Ending nuclear proliferation instead of adding to it - Go Obama 08! Like JFK, a new road for America!In what was his most distinctive foreign policy speech so far, Mr Obama drew a parallel between his campaign and the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who first negotiated the nuclear weapons control that led to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969.
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Turkey's government is nervous - are the crisis scenarios discussed by the Hudson Institute mere scenarios, or plans? One of the scenarios includes the incursion of the Turkey military into Iraq, which according to some news sources this past week, has already happened. Whatever the goal of the conference, here is yet another diplomatic fiasco generated by the American neo cons, just as these two supposed allies of the US are toe-to-toe.
Terrifying scenarios discussed at US think tank
A Washington-based think tank is reported to have had participants at a closed-door meeting, including Turkish military officials and civilian experts, discuss various crisis scenarios for Turkey in a brainstorming session.
Tülay Tuğcu
Assassi-nation of the recently retired chief of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, Tülay Tuğcu; a plot where 50 people would lose their lives in a terrorist act claimed by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in İstanbul’s Beyoğlu district; and a cross-border operation by the Turkish military into Iraq were among the possible scenarios discussed at the Hudson Institute, known for its anti-Islam discourse and neocon stance, both favored at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. Sources close to the think tank said that a significant number of the participants from the US objected to the scenarios floated during the session, asserting that they were too “unrealistic,” and refrained from making comments on the possibilities mentioned. About 20 participants attended the conference, which lasted a couple of hours, the same sources said.
At least one of the Turkish participants opposed a scenario in which terrorist leaders in northern Iraq were captured by US authorities and handed over to Turkish authorities, according to sources. This opposition was based on the reasoning that such a move would be perceived as US support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) ahead of the general elections on July 22. The suggestion that the AK Party would benefit if the US supported Turkey in its war against northern Iraq-based terrorism is not new in Washington. In a report written last month by Soner Çağatay and Yüksel Sezgin, associates of the Washington Institute, the authors argued: “Can the AK Party sustain its latest strategy? Assuming that its apparent tactic of political polarization works, other variables could have an impact on the party’s public support. For instance, terrorist attacks by the PKK would hurt the AK Party significantly. Alternatively, the party’s popularity would be boosted if the United States pressured Iraqi Kurds to extradite into Turkish custody those PKK leaders currently based in northern Iraq.” US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza said the scenarios being spoken of in the Hudson Institute were “insane,” according to a Turkish translation of his remark. Bryza also said that the US had no concern about the outcome of the general elections in Turkey, as long as the government is democratically elected. He added that Turkey’s democratic structure was most important for Turkey.
A group of AK Party deputies visiting Washington described the incident as “disgusting,” and said it would spell “treason” if Turkish participants really argued that PKK leaders should not be handed over to Turkey due to domestic political reasons.
Officials at the Turkish Embassy in Washington said they had heard that a meeting would be held at the Hudson Institute, but they had not been invited. No Turkish diplomat participated in the meeting, the same officials underlined.
Brig. Gen. Süha Tanyeri, director of the General Staff’s Strategic Research and Study Center (SAREM), Brig. Gen. Bertan Nogaylaroğlu, Turkey’s defense attaché in Washington, and Zeyno Baran, director of the Center for Eurasian Policy and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, are rumored to have been among the meeting’s participants.
The scenarios discussed at the Hudson Institute dominated a press conference held on Thursday at the Turkish Embassy by AK Party deputies, led by İstanbul deputy Egemen Bağış, who is also a senior advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Saying that a brainstorming exercise based on the question “What will happen in Turkey if the head of Turkey’s Constitutional Court is assassinated?” had been held during a closed-door meeting at a US think tank, journalist Hasan Mesut Hazar asked Bağış as well as two other AK Party deputies, Reha Denemeç and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, about their reactions.
“I condemn all kinds of efforts that accept killing of any Turkish citizen, be it a senior judge or not, as the starting point or as part of a scenario. These are really shameful. I also condemn those who attempt to do such a thing in a country that alleges to be a democracy,” Bağış said.
“Certain quarters set to become engineers of social projects designed in Turkey or certain quarters who try to determine the course of politics in Turkey from abroad do not have the right to say a word about Turkey’s national unity and Turkey’s national security,” he added.
Journalist Yasemin Çongar said “certain experts and officials argued at the meeting that the capture of PKK leaders by the US at this stage and their being handed over to Turkey would be unfavorable for political reasons,” and asked the deputies visiting Washington for their reaction.
“I find it disgusting that those persons who are from those lands assume an approach, saying, ‘Let’s wait for a while, let losses of people continue for a while’, just because of their political expectations concerning Turkey, while our commanders, conscripts and civilians are losing their lives. I harshly condemn it. These are approaches beyond politics that are equal to treason,” Bağış said.
“If there are certain persons who favor increasing the number of soldiers being martyred by the PKK because they believe that this will have an impact on the political life in Turkey, I say that they are traitors,” he added.
When journalist Yılmaz Polat asked whether the said discussion was the one held at the Hudson Institute, and hence organized by Zeyno Baran, Bağış said, “I don’t know that.” Facing insistent questions from journalists, Bağış, Denemeç and Çavuşoğlu said they didn’t have any information regarding those behind the controversial remarks and whether there were Turkish officials at the meeting. “I say that it is disgusting if the allegations are true,” Bağış said.
Meanwhile the hypothetical scenarios were described as being simply “too stupid” to have any credibility, by the former co-chair of the joint Turkish-EU Parliamentary Commission, Bülent Akarcalı. “These are simply too stupid to be credible. The US government has always been close to independent think tanks. So even if this is not an organization that is part of the US State Department, the US government should make a statement. In addition it is also important to know how much of these comments are adopted by the US administration. I believe the Turkish representatives that attended the meeting must have been there to prevent any mistakes that might have been made.”
Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Şükrü Elekdağ, a retired ambassador, referred to the Hudson Institute as a “serious institution,” but continued, “This is absurd.” Elekdağ, who served as ambassador to the US for 10 years added: “I don’t think serious people would take such scenarios seriously. They are trying to manipulate the country. It is a humiliating scenario.”
International relations Professor Hüseyin Bağcı of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) said he expected more scenarios on Turkey with sources in the US. Expressing concern that the Middle East could be restructured, Bağcı said: “I think intervention in northern Iraq would be wrong. That would create enormous problems for Turkey.”
They could be taking Turkey’s pulse
However the scenarios were not uniformly condemned as outrageous. Retired Ambassador İnal Batu said the Hudson Institute has a habit of “acting” out similar scenarios, even world wars. “It is very scary when it is very close to us. I don’t see anything strange. It would have been very different of course had this been a state institution,” he said, adding: “This is quite fashionable in the US. We have war games too. Senior officers attend such classes.” Batu also said that if the meeting had involved military officials from NATO countries then the participation of Turkish military officials was only natural.
Although he stated that acting out scenarios was not strange, Batu noted that if the claim that a Turkish representative indeed opposed handing over PKK terrorists to Turkish authorities by US forces in Iraq, “That would hurt us.” He added that speaking about something like this with foreigners would be “very wrong.”
Oya Akgönenç, Felicity Party (SP) representative responsible for foreign relations, said that in her opinion the content of the talks leaked to the press had the intention of taking Turkey’s pulse. “They will come to a conclusion and make some analysis. Leaking this story is perhaps a preparation, a way to determine an attitude,” she suggested.
Retired Ambassador Nüzhet Kandemir said US-based think tanks always worked on a number of scenarios. However he said that such scenarios never came under the spotlight during his time as Turkish ambassador to the US because he never allowed such a thing to happen. He also said Turkey would never let any of the Hudson scenarios become reality.
16.06.2007
ALİ H. ASLAN WASHINGTON http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=114232
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OK, here’s just one reason I’m tired of the focus on the huge, media-vulture events and our knee-jerk compulsive-obsessive responses to them. I’m as exasperated as most Americans with our lack of progress to end this stupid Occupation of Iraq, and the ongoing disaster in Afghanistan. The fact is, though, I would be immensely exasperated even if we didn’t have these occupations going on, even if we weren’t the biggest arms dealers usually to both sides of any conflict anywhere in the world.
On average every year since 9/11, about 20,000 young people from ages 10-34 die violently – they either commit suicide or are murdered.
We’re supposed to have a “terrorism” crisis, and it’s supposed to be coming from outside the US, with some “homegrown terror cells” too. We’re spending billions (let’s just forget “millions” as a large measure anymore, when we’re dealing with budget deficits in the trillions) to “prevent terrorism”. We’re spying on regular people’s web surfing habits, emails and phone calls because over 3,000 people were killed in a one-day attack.
Meanwhile, our young people, as young as age 10, are being murdered or committing suicide at the rate of 20,000 a year. These young people, people who could be (hopefully already haven’t been) our nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, young parents, grandchildren, cousins, brothers and sisters – all were not killed in a war. What’s wrong with this picture?
Well, we’re rightfully protesting the deaths of almost 4,000 soldiers now, along with the lifelong injuries of tens of thousands more. That’s been in four years. That’s about 1,000 soldiers a year – while 20,000 young people of about the same age as those soldiers (some much younger) are dieing right here in that same year.
Why don’t we care about these “domestic” deaths? Why don’t we demand, with equal vehemence, that our government deal with these deaths as a crisis? Twenty times as many people as soldiers in Iraq, some as young as 10, most between 15-34, die of violent causes every year. Another 9,000 or so people between 35-44 die violently, either by murder or suicide. That's almost 30,000 people between 10 and 44 years of age dieing violently in the US per year! Between the ages of 44-64, another 10,000 who haven’t been felled by cancer or heart disease or accidents are also murdered or commit suicide! In one year!
Inside our country, in one year over 27,000 people commit suicide; another 13,000 are killed. I'll bet you didn't know suicide kills more people than homicide, eh? You don't see a huge movement to arrest all those suicidal people and throw away the key [yet!] - your news only tells you that you must distrust your neighbor and expect to be murdered anytime, anywhere.
These 40,000+ violent deaths are from CDC statistics from 2004 – and as poverty spreads, despair and violence spread, and poverty has increased for millions of people in America. Expect higher numbers for 2005 and 2006.
So what do I want you to take from this? Well, keep it in perspective, please. While we’re being jerked around by our media and politicians to focus on things they control completely, we are letting these daily atrocities go, for the most part, unchallenged. These 40,000 murder/suicides per year are ripping at the very fabric of our existence. It’s as if we were being attacked by an outside enemy and mustering no defense whatsoever.
If it were an outsider killing this many in our country, even most of us who oppose empire-wars would join to defend ourselves against such a virulent attack. Why don’t we demand some national defense against this institutionalized (as in "routine", "ignored", "treated as normal") attack on our humanity?
Mental health PACs and interest groups aren’t in the news much (unless there’s a massacre!). They’ve never been busted for bribing legislators or singled out by those wonderful millionaires and actors who push the “liberal” agenda. Yet really, what’s more likely to impact our lives, our families, our homes? Are you or your loved ones more likely to die from global warming this year, or terrorism – or murder, or despair?
Take a look at the figures, and if life at home here in the US isn’t what it should be, let’s start demanding changes here, too, not just in our policies overseas. We won’t really value life any more elsewhere until we start valuing life (and not just fetuses) here. There are more demonstrations to protect fetuses than there are to stop the despair and violence within our own communities. It’s no coincidence that so many feel so helpless to change national and foreign policies when we live so tenuously right here.
We need mental health care for everyone that is fully paid for and available at many times the levels we have now. We need real mental health care, not pharmaceutical-industry-sponsored pill-pushing and “Ta-ta! See you when you need more!” We need to stop ignoring the despair that’s so close to home and so frightening to us all. We need to reach out to those who are close to the edge, not run from them – there’s nowhere to run; they’re in our communities, they are “us”.
Even in the presidential election endless season, only John Edwards stresses mental health for everyone, and Barack Obama wants improved mental health care for troops and veterans. None stress anything other than the methods and treatments that are obviously woefully inadequate. The 40,000 needless deaths will continue, year after year, while we wait for government and the media to even acknowledge it's a real problem they can help change.
As long as we have such easy access to weapons that easily kill others (and we always will so long as the US is the biggest arms dealer – by multiples! – in the world), we have to treat the epidemic of violence against others and ourselves as what it is – A CRISIS! Leaving millions of people in a state of poverty, anxiety and despair that could drive them to kill others and/or themselves is a stupid and cruel domestic policy.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/osp/charts.htm
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