Why Is Turkey Accusing Me of Plotting a Coup?: Henri J. Barkey, New York Times, Sept. 1, 2016 — On the night of July 15, elements of the Turkish military attempted a coup.
Turkey's Official "Cocktail Terror": Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 28, 2016 — Failing to name Islamic terror has cost Turkey hundreds of lives and will likely cost it hundreds more, as the country's leaders — and many others, especially in the West — are still too demure to call Islamic terror by its name.
Vladimir Putin and the Shiite Axis: Anna Borshchevskaya, Foreign Policy, Aug. 30, 2016 — On Aug. 16, Russian bombers took off from Shahid Nojeh air base near the Iranian city of Hamadan reportedly to bomb Islamic State targets in Syria.
The Russia-Israel Romance: Ariel Bolstein, Israel Hayom, Aug. 29, 2016 — Valdimir, a Muscovite taxi driver, is astonished that Israel, a tiny little country "that's all desert and sand" exports its fruit and vegetables all over the world…
The Erdoğan-Gülen Rivalry: Dr. Efrat Aviv, BESA, Sept. 7, 2016
Obama Is the Real Turkey in This Scenario: Ruthie Blum, Algemeiner, Sept. 6, 2016
How the Turks Deceived the Americans on Syria: Alex Fishman, Ynet, Aug. 31, 2016
Russia’s Growing Military Ties With Iran: Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 17, 2016
WHY IS TURKEY ACCUSING ME OF PLOTTING A COUP?
Henri J. Barkey
New York Times, Sept. 1, 2016
On the night of July 15, elements of the Turkish military attempted a coup. It was a poorly organized effort that was defeated by a combination of people power, loyal units and serendipity. What made this failed effort remarkable was the putschists’ extreme brutality against civilians who resisted or happened to be in their way. Some 240 people were killed. I was in Turkey at the time, leading a workshop on Buyukada, an island that is a 45-minute ferry ride from Istanbul. The workshop, which had been planned months earlier in conjunction with an Istanbul-based think tank, brought a small number of experts together to discuss Iran’s relations with its neighbors. Academic gatherings like these are important for my work, but I suspect most people would have thought it was pretty dull.
Some people in Turkey, however, saw something far more nefarious. They thought I was behind the mutiny.
Soon after the coup was defeated, my colleagues and I became the targets of sensationalist conspiracy theories promulgated by Turkey’s pro-government press. The accusations ranged from organizing the coup on behalf of the C.I.A. to setting up communication links for the plotters and, most implausibly, bringing a convicted murderer from California into Turkey to engage in evil deeds.
The coup attempt appears to have been carried out by a hodgepodge coalition of officers: some loyal to Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and was once an ally of the ruling party but is now its fiercest enemy, alongside strict secularists and some other opportunists who probably knew they would soon be dismissed from the military. The Turkish people rejected the threat to their constitutional order. But in the weeks since, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has harnessed the trauma of the coup attempt to overhaul the state and its institutions. As millions have rallied to his side, he has begun to implement policies that had long been in the making, especially purging the Civil Service. The purge is only the first step: The real aim is to change the Constitution and create a presidential system with weak checks and balances, enabling Mr. Erdogan to rule unchallenged.
United States-Turkey relations are among the failed coup’s casualties. The decades-long Turkish-American relationship is based on more than just NATO membership. It is rendered strategic by a variety of transactions in almost every imaginable arena, from the environment to scientific research, cultural and educational exchanges, and important business ties. Turkish society has long been steeped in conspiracy theories, but the widespread stoking of anti-Americanism today is unprecedented. The accusations leveled at me and the other participants in our workshop — in the absence of any evidence — are cynical attempts to blame Washington and bully the United States into extraditing Mr. Gulen, and maybe even force it to abandon its support for the Kurds in Syria in the fight against the Islamic State.
What is most disturbing is that the attacks on me and the other academics appear to have been instigated by the government. The newspapers revealed details that only Turkish security services could have had access to, such as the exact time I crossed passport control entering and leaving Istanbul. Some of our Turkish colleagues have already been subjected to unfair retribution — suspended from their jobs or called in for interrogation. All of the participants in our conference have had our reputations unfairly damaged in Turkey and in the region. Abuse and threats have been pouring in through social media.
But beyond these petty attacks lies a more important issue. The Turkish press, which is almost totally controlled or influenced by the government, has come to characterize the United States as Turkey’s primary enemy. The government seems not to understand the long-term consequences of this. Concerned about the safety of its citizens, the United States government has already announced a one-year suspension of Fulbright teaching fellowships to Turkey. Soon, civil society will pay a price, too, as opportunities for dialogue and space for honest analysis and critique, not to mention international business confidence, diminish.
The Obama administration clearly hopes that quiet diplomacy and time will somehow return things to normal. In dealing with Turkey, a difficult ally prone to gusts of emotion, Washington’s fallback option has always been to turn the other cheek. But this won’t work in today’s atmosphere of calculated hysteria. Last week, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. went to Ankara, the capital of Turkey, in an attempt to mollify Mr. Erdogan and his government. It appears to have been a futile effort. On the same day the vice president arrived, the Turkish military went into Syria, where it is now fighting American-backed Kurdish forces. The anti-American conspiracy theories continue…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
TURKEY'S OFFICIAL "COCKTAIL TERROR"
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Aug. 28, 2016
Failing to name Islamic terror has cost Turkey hundreds of lives and will likely cost it hundreds more, as the country's leaders — and many others, especially in the West — are still too demure to call Islamic terror by its name. Without a realistic diagnosis, the chances of a successful treatment are always close to nil, and Turkey's leaders stubbornly remain on the wrong side of the right diagnosis. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's theory that "there is no Islamic terror," coupled with his persistent arguments that Islamist radicals hit Europe because of Islamophobia in the Western world, are not only too remote from reality but have now become a curse in his own country.
As early as 2014, cars began to be seen in the streets of Istanbul sporting the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The same year, Islamists opened a shop selling T-shirts featuring the same flag. ISIS-related magazines went ahead with open hate content even though, in March 2014, ISIS spilled its first blood in Turkey when an ISIS team ambushed a police checkpoint and killed one police officer, one soldier and one civilian. In its first suicide attack on June 5, 2015, ISIS targeted a pro-Kurdish rally in Diyarbakir, killed four people and injured 279. It targeted, once again, a pro-Kurdish gathering in July 2015 in Suruc, a small town bordering Syria, killed more than 30 people and injured more than 100.
When, in October 2015, Islamists attacked the main train station in Ankara and killed more than 100 civilians in the worst terror attack in Turkey's history, Turkish officials were once again too demure to blame it on radical Islamists. Instead, they invented an unconvincing concept, "cocktail terror," putting the blame on a mixture of various terror groups. In a span of just one year, starting with the Suruc suicide bomb attack in July 2015, ISIS terror attacks in Turkish soil have killed 265 people and injured 1,256. In its latest attack in Turkey on August 21, ISIS did something it had not done before: it used a child suicide bomber with explosives detonated by a remote controller. The target was a wedding ceremony in the southern city of Gaziantep; most of the victims were children, like the suicide bomber himself. More than 50 victims were killed, of whom 26 were less than 18 years old. Two of the victims had just turned four.
This is premeditated, officially-tolerated murder. Evidence? Between Aug. 14, 2014 and June 29, 2016, two opposition parties, the social democrat Republican People's Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), appealed to parliament five times asking for a parliamentary investigation into ISIS and its activities in Turkey. All five requests were rejected by the votes of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdogan's powerful political machine. Why would a ruling party vote down an investigation request into a barbaric terror group that has killed hundreds of people in its own country? But there is more. In July, slightly more than a month before the ISIS's child bomber was blown up along with more than 50 others in Gaziantep, a court in the same city reduced the jail sentence of an ISIS militant due to "good conduct." Good conduct?! The man did not even stand before the court, as the police were unable to apprehend him.
At the end of June, the main opposition party, CHP, made a parliamentary inquiry into the activities of an Istanbul-based defense company accused of having links to ISIS. The opposition claims the SADAT International Defense Consultancy, established in the early 2000s by soldiers dismissed from the military due to Islamist activities, offers "irregular warfare training" in various fields including "intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing and assassination." The inquiry said: "…that special commissioned and non-commissioned officers have begun working at this company with high salaries, and that in camps irregular warfare training has been given to ISIS and its derivatives." SADAT's owner and chief official is retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi widely known for his close relations with Erdogan and the AKP.
Since the opposition made the parliamentary inquiry, it has not heard from the government benches about its request for an investigation into SADAT. But, after the inquiry, the government made a move. In August Erdogan appointed Tanriverdi as his chief presidential advisor. Turkey's war with radical jihadists is a too demure and reluctant one — if not fake altogether.
VLADIMIR PUTIN AND THE SHIITE AXIS
Anna Borshchevskaya
Foreign Policy, Aug. 30, 2016
On Aug. 16, Russian bombers took off from Shahid Nojeh air base near the Iranian city of Hamadan reportedly to bomb Islamic State targets in Syria. The fact that the Russian air force had based planes inside Iran was not only a surprise to American diplomats — it was news to many Iranian officials as well. While State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the Russian action may have violated a UN Security Council resolution, 20 Iranian legislators demanded a closed session of parliament to discuss why Iran had allowed foreign forces to base themselves in the country for the first time since World War II.
Against the backdrop of outrage in Tehran, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan accused Moscow of "ungentlemanly" behavior in publicizing Russia's use of the base, denied reports citing Russian officials that Moscow and Tehran had signed an agreement for Russia to use the base, and announced that Iran would no longer allow Russian bombers to fly from the airstrip. In an apparent attempt to save face, Russian Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the Russian planes had "successfully" completed their mission and returned to Russia. This may have seemed a brief hiccup in an otherwise solid alliance between Russia and Iran. But it's worth remembering that it's the romance, not the strife, that is the aberration. Never in the countries' hundreds of years of dealing with each other have they cooperated so closely. It's America's misfortune that Moscow and Tehran have just recently discovered that there is vast overlap in their interests in the Middle East — not least, in opposing U.S. interests there.
Russia and Iran have traditionally been suspicious of each other. Although there has been occasional cooperation, relations have usually vacillated between direct rivalry and veiled competition. At times, the two countries have descended into armed conflict: They fought two wars in the 19th century, and Russian forces occupied lands the Iranian shah considered his own in what is now Turkmenistan. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet forces sponsored separatist movements, first in the northern Iranian province of Gilan on the Caspian Sea and, in the wake of World War II, in both Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. The 1946 Azerbaijan crisis — the first real crisis of the Cold War — was sparked by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's refusal to withdraw the Red Army from Iran in 1946, where it had been stationed during World War II in order to help secure a supply route.
The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the Iranian revolution might have symbolized revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's animosity toward the United States, but his distrust of the Soviet Union was just as deep. "Neither East nor West but Islamic republic" became a defining slogan of Iranian revolutionaries. But with Khomeini's death in 1989, some Iranian officials sought to improve ties with Moscow. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani even traveled to Moscow to explore rapprochement. By the end of the 1990s, Russia had emerged as Iran's main conventional arms supplier and began assisting in its nuclear program.
When Vladimir Putin rose to power in 2000, the relationship grew even warmer. The arms trade between the two countries expanded even further, and the Kremlin's diplomats vocally supported Iran's nuclear program as a peaceful endeavor and worked diligently to dilute sanctions on Tehran. High-level meetings of the countries' top officials are now almost routine: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Iran in January 2015, and Putin visited in November — the first visits by Putin and a Russian defense minister in a decade. Putin and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, have met several times since then, as have their ministers and aides. This summer, Putin called for Iran's admission into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, something he had never done for any Arab state.
Some of the motivation for this warming of ties may have been economic, as Russian military and nuclear industries saw Iran as an increasingly lucrative market. But Moscow and Tehran have also been brought together by a growing number of shared political interests. Both countries are concerned about the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal. Both fear the rise of Sunni extremism, which for Russia is connected to the historic instability in the North Caucasus region that goes back to the war with Chechnya, when Moscow's abusive policies radicalized what began as a secular separatist struggle. Russia and Iran also see possibilities for growing cooperation in Eurasia; for example, three years ago, Russian and Iranian officials discussed the idea of Tehran joining the Moscow-led Customs Union, which aims to counterbalance the European Union.
The Syrian crisis has taken Russia-Iran cooperation to new heights. The war-torn country has become the perfect place for both regimes to check U.S. influence in the Middle East and expand their own power in the region. Putin especially wants to promote himself as a great world leader and cynically uses talk of anti-terrorism cooperation in Syria to advance this goal, even as he failed to target the Islamic State with any consistency and in some cases may even have strengthened it.
From Putin's paranoid perspective, support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is the same as supporting his own grip on power. The Russian president believes that the West orchestrated the "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe and other anti-regime protests in the Middle East and Russia. If he does not reduce Western influence, he believes, the West will oust him. Iran also needs Moscow's help to prop up its client and wants to obtain more Russian weapons. Putin says he is friends with everyone in the Middle East, but, in reality, his policies favor the "Shiite axis" in the region. Russian experts and officials claim that Iran is a potentially "secular" force to counter Sunni Islamists. Indeed, Moscow has designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State as terrorist organizations — but not the Shiite Islamist Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the Russian media trumpet the country's alliance with Iran and the public acknowledgment of Russian forces based there.
Putin is a cynical pragmatist. Even as he courts Iran and the Syrian regime, for example, he has also worked to improve relations with Turkey and Israel. Yet the Middle East's Shiite powers tend to be more anti-Western than the Sunni bloc — an alliance with them aligns with Putin's goal of countering the West and positioning himself as the leader of a great power.
Iran's decision to cut off Russia's use of Shahid Nojeh air base was most likely due to a domestic political backlash. In any case, the anger was not about Moscow's use of the base, but about Russia's decision to publicize it. Moscow and Tehran are therefore likely to continue cooperation. Theirs is an alliance of dictatorships, and dictators can put their differences aside when it suits their interests. Still, this doesn't mean their alliance is built to last. Putin may think he can continue to successfully balance the Arab world's rival Sunni and Shiite powers on one hand and Iran and Israel on the other, but the Middle East is volatile and unpredictable. Iranian officials' cynicism that Putin will throw Tehran under the bus when it suits his short-term interests and anti-Russian sentiments among ordinary Iranians will continue to undercut long-term ties.
But a short-term alliance can do long-term damage to U.S. interests, and tactical victories can add up to a strategy. U.S. and European officials should not underestimate Putin's Middle Eastern ambitions or the challenges that his growing anti-Western alliance in the region presents.
Ariel Bolstein
Israel Hayom, Aug. 29, 2016
Valdimir, a Muscovite taxi driver, is astonished that Israel, a tiny little country "that's all desert and sand" exports its fruit and vegetables all over the world — including to Russia, where Israeli produce has become a common sight in Moscow, and even to the country's periphery. But it doesn't end with carrots and potatoes. In general, Russia holds a positive view of Israel as an exciting, developed country. It is beguiling to many Russians as a tourist destination, and if anything stands in the way of increased Russian tourism, it is the fact that Israel is more expensive than other vacation locales.
This has proved beyond a doubt that tourism to Israel can help create a positive image for the country. The many Russians who have visited Israel since the visa requirement was canceled have changed the way Israel is viewed by the Russian public. Almost anyone you meet in Moscow has a friend, relative, or acquaintance who recently visited the Holy Land and came back with tales of its wonders. These positive stories add up to create more and more circles of support for Israel. What is especially interesting is how Russia views the Jewish state's military achievements. If in certain Western circles the IDF is seen as a "hunchback" deserving of criticism, the Russians see Israel's strength as something to be admired. For the Russians, military might means an independent, confident country, and only countries like that are they willing to accept as equal partners.
This situation is due to intensive work by many Israeli elements. The Israeli Embassy in Moscow, the network of Israeli cultural centers, Jewish Agency offices — they all do work that is worth its weight in gold. Even now, at the end of summer, which is traditionally vacation time in Russia, the capital is buzzing with Israeli activity. Just this week, three major events are underway: an exhibition of giant photographs of Israeli landscapes; the Israeli Film Festival; and the IDF band's appearance at an international festival of military bands.
When the Russian media mentions Israel, the consensus is largely favorable. The Russian government has such tight control over the state media that it's clear that the affection for Israel feeds off the sentiment of the "commander." Herein lies some uncertainty about the future: What will happen to the pro-Israel approach if the government changes its stance? That's not a scenario we currently foresee, but there is real — if unseen — competition between Russia and Israel. Russian Jews making aliyah, one of the founding principles of the Jewish state, is seen differently by the Russian powers. In their eyes, emigration is a battle for the most important resources of all, human assets. The stream of emigrants out of Russia upsets the country. Nevertheless, Moscow's residents cheer on the IDF band as it performs in Red Square, buy tickets to Israeli films, and crowd around the images of Israel's landscapes. Our image in the Russian capital has never been better.
The Erdoğan-Gülen Rivalry: Dr. Efrat Aviv, BESA, Sept. 7, 2016—This summer, the world was riveted by the attempted military coup in Turkey and the subsequent purge by President Erdoğan, who exploited the crisis to strengthen his own grip on power. Tens of thousands were detained, fired or suspended, including military personnel, police, teachers, deans, academics, journalists and judges. This was followed by the suspension of annual leave for more than three million civil servants nationwide until further notice.
Obama Is the Real Turkey in This Scenario: Ruthie Blum, Algemeiner, Sept. 6, 2016—US President Barack Obama met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday at the G-20 summit in China.
How the Turks Deceived the Americans on Syria: Alex Fishman, Ynet, Aug. 31, 2016— The Americans are now selling out the Syrian Kurds to the Turks—but we've already gotten used to their cynical foreign policy.
Russia’s Growing Military Ties With Iran: Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 17, 2016—Russian military aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday targeted rebel positions in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria. Not much new in that—except the Kremlin made a point of announcing that the bombers are flying out of an air base in western Iran.
