Democracy’s Disintegration in Turkey: New York Times, Mar. 7, 2016— If there was any doubt about why the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized the newspaper Zaman last week, consider this: Within 48 hours after the takeover, the paper began publishing pro-Erdogan propaganda.
A Weakened Turkey Seeks Israel's Help to Break Growing Isolation: Yossi Melman, Jerusalem Post, Mar. 1, 2016— Even if Israel and Turkey soon announce an end to their diplomatic crisis, which began almost six years ago as a result of the Mavi Marmara flotilla ship incident, relations between the two countries will not go back to how they once were.
Turkey's "Fall and Fall": Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Feb. 28, 2016 — Less than a decade ago, many Western statesmen and pundits were racing ahead to praise Turkey's Islamist leaders as "post-modern, democratic, reformist, pro-European Union Islamists" who could play the role model for less democratic Muslim nations in the Middle East.
In Turkey, a Kurdish City Confronts Its Ruins: Ayla Albayrak, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 3, 2016— Thousands of residents from a small Turkish city caught in the country’s fight against Kurdish separatists returned to their homes this week to find their community in ruins.
How Turkey Held the EU for Ransom: Matthew Karnitschnig, Politico, Mar. 8,2015
The Middle East’s Alphabet Soup of Kurds, Explained: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2016
Islamist Turkey is Imploding: Alex Alexiev, American Thinker, Feb. 24, 2016
Saudi Arabia and Turkey Are Walking into a Trap: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Feb. 16, 2016
DEMOCRACY’S DISINTEGRATION IN TURKEY
New York Times, Mar. 7, 2016
If there was any doubt about why the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized the newspaper Zaman last week, consider this: Within 48 hours after the takeover, the paper began publishing pro-Erdogan propaganda.
Zaman, Turkey’s largest circulation daily, was one of the country’s few opposition media outlets before the police used tear gas and water cannons on Friday to disperse a crowd outside the paper’s headquarters chanting, “Free press cannot be silenced” as it raided the offices. The police acted after a court in Istanbul, without explanation, put the paper under the administration of a panel of trustees.
Before the takeover was complete, the journalists put out a Saturday edition of the newspaper with the headline, “The Constitution Is Suspended.” In the end, the newspaper’s editor was fired and efforts were underway to eradicate the paper’s entire online archive, according to news reports.
The attack on Zaman is no surprise. The paper has been associated with Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. Mr. Gulen, once an ally of Mr. Erdogan, broke with the Turkish leader about two years ago and the media group switched from being pro-government to anti-government.
This crackdown is merely the latest of Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian moves, which have included imprisoning critics, sidelining the military and reigniting war on Kurdish separatists. He now controls much of the media and has made Turkey a leader among countries that jail journalists. Along with his campaign to wipe out a free press, his government’s prosecutors have opened nearly 2,000 cases against Turks in the last 18 months for insulting Mr. Erdogan, which is a crime.
Turkey was once on track to be a model Muslim democracy, though it now seems unlikely that Mr. Erdogan ever believed in democratic principles. The fact that he is moving the country ever further from that path raises serious questions about whether Turkey can continue to be a trusted member of NATO, which was founded as a security alliance based on common values.
It is unsettling that the United States and Europe have responded so meekly to Mr. Erdogan’s trampling of a free press. The Obama administration said the move against Zaman was “troubling,” while the European Union said Turkey “needs to respect and promote high democratic standards and practices, including freedom of the media.”
They may well be muting their criticism in hopes of persuading Turkey to help contain the refugee crisis that is roiling Europe. On Monday, Mr. Erdogan offered a harder stance, setting new demands for his cooperation, including billions more in aid and earlier membership in the European Union for Turkey. That’s not the approach of an ally, and Mr. Erdogan’s turn toward authoritarianism will not strengthen Turkey, NATO or the European Union.
A WEAKENED TURKEY SEEKS ISRAEL'S
HELP TO BREAK GROWING ISOLATION
Yossi Melman
Jerusalem Post, Mar. 1, 2016
Even if Israel and Turkey soon announce an end to their diplomatic crisis, which began almost six years ago as a result of the Mavi Marmara flotilla ship incident, relations between the two countries will not go back to how they once were. The golden era of cooperation in the security and intelligence fields between the two countries up until a decade ago will certainly not come back.
Turkey was a large and important market for Israel's security industries, which provided drones, intelligence systems, tank and planes upgrades, and more. For years, there was close cooperation between the Mossad and Turkey's intelligence agency, the MIT, which included meetings, an exchange of each countries' situational assessments and more. This cooperation began in 1958 with the initiation of an intelligence pact between Iran's SAVAK, under the Shah, the Mossad and Turkish intelligence. The codename in Israel for this pact was "Clil" (Complete).
These intimate relations were ended by Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he rose to power in 2002, first as prime minister, and currently as president. It was a gradual process that deteriorated after the Marmara incident. However, the 2010 flotilla was merely a symptom of a deeper issue. Yet, despite the security and intelligence disconnect and the diplomatic crisis, both commercial and tourism ties did grow under Erdogan.
The initiative for a turnaround in relations has come from Ankara – if indeed there is a reconciliation afoot as Turkish media have reported and Turkey's foreign minister expects. Erdogan's foreign and defense policies have failed miserably. He saw himself as the renewer of the days of the Ottoman Empire and as a modern-day, 21st century Sultan. He aimed to turn Turkey into a regional power, and perhaps into the strongest force in the Middle East, but this did not happen.
Instead, Turkey finds itself in a conflict with Russia and Iran over Syria, where Erdogan hoped to see President Bashar Assad ousted. Erdogan supported the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and now he finds himself at odds with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. Because of Turkey's uncompromising fight against its Kurdish population, as well as in Syria and Iraq, Ankara is also losing its influence with NATO and with the US. Turkey is now more isolated than ever and is therefore interested in renewing ties with Israel, in the hope that the Jewish state can help Ankara improve its standing in Washington. Turkey also needs natural gas from Israel in order to diversify its sources of energy and to reduce its dependency on Russian gas.
Most of the disagreements between Israel and Turkey stemming from the Marmara incident have already been rectified. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the incident in which nine Turkish citizens were killed. Israel has already made clear that it is prepared to pay some $25 million in compensation to the families of the victims. Turkey has deported senior Hamas military wing official Salah Aruri from the country and has tightened its supervision of the organization's members at Israel's request. Ankara has also agreed to institute special legislation that will prevent IDF commanders from standing trial for the Marmara incident.
However, the bigger problem to be solved is connected to Hamas in Gaza. Turkey is looking for a foothold in the Strip. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon is strongly opposed to this, with his main argument being, to use a schoolyard expression, "You started it." Meaning, Erdogan broke the rules, and therefore he bears the responsibility for rectifying the situation. Egypt's Sisi as well is not prepared to easily forgive and grant Erdogan a prize for his behavior, as if nothing happened.
If the golden formula is found, and the crisis is indeed solved, it will be part of a three-way deal: Israel-Egypt-Turkey, in which the strategic alliance with Egypt is much more important to Israel than rehabilitating ties with Turkey. Anyways, as the phrase goes, it's not over until it's over.
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Feb. 28, 2016
Less than a decade ago, many Western statesmen and pundits were racing ahead to praise Turkey's Islamist leaders as "post-modern, democratic, reformist, pro-European Union Islamists" who could play the role model for less democratic Muslim nations in the Middle East. It was "The Rise and Rise of Turkey," as Patrick Seale put it in the New York Times in 2009. In reality, the "post-modern Islamists" were just Islamists gift-wrapped in a nicer package. Today, Turks are paying a heavy price for the neo-Ottoman, revisionist, miscalculated strategic vision of their leaders.
In July, a Turkish-Kurdish suicide bomber murdered more than 30 pro-Kurdish activists in a small town along Turkey's border with Syria. Three months later, jihadist suicide bombers murdered more than 100 pro-peace activists in the heart of Ankara, in the worst single act of terror in Turkish history. The Turkish government manipulatively put the blame on a "cocktail" group of terrorists, including Kurds. In January, jihadists murdered 10 German tourists in Istanbul in another suicide bomb attack.
On October 10, 2015, jihadist suicide bombers murdered more than 100 pro-peace activists in the heart of Ankara, in the worst single act of terror in Turkish history…Most recently, on February 17, a Kurdish militant murdered nearly 30 people, including military personnel, just a few hundred meters away from the Turkish parliament in Ankara.
In a span of only seven months, more than 170 people have lost their lives in bomb attacks. This number excludes the more than 300 security officials killed by Kurdish militants, and more than a thousand Kurdish militants killed by Turkish security forces since a Turkish-Kurdish ceasefire ended last July.
Outside its borders, Turkey is floating on a sea of chaos too. The country is in an increasingly dangerous proxy war against a bloc of Shiite and Shiite-dominated governments in Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran, plus their Russian supporters. In addition, for Turkey's neo-Ottomans, Lebanon, Libya, Israel and Egypt are all "hostile lands."
Government officials privately claim that Turkey's enemies were using terror groups to launch attacks on Turkish targets. "It's like you know well who is behind the attacks but cannot prove it … The masterminds can be one or more of the countries we have locked horns with," a senior security official told this author recently. Not a nice feeling to be the common target of a number of thuggish-to-rogue states with the capability of manipulating terrorists.
The players in the eastern Mediterranean theater, including Turkey, are running after a bigger slice of a smaller pie. Turkey's sectarian ambitions are no secret. Nor are Iran's. Today there are nearly 50,000 Shiite militiamen fighting in Syria, where a majority of the population is Sunni (as in Turkey).
Russia, on the other hand, since September 30 has been bombing targets hostile to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russian aircraft have carried out about 7,500 sorties, 89% of which have hit Assad's opponents from groups other than the Islamic State (IS). Only 11% have targeted IS, which is everyone's common enemy.
Russia has also piled up a very serious military inventory around the Caspian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Russia is in the process of encircling Turkey militarily — in Syria, the Crimea, Ukraine and Armenia. Most recently, Moscow announced the deployment of a new batch of fighter aircraft and attack helicopters to an air base outside the Armenian capital, Yerevan, 25 miles from the Turkish border.
Turkey looks helpless. Even its NATO allies look deeply reserved over any help they would be prepared to extend to Ankara in case of a conflict with Russia. Recently, Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, warned the Turkish government that it cannot count on NATO's support if its tensions with Russia escalated into an armed conflict.
Russia's fight is not about defeating the Islamic State, but about expanding its sphere of influence in the eastern Mediterranean, including the mouth of the Suez Canal. In a way, Russia is challenging NATO through Syria — the same way Turkey is challenging the Shiites through Syria, or Iran is challenging the Sunnis through Syria.
There are a number of questions concerning the possibility of peace returning to this part of the world. Will the Muslims ever stop hating and killing each other, including bombing their mosques, along sectarian lines and end their 14-century-long war? Will there be functional governments in Damascus and Baghdad any time soon? Will the Sunni world ever stop its own radicalization without peace being imposed upon it from the non-Muslim world? Will the Shiite world ever control its own sectarian expansionist ambitions?
Will the Sunni and Shiite worlds ever stop hating Jews and committing themselves to annihilating the State of Israel? Will Turkey's Islamists ever realize that their neo-Ottoman ambitions are too disproportionate to their power and regional clout? Will the Western world be prepared to challenge Russia, the new thuggish kid on the block called the eastern Mediterranean? If yes, how? Will the players in the eastern Mediterranean ever be happy with a bigger pie and their slices not necessarily getting smaller? The answers of this author to those questions are negative.
IN TURKEY, A KURDISH CITY CONFRONTS ITS RUINS
Ayla Albayrak
Wall Street Journal, Mar. 3, 2016
Thousands of residents from a small Turkish city caught in the country’s fight against Kurdish separatists returned to their homes this week to find their community in ruins. Neighborhoods at the heart of a monthslong battle have been reduced to rubble reminiscent of the besieged cities of neighboring Syria. Security officials are slowly clearing the city of makeshift bombs they say were left by Kurdish militants. Police snipers keep watch from rooftops at the city’s entrance for any new signs of trouble.
Residents said they pulled two bodies out of collapsed rubble on Wednesday, one of which appeared to be that of a young boy. “I have no hope for this place anymore,” said Firat Duymak, an 18-year-old resident. He returned to Cizre after burying his father, who he said refused to leave the town as the fighting worsened.
Turkey launched its military campaign against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, last July after the collapse of a two-year-old cease fire stoked a new era of fighting in Kurdish towns and cities. Cizre, a Kurdish-majority city of 130,000 on the Syrian border, has been the scene of some of the worst of it. Emboldened by the successes of U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in neighboring Syria, who have started to carve out a quasi-state along the Turkish border, a new generation of PKK militants are challenging Ankara’s control in southeastern Turkey, where the Kurds have struggled for decades to secure greater autonomy.
Ankara has responded by repeatedly bombing PKK sanctuaries in northern Iraq. It has shelled U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters it accuses of funneling weapons into Turkey and sent tanks to confront militants across southeast Turkey in places like Cizre, a city that traditionally has been a strong base of support for the PKK. The U.S., Turkey and European Union have designated the PKK a terrorist group. Last fall, Turkey sent tanks and troops to clear the city of hundreds of PKK fighters. Thousands of its residents fled the fighting to neighboring villages and nearby cities.
On Wednesday, Turkey partially lifted a blanket curfew on Cizre and declared it safe for residents to return. What they found left many in despair. Mr. Duymak said his 55-year-old father, Mahmut, was one of the few Cizre residents who decided to stay to help people injured in the fighting. As the battles intensified, Mr. Duymak said, his father was trapped in a basement with several dead bodies and injured residents who waited for ambulances to take them to safety. Help never arrived, he said.
“When I received his body for burial, it was just a bag of flesh and bones,” Mr. Duymak said as he stood near the rubble covering the basement where his father died. The basements of Cizre became a rallying cry for Kurdish politicians during the military operation. Kurdish leaders said dozens of innocent, injured civilians had been trapped by the fighting, while the government said it was impossible for ambulances to rescue them because of PKK attacks.
Turkish officials dismissed as terrorist propaganda the claims of Kurdish politicians and some residents that Turkish forces had deliberately targeted civilians and deprived residents of medical care. Officials said the basements were being used as militant bases and as makeshift PKK hospitals to treat wounded fighters.
On Thursday, Ali Ihsan Su, governor of Sirnak province, blamed the PKK for destroying Cizre. “Terrorists damaged citizens’ homes by planting explosives from their kitchens to their bedrooms, burning down and destroying their homes,” he said. “They acted in extreme savagery, attacking lives of people, regardless of whether they were soldiers, police, women, men, young or old.”
While the governor blamed the PKK, the owner of one commercial building, who asked not to be identified, said Turkish security forces had been the ones to damage his place while using it as a command center. “They hung a big Turkish flag on the exterior of our building,” he said. “I don’t know why they created this havoc, it’s inhumane.”
Throughout the town, residents found graffiti supporting Turkish forces. Turkish flags were painted on walls alongside slogans threatening to kill “traitors of the state.” Graffiti in one room of the commercial building threatened a female teacher with rape and accused her of being a traitor. Outside the wall of the building, someone had spray-painted a final warning: “If your ass starts itching again, we will return.”
The Sirnak governor’s office declined to comment on the claims of damage caused by security forces, but it has vowed to help the city rebuild and offer aid to “all victims of terrorism.” The Turkish military said it killed more than 600 PKK fighters in Cizre, making it the scene of the most deadly operation so far. According to figures from the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that analyzes global conflict, 344 Turkish security forces, at least 298 PKK militants and as many as 259 civilians in the region have been killed since last July.
This week, Cizre residents began to rebuild. As they considered the aftermath, a few blamed Kurdish fighters for wrecking their town. “This is the PKK’s fault,” said Isa, a 26-year-old furniture seller who refused to give his last name out of fear of reprisal. Isa said the young Kurdish separatists seemed harmless when they first started handing out antismoking and antidrug leaflets three years ago. That changed when they took up arms against Turkey, built barricades in the city and dug trenches, declaring “self-rule”, he said.
One day, four boys with Kalashnikovs came to his shop to ask for curtains they could use to shield fighters from Turkish snipers. “I refused and they shouted at me, saying I’d be chucked out when Kurdistan was set up,” he said. “They made us targets too.”
How Turkey Held the EU for Ransom: Matthew Karnitschnig, Politico, Mar. 8,2015—Shopping in a Turkish bazaar is never wise for the novice. The EU learned that lesson the hard way when it discovered the carefully crafted refugee deal it believed it had sold to Turkish leaders in the run-up to Monday’s summit turned out to be little more than the beginning of the negotiation.
The Middle East’s Alphabet Soup of Kurds, Explained: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2016 —When it comes to many of the interlocking conflicts of the Middle East, the Kurds seem to be a kind of glue. For decades, millions of Kurds have lived as part of stateless ethnic minorities across a vast expanse of the region, from Iran in the east to Turkey in the west. To varying degrees, they were marginalized, oppressed and under-represented.
Islamist Turkey is Imploding: Alex Alexiev, American Thinker, Feb. 24, 2016—In the past two weeks a number of events have taken place in Turkey that, taken together, indicate that this erstwhile U.S. ally is spinning dangerously out of control with neither Ankara nor Washington and its European allies having the slightest clue of what to do.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey Are Walking into a Trap: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Feb. 16, 2016—After Russia's increasingly bold military engagement in war-torn Syria in favor of President Bashar al-Assad and the Shiite bloc, the regional Sunni powers – Turkey and its ally, Saudi Arabia – have felt nervous and incapable of influencing the civil war in favor of the many Islamist groups fighting Assad's forces.
