get its soldiers past the Habur border gate and to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The Turkish military says a cross-border operation into northern Iraq is needed to clamp down on PKK bases and to stop the infiltration of the PKK terrorists armed with weapons and explosives intending to carry out attacks in Turkey. Over the weekend, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül held a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Gül told Rice that the Turkish public was running out of patience due to the ongoing attacks in eastern Turkey, urging Washington to take urgent and effective measures to stop terrorist infiltrations from northern Iraq, reported the Anatolia news agency. During the conversation, Rice expressed the U.S. administration's dismay stemming from the killings of many civilians and soldiers in clashes with the PKK. But she did not touch upon the likelihood of a military incursion into northern Iraq by the Turkish army. She only said the United States was siding with Turkey in the fight against terrorism and assured that Washington would increase cooperation with Turkey in that respect, Anatolia news agency reported. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Gül said many political leaders from different countries called him and condemned last week's terrorist attack in the center of the Turkish capital, adding that his telephone conversation with Rice was in that regard. Public pressure on the government to step up the fight against the PKK mounted after a suicide bomber, who authorities believe was a PKK member, blew himself up at a busy shopping center in downtown Ankara on Tuesday, killing six people and wounding 121. Asked whether a cross-border operation was discussed during their conversation, Gül said, "We make decisions about these issues by ourselves; we don't talk about it with others," Anatolia news agency reported.In a televised interview last week, Gül said Turkey has run out of patience over the safe haven the PKK enjoys in northern Iraq but added there were no immediate plans for a cross-border military operation into the region. He also dismissed suggestions of any disagreement between the government and the army on the issue, saying that Parliament and the government would certainly support any action, any operation that would yield results. Gül added, however, that there was no preparation at the moment for the government to seek parliamentary authorization to send soldiers into northern Iraq. Washington has warned Ankara against a cross-border operation in northern Iraq, wary that such a move may destabilize a relatively peaceful region in the conflict-torn country and fuel tensions between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds, a staunch U.S. ally.

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Europe

The Turkish Trojan Horse

2007-05-15

In an interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Ayaan Hirsi Ali warned that almost nobody in the West wants to understand that Islam’s problems are structural. Contemporary Islam hardly exists. Islam stopped thinking in the year 900 and has stood still for more than a thousand years. Western Muslims, however, live in an environment where you can think independently without your head being chopped off by somebody. Hirsi Ali knows better than anyone else, of course, how precarious that freedom of thought can be—even in her former Dutch homeland, whence she was eventually forced to flee to the United States. Things may be bad in the Netherlands, but the threat there comes from a militant Muslim minority. How much more precarious must free speech be in Turkey, where the secular consensus instituted nearly a century ago by Kemal Atatürk is now being eroded by an Islamist government that enjoys majority support? In a recent article in Die Welt, Hirsi Ali analyzes the efforts of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül to Islamicize Turkey. Rather than mount a direct attack on Atatürk’s secular legacy, which the Turkish military has defended by repeated military coups, they and other leaders of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) work in subtler ways, presenting themselves as “moderate” Islamists while appealing to the need for direct democracy in Turkey. This dissonance notwithstanding, these means are working. The AKP is undeniably popular: some 70 percent of the electorate say they would vote for Gül if the constitution were amended to allow direct elections for the influential post of president, as Prime Minister Erdogan demands. This popularity may well be the result of Turkey’s economic stabilization under Erdogan, as well as creeping Islamicization in state education and in the media. Recent mass demonstrations by Turkish secularists aside, it was only the warning of the military that persuaded Turkey’s constitutional court to rule against Gül’s nomination for the presidency. While such direct military interference in the political and constitutional process runs counter to the letter and the spirit of the European Union (membership in which Erdogan has made the central plank of his foreign policy), Hirsi Ali condemns as “naïve” the demands of EU leaders for civilian control over the Turkish military as a condition of entry. The Europeans are, in her opinion, thereby unwittingly advancing the cause of transforming Turkey into an Islamic republic. She calls on Western liberals to recognize the unique role of the army in protecting Turkish democracy from Islam. There is no doubt that Hirsi Ali is correct to identify this Turkish paradox—that liberty and democracy are only guaranteed by the threat of martial law. But she is also right that the liberal mindset finds such a paradox not only uncongenial, but intolerable. Most Europeans do not want Turkey to join the EU, where it would soon constitute by far the largest and youngest population. Even those who do favor Turkish entry—including the United States and Britain—insist on stripping away the political role of the army. Seen from this perspective, the medium-term outlook for Turkey is grim. For Europe, however, the long-term outlook is even worse. As demographic trends in Europe cause Muslims to make up an ever larger proportion of the continental population, it will become impossible to resist pressure to accept an Islamist Turkey on its own terms. Ancient Troy was sited on what is today Turkish soil. It is hard not to see Erdogan’s “moderate” Islamism as a potential Trojan horse in the heart of Western civilization.

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Europe

Turkey Frowns at EU's Beer Mug Farewell Gift to Chirac

2007-04-14

An antique beer mug presented to French President Jacques Chirac as an EU going-away present has drawn criticism from EU-hopeful Turkey for reportedly depicting an 18th century Ottoman defeat by the French. They got the century wrong? "The European Union should concern itself with the future rather than the past," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül told reporters when asked about the mug. "If the EU has a future vision, it should look to the future," he said. "Harping on the past does not befit the EU vision." Yeah, but those Star Trek mugs are cheap and tacky. Turkish newspapers said that the mug depicted Napoleon's 1799 victory over Ottoman forces in Egypt and reflected hostility towards Turkey. A nice depiction of Trafalgar probably wouldn't have made it Jacque's favorite souvenir. And I can't see the Prussians giving him a mug depicting Austerlitz. It was probably the Turks, by default. It was given to Chirac as a retirement gift by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at celebrations of the EU's 50th anniversary over the weekend. Merkel is opposed to full membership for Turkey and has instead advocated a special partnership with the sizeable mainly Muslim country. I'm not privy to Merkel's innermost thoughts and preferences, but that could be because it's the European Union, and Turkey's mostly in Asia Minor. Guatamala and Bhutan are both ineligible for membership for much the same reasons, though if everybody's all friendly and everything no doubt they can have some sort of special partnership, too.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Turkish Interior Minister: Bullets that Killed Priest Target Turkey

2006-02-12

from the Turkish Daily News Turkey extended condolences to the Catholic world for an Italian priest slain by a teenage assailant while praying in his church in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, as the cleric was laid to rest in a ceremony in Rome. “There can be no religious, philosophical or humane explanation for the murder of a man of faith in a house of worship,” Interior Minister Abdülkadir Aksu told a press conference in Trabzon, where Father Andrea Santoro was killed by a 16-year-old high school student. “The bullets fired at Santoro were not only aimed at him but also at the atmosphere of stability Turkey enjoys.” You might say they were fired at Turkey from the Ottoman Empire. In Rome, Italy's most senior cardinal said at the funeral that Santoro has all the makings of a Christian martyr and should be put on the road to sainthood. Christian martyrs don't explode... “Right from now, inside me, I am convinced that Don Andrea's sacrifice has all the elements needed to make him a Christian martyr,” Cardinal Camillo Ruini said to prolonged applause from hundreds of mourners gathered for the priest's funeral Mass. Killed for his religion, that's kind of the definition of a Christian martyr. The murder of the priest shocked Turkey, which sees itself as a bridge between civilizations. “I think this was an isolated incident,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül said in an interview with Italy's La Repubblica daily. He said the government was combating extremists who were trying to sabotage Turkey's EU bid. I think the extremists are more important than Turkey's EU bid, and I don't see it as an isolated incident. I see it as something that's a constant danger to Turkey.

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