Turkey's Obsessive Fantasy: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, May 5, 2015 — In his 2007 bestseller book, "The Children of Moses," quirky Turkish writer Ergun Poyraz claimed that then Prime Minister [now President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a crypto-Jew.
Turkey’s Patriotic Lies: Robert Fulford, National Post, Apr. 24, 2015— If a whole nation believes a persistent lie in order to be thought patriotic, how will that affect the public life of the country?
The Status of Western Military Aid to Kurdish Peshmerga Forces: Lazar Berman, JCPA, May 11, 2015 — The Kurdish peshmerga forces (literally “those who confront death”) have proven willing and able to stand up to the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) on the battlefield.
Israel’s Road From Lausanne to Kurdistan: Ariel Harkham, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 29, 2015— With the Lausanne agreement signed earlier this month, it’s safe to say that Iran is on the march.
A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens: Tim Arango, New York Times, Apr. 16, 2015
Does Turkey Have the Putin Disease?: Thomas Seibert, Daily Beast, Apr. 15, 2015
New Anti-Semitic Film All the Rage in Turkey: Burak Bekdil, Middle East Forum, Apr. 27, 2015
Kurdistan Thrives Despite War With ISIS: Michael J. Totten, World Affairs, Apr. 19, 2015
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, May 5, 2015
In his 2007 bestseller book, "The Children of Moses," quirky Turkish writer Ergun Poyraz claimed that then Prime Minister [now President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a crypto-Jew. The book's cover depicted Erdogan and his wife in a Star of David, and portrayed Erdogan as a secret agent of "international Jewry."
Only six years after the publication of "The Children of Moses," in 2013, Erdogan, along with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei and UN official Richard Falk was on top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's annual list of the top 10 anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs. If one asked Poyraz, the author of the book, he would most likely explain Erdogan's deep anti-Semitism with another conspiracy theory: his public anti-Semitism is a perfect "disguise" for him to serve the Jews.
Erdogan's ideologically inherent anti-Semitism, often expressed in a blend with his anti-Zionism, is only too well-known internationally. In 2013, the year he "won the award" for his anti-Semitism, he said that Zionism was a crime against humanity. The Middle East has never been short of conspiracy theories. But the idea that there are crypto-Jews or secret friends of Israel is increasingly popular with Muslims who are waging political, ideological and sectarian wars among themselves.
Recently, a top Iranian military commander accused Saudi Arabia of following the footsteps of Israel. "Saudi rulers follow Israel as a role model," said Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards. Only a few days earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had appeared on television with his own version of conspiracy theories, this time pointing to Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, one of Turkey's regional nemeses, as Israel's "secret ally." Davutoglu said: "A [invisible] hand wants Assad to survive. Just like Sisi … Neither Assad nor his family has done any harm to Israel. … Sisi continues with the siege of Gaza. Because for Sisi, Israel's security is more important than human dignity in Egypt."
Davutoglu illustrated a stereotypical Islamist's judgment: When I have ideological, political or sectarian cold wars with my co-religionists and they refuse to convert to my worldview, it must be because they are the secret allies of Israel. The regimes of both Assad and al-Sisi are Turkey's worst regional enemies, because Ankara views them as barriers to the Muslim Brotherhood or similar Islamist regimes in Syria and Egypt.
Davutoglu's allegation is deeply problematic for a number of reasons. First, it does not satisfy him that both the regimes of Bashar Assad and his late father Hafez Assad in Syria have been in a state of war with Israel for decades. He openly declares that Syria must "do harm" to Israel. Davutoglu does not hide his annoyance that the Assads' Syria has not done any harm to Israel. To put it in more simple words, the Turkish Prime Minister wants Israel to be harmed. Second, Davutoglu's allegation is at the same time a confession. He says that the Sisi regime in Egypt maintains its blockade against the smuggling of arms into Gaza. That is factual, so it is not wrong. But then he says Egypt does this because "for Sisi, Israel's security is more important than human dignity in Egypt."
So the Turkish Prime Minister clearly admits that without Egypt's control over the border and destruction of smuggling tunnels, the Palestinians will smuggle arms into Gaza to commit acts of terror against Israel. The Turkish Prime Minister also admits that he has a problem with Israel's security, that he would prefer an insecure Israel, and he equates "human dignity" in Egypt with Israel's insecurity — by means of weaponry smuggled to Palestinian terrorists through the tunnels he would prefer not destroyed by the Egyptian government.
In a saner part of the world, Davutoglu (and therefore, Turkey) could be accused of openly sponsoring terrorism. He will not be. Instead, a Shiite rival or Sunni enemy might argue that Davutoglu says he is upset by Israel's security because he is a crypto-ally of Israel. The slanderous, defamatory pattern repeats itself — always in the same conspiratorial way.
Robert Fulford
National Post, Apr. 24, 2015
If a whole nation believes a persistent lie in order to be thought patriotic, how will that affect the public life of the country? This is a major problem for Turkey, though only a few Turks will admit it. The issue arises now because Armenians everywhere are commemorating the Armenian genocide, which began a century ago this week. Their remembrance services have brought out the anger and paranoia in Turkish politicians. Officially, Turks do not believe the account of the tragedy accepted by most historians and 22 countries, including Canada. Over and over, the Turks say it never happened the way most of the world believes. It is as if the Germans and Austrians were to claim that the accepted history of the Holocaust is a lie.
Nationalist Turks experience Armenian mourning as a rebuke. On April 12 Pope Francis, in a service in St. Peter’s Basilica, described the death of about 1.5 million Armenians as the “first genocide of the 20th century.” The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was outraged. He reacted by calling the pope “a politician, not a man of religion.” He added, “I warn him not to repeat the same mistake.” He was also offended when the European Parliament mentioned “genocide” in a resolution. Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said the use of “genocide” reflects European racism. He accused the Pope of being part of plots against Turkey and its ruling AKP party.
The disputed tragedy’s roots go back to the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. When it began falling apart, previously obedient subjects began asserting ethnic independence. A movement called the Young Turks took control of the empire’s Turkish region. The core of the Young Turk Revolution was the exclusionist and xenophobic Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which assumed power in 1913.
The two million Armenians in what became Turkey, many of them manufacturers and merchants, aroused jealousy in the poor peasants and soldiers around them. That feeling coincided with the new government’s desire that Turkey should be mainly Turkish. The government confiscated Armenian property, fulfilling a nationalist plan to increase Turkish control of business. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced to emigrate. Many died of starvation while seeking a new home.
The case of Orhan Pamuk, the only Turkish winner of the Nobel prize in literature, shows how these events haunt national thinking. In 2005 an ultra-nationalist lawyer sued him for saying to a Swiss magazine that “30,000 Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do.” Pamuk was trying to throw light on Turkey’s cramped attitude to freedom of speech: “What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation. But we have to be able to talk about the past.” He was charged under the Turkish Penal Code, which then prescribed up to three years imprisonment for insulting the Republic.
His trial was halted on a technicality but Turkey was internationally condemned both for the law and for using it against Pamuk. A European Union official said this might affect Turkey’s chance of winning full membership in the EU. Foreign writers lined up to support Pamuk. The charges were dropped and a new penal code passed. Still, the lawyer who brought the original charge said Pamuk must be punished “for insulting Turkey and Turkishness.”
Turkish propagandists insist, above all, that 1915-17 was not genocide. After all, they argue, genocide is an intentional crime. If Armenians were killed, it was not the government’s intention. They claim Armenian deaths resulted from spontaneous outbreaks in a chaotic time. Scholars usually consider it genocide. Ronald Grigor Suny, a University of Michigan historian, calls his detailed book, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton University Press), published this year. Suny explores a mountain of documents and makes a powerful case — but, as any Turk would be quick to point out, he has Armenian ancestors.
Henry Morgenthau, at the time U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote in his memoirs that the Turkish authorities who wrote deportation orders were condemning Armenians to death. “They understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.” For the Turks, denying that assertion has become an obsessive neurosis, a poison in their national discourse. Their habit of denial has made them the victims of a crime they claim never happened.
THE STATUS OF WESTERN MILITARY AID
Lazar Berman
JCPA, May 11, 2015
The Kurdish peshmerga forces (literally “those who confront death”) have proven willing and able to stand up to the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) on the battlefield. By contrast, two whole divisions of the U.S.-trained and financed Iraqi Army, along with tens of thousands of police and other paramilitary forces, fled in the face of the IS onslaught in 2014, leaving behind advanced weaponry paid for by American taxpayers for the jihadis and their Ba’athist allies to add to their arsenal.
Realizing that the Kurdistan Region, the most stable and secure region of Iraq, could fall to IS unless they stepped in, several Western countries increased military aid to the peshmerga after the city of Mosul fell in the summer of 2014, but the Kurdish fighters’ performance remains uneven. Kurdish officials claim the aid is insufficient, and that Baghdad is preventing some shipments from reaching their forces. It certainly has not enabled the peshmerga to sweep the Islamic State away from Kurdish areas, but weapons are not the only factor keeping the peshmerga from achieving a far-reaching victory.
Though the peshmerga is under the nominal unified control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) president, it is effectively two separate party militias with ample distrust between the sides. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) peshmerga fought a bloody civil war in the 1990s, and are largely loyal to the party, not the regional government. The rivalry can also affect deployment. Both peshmerga organizations sent far too many troops to Kirkuk in an attempt to gain dominance in the oil-rich region in June 2014, leaving other strategic areas dangerously undermanned.
As with many aspects of the Kurdish economy and government society, corruption and nepotism are rampant in the peshmerga. Senior commanders are chosen because of family connections, and some commanders have lied about the number of fighters under their command in order to pocket salaries and benefits. A nephew of KRG President Massoud Barzani is accused of fleeing the battlefield in January during an amphibious IS assault on peshmerga positions. Kurdish refugees in Syria also claim that peshmerga fighters fled their positions in Sinjar while Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) fighters stayed to fight.
The peshmerga are primarily stocked with light arms, many of which were captured from Saddam Hussein’s forces during the wars in 1991 and 2003. AK-47s and Soviet machine guns, often mounted on unarmored jeeps, make up the preponderance of their weaponry. Even before the recent arms shipments, they did have some anti-tank capabilities, including American TOW missiles and RPG-7s. Their artillery was largely limited to Soviet-era howitzers and small mortars.
The peshmerga have their own armor as well, including American MRAP vehicles, old Soviet T-54/55 tanks, and some newer T-72s, captured from the Iraqis in the 2003 Iraq War. Though they do have several hundred tanks in total, they are woefully unequipped to provide the logistical support needed to reliably field sustained offensive armored operations, and have no ground maneuver capabilities.
Peshmerga commanders have long complained of acute ammunition shortages for small arms and for their artillery and armor. Kurdish officers and leaders point to their inferior arms to explain sometimes embarrassing setbacks against the Islamic State. Weapons certainly play some role in the peshmerga’s performance, but do not at all determine the outcome of the fight. The far more lightly armed Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters, with a deeper commitment to their cause and to their leaders, have proven especially effective against IS.
There are significantly more decisive factors peshmerga commanders would rather not mention. Despite their storied reputation, the peshmerga glory days were in a bygone era. They cut their teeth fighting a guerrilla war against Saddam’s conventional forces in Kurdistan’s mountainous terrain during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. After the 1991 Gulf War, peshmerga forces saw little action beyond a civil war between 1995-1998. Training since the fight against Saddam has also been entirely inadequate, and the peshmerga became a border guard and counter-terrorism force, untrained to fight mobile IS insurgents on open plains.
The Islamic State’s early August 2014 offensive against northern Iraq, in which they captured Mount Sinjar and the Mosul Dam and threatened Erbil, spurred a commitment for arms and other aid from Western countries, including the United States, Albania, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and United Kingdom. The aid came in various forms. Dozens of military advisers from the U.S., UK, France, Italy, and other countries have been training peshmerga fighters in the use of weaponry and intelligence. Kurdish fighters have also flown to Germany to train on weapons systems there.
Countries have provided significant quantities of rifles, pistols, grenades, and ammunition, some of which are outdated. Italy, for instance, sent tens of thousands of AK-47s and other weapons captured during the Balkan conflicts in the early 1990s. Non-lethal equipment has come in the form of night-vision equipment, mine detection systems, helmets, body armor, communications gear, and light vehicles. Though the Kurds would like to build up an attack and ground support capability from the air, it does not look to be in the offing. However, Italy announced it would send four Chinook helicopters for logistics and troop movement.
Perhaps the most significant weapons system the peshmerga has received is the MILAN anti-tank missile, provided by Germany. The missile has been especially effective against the Islamic State’s armored suicide vehicles moving toward peshmerga checkpoints and positions. Germany has provided other military aid in well, totaling over 700 tons. Turkey has also begun sending non-lethal military equipment and is training fighters.
Iran, which holds significant sway in the Kurdistan region, is also sending arms to the peshmerga. Tehran has established itself as the peshmerga’s primary artillery provider, especially BM-14 and BM-21 truck-mounted rocket launchers. The Soviet-made systems go through ammunition rapidly, and Iran sends daily shipments to the Kurds. Ties are especially close with the PUK peshmerga….
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
ISRAEL’S ROAD FROM LAUSANNE TO KURDISTAN
Ariel Harkham
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 29, 2015
With the Lausanne agreement signed earlier this month, it’s safe to say that Iran is on the march. Tehran is now enjoying the benefits of a “diplomatic iron dome” it’s been building over the course of six-plus years of negotiation, nurtured and in a sense funded by US President Barack Obama’s desire to negotiate while not addressing the larger problem of a militant regime run amok. The result is that while diplomats agree on an acceptable number of centrifuges, the Iranian Islamic revolution has grown more aggressive, supporting, coordinating or running wars in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon and now Yemen, while being increasingly open about its genocidal intent toward Israel.
Israel, on the other hand, has done what it traditionally does when it comes to strategic international threats, which is to sit on the regional sidelines and wait things out. Though this approach may have worked for it in the past, and is still popular with the Israeli public today, it ignores the unprecedented nature of the growing threats that now surround Israel. It’s clear that Israel needs an independent strategy on Iran. And, though it may seem unexpected, it can find the potential for such a strategy in the Kurdish people’s fight for independence.
As a national independence movement, the Kurds have a claim to national sovereignty at least as strong as that of any other ethnic minority. Despite this, it seems when you look at the surface, there’s little room to break the hostilities, entanglements and intolerances created by the current regional players – Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia, and the Kurds themselves – who are involved in the Kurdish conflict. But, digging a little deeper, the Kurds offer Israel a unique opportunity to build from the ground up a new friend by helping with the sort of nation-building challenges that the “start up nation” is uniquely able to help overcome.
For Israel, there are a number of compelling interests and motivations that argue for the adoption of an interventionist Kurdistan policy that goes beyond the back channels and current lip-service support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thus far offered. The Kurds, who number around 30 million people, have, like the Jews, suffered for centuries as a powerless and persecuted minority. They’ve been gassed, massacred and exiled, and to this day not only remain stateless but have watched as their land has been split into five separate countries. Furthermore, with a distinct claim and an ancient history going back millennia, the deep cultural parallels to the Jewish story generates the critical public support for a sustainable aid program in the Knesset.
There’s good reasons to believe the Kurds themselves have what it takes. Foreign Affairs recently called 2015 “The Kurds’ Big Year” in a lengthy piece arguing in favor of northern Iraq as the most likely seat for Kurdish independence this year. Islamic State (IS) has effectively removed Baghdad’s authority over the autonomous Kurdish majority in the north (who had been left to fend for themselves). The world watched in horror at the end of 2014 as the Yazidis were butchered and enslaved, stressing the need for a solution to the ongoing Kurdish crisis, causing even the typically antagonistic Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to shift his stance on the Kurdish question, becoming more sympathetic and eventually putting in motion a political process to resolve his own country’s Kurdish problem.
The result is that the Kurds have extended control as far as Kirkuk and, in the process, have been legitimized on the world scene to the point of receiving foreign military assistance from NATO and signing their own global oil agreements (of which Israel was among the first customers). Last year, Masoud Barzani, the leader of the ruling KRG, announced a highly touted independence referendum in northern Iraq, giving the Kurds their greatest hope of freedom in generations.
Looking at Israel’s national interest in a free Kurdistan, there’s a compelling case for an interventionist policy in the near-term. Inhabiting northern Iraq, eastern Turkey and southern Iran, the Kurds are situated on a strategic launch pad in the heart of the region, whose importance is hard to ignore. Moving strongly in support of a Kurdish state would also allow Israel to strengthen relationships with western Asian states, like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, who have a vested interest in Kurdish independence and a shared anxiety over their Iranian neighbor.
For the Kurds, Israel has much to contribute, not least of which is a highly advanced military-industrial complex that’s sophisticated enough to develop a bold military aid program to supply Kurdish fighters. Its premier intelligence agencies are able to assist Kurdish leaders in decision making and a highly-trained and experienced IDF officer corps could advise and train Kurdish soldiers. In addition to initiating clandestine support specifically for the Iranian Kurds’ independence movement, Israel has the means to provide arms and advisers to the Iraqi Kurds with the goal of assisting them in maintaining autonomous control over their region, degrading Islamic State (IS), and strengthening Kurdish resolve in the face of Iranian aggression…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens: Tim Arango, New York Times, Apr. 16, 2015—The crumbling stone monastery, built into the hillside, stands as a forlorn monument to an awful past.
Does Turkey Have the Putin Disease?: Thomas Seibert, Daily Beast, Apr. 15, 2015—Is NATO ally Turkey on track to become a country under one-man rule?
New Anti-Semitic Film All the Rage in Turkey: Burak Bekdil, Middle East Forum, Apr. 27, 2015—Turkey's biggest enemy, according to its Islamist rulers, is not the fanatical jihadists who now neighbor their country in large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq; nor is it the thousands of "sleepers" at home — the same jihadists who have not staged a sensational act of terror, but might yet.
Kurdistan Thrives Despite War With ISIS: Michael J. Totten, World Affairs, Apr. 19, 2015 —A suicide-bomber blew himself up and killed three people—the terrorist himself, along with two Turkish citizens—in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, at a popular café just down the street from the US Consulate.
