“President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed.”
- Liz Cheney
If you have been paying attention to the names of the intellectuals screaming the loudest against Turkey, in the days just before and since the flotilla incident, something probably looks familiar.
No, your eyes are not deceiving you, the list of ‘anti-Turkey’ articulators reads eerily similar to those who were foremost in the chorus calling for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Do these same voices want the U.S. to invade Turkey?
No. But perhaps ‘not so far,’ might be a more accurate answer.
What would satisfy this leading intellectual community?
Nothing short of what I believe would be the biggest foreign policy blunder the West has made since World War II: The neoconservatives are calling for the expelling of Turkey from NATO.
In a June 9th article from the Inter Press Service (IPS), ‘Neo-cons lead charge against Turkey’ columnist Jim Lobe surveys the landscape:
‘Outraged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip’s Erdogan’s repeated denunciations of the May 31 Israeli raid, as well as his co- sponsorship with Brazil of an agreement with Iran designed to promote renewed negotiations with the West on Tehran’s nuclear programme, some neo-conservatives are even demanding that the U.S. try to expel Ankara from NATO as one among of several suggested actions aimed at punishing Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government.
“Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran,” noted the latest report by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a hard-line neo-conservative group that promotes U.S.-Israeli military ties and has historically cultivated close ties to Turkey’s military, as well.
“If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey’s arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organisation,” suggested the group.
Its board of advisers includes many prominent champions of the 2003 Iraq invasion, including former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey, and former U.N. Amb. John Bolton.
Neo-conservative publications, notably the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review, have also been firing away at the AKP government since the raid.
“Turkey now represents a major element in the global panorama of radical Islam,” declared the Standard’s Stephen Schwartz, while Daniel Pipes, the controversial director of the Likudist Middle East Forum (MEF), echoed JINSA’s call for ousting Ankara from NATO and urged Washington to provide direct support for Turkey’s opposition parties in an article published by the National Review Online.
The Journal has been running editorials and op-eds attacking Turkey on virtually a daily basis since the raid, accusing its government, among other things, of having “an ingrained hostility toward the Jewish state, remarkable sympathies for nearby radical regimes, and an attitude toward extremist groups like the IHH (the Islamist group that sponsored the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara) that borders on complicity.”
On Monday, it ran an op-ed by long-time hawk Victor Davis Hanson that labelled the IHH “a terrorist organisation with ties to al-Qaeda”, while an earlier op-ed, by Robert Pollock, its editorial features editor, called Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, “demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East”.
Meanwhile, in an op-ed published by ‘The Forward,’ a Jewish weekly, Michael Rubin, a Perle protégé at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), accused Turkey of having “become a conduit for the smuggling of weapons to Israel’s enemies”, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The onslaught is ironic both because of the neo- conservatives’ long cultivation of Turkey and their avowed support for promoting democratic governance - of which they have singled out Turkey for special praise - in the Muslim world.”
If that weren’t serious enough, these intellectual voices are influencing members of the United States Congress. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from New York says, “Let’s consider Turkey. This [the flotilla incident] would not have happened were it not for the nation of Turkey taking the role that they did… And for a lot of time, we kind of worship at the altar of the moderate Muslim state, the moderate Arab states that, you know what, we hope that they are there to be a fulcrum for peace, but it’s not unlike a child wanting to see a unicorn. It would be great if it happened, but we have to realize the facts are the facts, and NATO membership for Turkey has to be called into question here.”
Really?
If the neo-cons get a ‘D’ for their advocacy and planning of the war in Iraq they deserve an ‘F’ for the mere suggestion that it is in anyone’s interests in the West (including Israel’s) to have Turkey removed from NATO.
You only need to consider two factors: The strategic importance of Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base and Turkey’s controlled management of the Bosporus Straits.
It can be argued that over the last decade there has been no more important U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine installation than Icirlik Air Base in Turkey. It is from Incirlik that the United States established the hub of its actions for the War in Afghanistan; runs critical covert operations into three regions; houses nearly 100 nuclear warheads; can accommodate the landing/airstrip needs of stealth bombers and the logistics of sophisticated equipment; and provides humanitarian and disaster relief to places as far away as Asia.
And just how important was Turkey to the war the neo-cons craved for and got – Iraq?
From an article in the Turkish Weekly, “US Congress should weigh importance of Incirlik Base,” we read the testimony of important members of America’s armed forces:
Remarks made by an aerial port operations officer with the 728th Air Mobility Squadron, Capt. James Burnham, at Incirlik on Nov. 14, 2006, in the US Air Force Print News (AFPN) explain how vital Turkish facilities are for the US in its war in Iraq: “By flying critical supplies via C-17 Globemaster III from this eastern Turkey airbase directly to service members at remote locations in Iraq, more than 3,300 convoy truck missions are taken off the Iraqi roads each month.”
“During around-the-clock operations at the Cargo Hub here (Incirlik), supplies such as essential add-on humvee equipment or repair parts and medical supplies are examples of critically needed items that are loaded onto C-17s destined for Iraq,” said 2nd Lt. Ryan Randall, the officer in charge at the Air Terminal Operations Center. (Michael Tolzmann, AFPN, Nov. 14, 2006, Incirlik Air Base, Turkey)
Close to 60 percent of all air cargo destined for Iraq passes through Incirlik Air Base, said Col. Tip Stinnette, commander of the 39th Air Base Wing. “Incirlik is a strategic center of gravity for the US and Turkey in this region,” Colonel Stinnette remarked. (Ibid)
“The greatest accomplishment of this airlift hub is that every time we fly a sortie, we keep a convoy of trucks and drivers off of the dangerous roads of Iraq,” said Col. Mike Cassidy, the 385th Air Expeditionary Group commander. Since the inception of the Cargo Hub mission in June of 2005, more than 103,000 tons of cargo has moved through Incirlik, reported the AFPN.
It is clear the neocons really don’t know their friends from their enemies.
As for the second factor, the importance of the Bosporus Straits, It is hard to improve upon this Wikipedia entry on the subject as an introduction:
The strategic importance of the Bosporus remains high, and control over it has been an objective of a number of hostilities in modern history, notably the Russo–Turkish War, 1877–1878, as well as of the attack of the Allied Powers on the Dardanelles during the 1915 battle of Gallipoli in the course of World War I.
At its peak in the 16th through the 18th centuries, the Ottoman Empire had wrested control of the entire Black Sea area, which was for the time an “Ottoman lake”, on which Russian warships were prohibited.
Subsequently, several international treaties have governed vessels using the waters. Under the Treaty of Hünkar Iskelesi of 1833, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits were to be closed on Russian demand to naval vessels of other powers. Following World War I, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres demilitarized the strait and made it an international territory under the control of the League of Nations.
This was amended under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which restored the straits to Turkish territory – but allowed all foreign warships and commercial shipping to traverse the straits freely. Turkey eventually rejected the terms of that treaty, and subsequently Turkey remilitarized the straits area. The reversion to this old regime was formalized under the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits of July 1936. That convention, which is still in practical force as of 2008, treats the straits as an international shipping lane, but Turkey does retain the right to restrict the naval traffic of non-Black Sea nations (such as Greece, a traditional enemy, or Algeria).
During World War II, through February 1945, when Turkey was neutral for most of the length of the conflict, the Dardanelles were closed to the ships of the belligerent nations. In the conferences during World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin openly requested the concession of Soviet military bases on the Straits, even though Turkey was not involved in the war. This incident, coupled with Stalin’s demands for the restitution of the Turkish provinces of Kars, Artvin and Ardahan to the Soviet Union (which were lost by Turkey with the Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878, but were regained with the Treaty of Kars in 1921) was one of the main reasons why Turkey decided to give up its general principle of neutrality in foreign affairs. Turkey did declare war against Germany in February 1945, but did not engage in offensive actions.
In more recent years, the Turkish Straits have become particularly important for the oil industry. Russian oil, from ports such as Novorossyisk, is exported by tankers to western Europe and the U.S. via the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles straits.
Apparently even the controversial source, Wikipedia, grasps geopolitical chess-playing more than the neocons.
While it is not a well-known subject, a high level chess game is still underway between Russia and Britain regarding the Bosporus Straits.
Pull out a map.
Russia has always coveted an outlet to the open waters of the south through access/acquisition of the Bosporous Straits and ‘Constantinople’ (Istanbul), domination of the Black Sea, and reach into the Persian Gulf. Parallel to this has been Britain’s long-standing interests in India. The British Empire’s nightmare scenario150 years ago (and still today) is an attempt by Russia to invade Afghanistan in order to get to northwest India; or crossing Iran into the Persian Gulf or to disrupt the British ‘lifeline’ to India. Russian penetration of the Aegean Sea and into the Mediterranean to interfere with Western interests has always been a concern.
I intend to get into some of this ‘forgotten’ European history in the future, as current events warrant.
So, now think through what might happen if the Neocons, in pure and dangerous ideological fashion get what they want. Not only does the U.S. and entire Western Europe lose the strategic access of the Icirlik Air Force base, but the even more volatile issue of control of the Bosporous Straits is now in play.
I can’t see anything other than the near complete outbreak of World War III.
A brilliant friend of mine – extremely knowledgeable of world history, current events and international chess-playing is convinced that the neocons would never be able to break up the relationship between the U.S. and Turkey because of its strategic nature.
But I do wonder, and have serious doubts.
*****
It is hard to convey how ridiculous a suggestion, much less demand that Turkey be kicked out of NATO sounds to someone like me who has lived in Europe on a military installation. It sounds even more ludicrous to any active duty personnel stationed overseas. The concept of Turkey as an ‘enemy’ of the United States and Europe finds no basis in factual history and is purely the fabrication of a very dangerous circle of intellectuals who have tried for years to justify the relationship between Israel and the United States on moral, strategic, ideological, and political grounds.
Such an argument is theirs to try to make and they certainly have a right to do so.
But it is sobering if not frightening to think that a group with such a poor track record, much less enormously weak arguments, is given access to extremely influential foreign policy planning circles not to mention such prize real estate as the influential editorial and op-ed pages of mainstream newspapers.
This brings us again to one such intellectual – Mr. Steven J. Rosen, whose op-ed in The Wall Street Journal - was the focus of Part I of this series. Mr. Rosen is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum – a leading Neocon institution (http://www.meforum.org/2092/steven-j-rosen-joins-mef-as-visiting-fellow) run by Daniel Pipes.
Fine, no problem. Mr. Rosen certainly has the right to express himself intellectually wherever he likes and the Wall Street Journal has every right to feature his thoughts.
But isn’t it more than peculiar or well beyond eyebrow-raising status that the same Steven J. Rosen who wants the world to believe Turkey is an anti-Semitic and anti-American nation (and we gather worthy of dismissal from NATO) is the same person who was indicted on charges that he helped spy against the United States on behalf of Israel. According to The New York Times: “The indictment said they violated the law by disseminating to journalists, fellow Aipac employees and Israeli diplomats information they had learned in conversations with senior Bush administration officials.”
The charges were dropped.
While I acknowledge Mr. Rosen’s innocent until proven status I just can’t help but wonder what Black American or Turkish American who had been similarly indicted (for spying on behalf of an African nation or Turkey) would have received the same honor of publication in the Wall Street Journal?
Interestingly, it was the same Obama administration that Mr. Rosen and the neocon intelligentsia are now criticizing, that moved on May 1, 2009 to drop all charges against Mr. Rosen.
So where do things stand in the relationship between President Obama and members of the Jewish Political Establishment? A clear indicator is the recent symposium, “Obama, Israel & American Jews: The Challenge—A Symposium,” convened by Commentary magazine, where 31 prominent American Jews were asked to respond to this statement:
“The open conflict between the Obama administration and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has created tensions between the United States and Israel of a kind not seen since the days of the administration of the first President Bush. And those tensions are placing unique pressure on American Jews, who voted for Barack Obama by a margin of nearly 4-to-1 in 2008 after being assured by Obama himself and by his supporters in the Jewish community that he was a friend and an ally of the State of Israel despite his long association with, among others, the unabashedly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
We argue that American Jews are facing an unprecedented political challenge, and at a crucial moment, with the need to address the existential threat to Israel—and by extension to the future of the Jewish people as a whole—from a potentially nuclear Iran. How will American Jews handle this challenge? Can Obama’s Jewish supporters act in a way that will change the unmistakable direction of current American policy emanating from the White House? Will American Jews accept Barack Obama’s view that the state of Israel bears some responsibility for the loss of American ‘blood and treasure’ in the Middle East? Will they continue to extend their support to the Obama administration and to Barack Obama’s political party?”
You can read the responses from the 31 Jewish intellectuals here:
Even the strongest defenders of President Obama in the symposium seem weak in their arguments on his behalf.
*****
What is this urge to push Turkey out of NATO all about?
And does the quiet effort to bring Israel into NATO – supported by such diverse voices as conservative Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch and progressive editor of the Tikkun magazine, Rabbi Michael Lerner – have anything to do with it?
What would a world with Turkey out of NATO and Israel in it look like?
Would it be more or less dangerous than it is now?
Lastly – can anyone openly state that America’s relationship with Turkey matters more than its relationship with Israel without being labeled, ‘Anti-Semitic’?
Cedric Muhammad is a business consultant, political strategist, and monetary economist. He is a former GM of Wu-Tang Management and currently a Member of the African Union’s First Congress of African Economist. He’s the Founder of the economic information service Africa PreBrief (http://africaprebrief.com/) and author of ‘The Entrepreneurial Secret’ (http://theEsecret.com/). Cedric can be contacted via e-mail at: cedric(at)cmcap.com