TURKEY STEERS CLEAR OF USA’S SUPER MISTAKES

 

The closest ally of the United States, the UK, was in deep trouble in recent weeks with the seven-seven and its replicate-to-be a couple of weeks later which luckily remained abortive and saved Londoners from another tragic blood bath. A few Turks lost their lives in these two sets of violence in the heart of Europe and three others were detained for 40 hours with suspicion of involvement in this so-called “Islamic terrorism”. The whole affair was proof of the changing world where the British police famous for never carrying a gun turned out to be a trigger happy security force killing an innocent Brazilian man in London with eight bullets, five in the brain, at the slightest suspicion. The most interesting side of these tragic events remains to be seen as the established British rules of justice will find it most difficult to find the “smoking gun” about the arrested Islamic origin British national suspects. For an analysis of a Muslim writer-researcher in the light of Turkey’s centuries old experience in these events please read the article below.

 

The struggle in Washington’s BME (Broader Middle East) area, between the United States and the SCO (The Shanghai Cooperation Organization) for having the upper hand in especially Central Asia has clearly taken a turning in favour of the Asian organization. Instrumental in the commencement of this trend were events ranging from Iraq and Iran to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The uncontrollable suicide bombings in Iraq which have begun to claim at least 20 lives a day of the US coalition’s supporters, the Turkish forces’ handing over the command of NATO forces to Portugal on Monday (1^st) in Afghanistan (terrorism declined by 40% in Afghanistan during the Turkish command), the Kyrgyzstan elections a few weeks ago which turned out to be a support for the SCO and Iran’s announcement of resumption of its nuclear activities are all important developments contributing to this trend. Uzbekistan has already given Washington a six-month notice for closing down its air base next to the Afghan frontier and Kyrgyzstan is expected to follow suit in accordance with the 5 July Astana conference resolutions of the SCO, despite the US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld’s rushing to Bishkek to dissuade the new Administration from taking such a step.

Soros funds in elections yield opposite results in BME, including Turkey

All these developments are proof that American secret funds commonly called the “Soros funds” and used in the elections of these countries (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey) are yielding the exact opposite of the American intentions. In Turkey the Soros funds and tactics were used in the elections of two political parties- the official opposition party CHP and the strongest rival of the AKP rule, the MHP. Both failed flatly and resulted in the unmasking of this CIA subversion in Turkey’s domestic politics by official party rulers, namely Deniz Baykal and his colleagues, as well as the wide range of MHP rulers and mouthpieces.

The last occasion was the CHP’s Istanbul provincial convention on Sunday, July 31^st. A former party chairman, Altan Oymen, stood for the Istanbul Provincial Head election on Sunday and suffered a heavy defeat by Baykal’s supporters, losing the election with 388 votes to 213. Noteworthy at Sunday’s provincial congress was a prominent banner reading, “If you are saying, ‘You are opposing the super power, we will make you pay for It,’ we know damn well how to pay that price in dignity; but it should be known that we will never succumb. – Deniz Baykal”.

At Sunday’s Istanbul provincial convention of the CHP the American subversion, if any, was quite subtle, but at the emergency national convention seven months ago it was scandalously obvious as the American NGOs were pouring down millions of dollars in order to topple Deniz Baykal by a very mediocre politician, Mayor Sarigul of Istanbul’s Sisli town. And what’s more they were using exactly the same tactics in favour of Sarigul as they used in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and other places –carrying noisy demonstrators by busses and trucks from town to town at great cost.

These American NGOs or institutions that were recently active in the elections in the BME region include, according to Turkish experts, NED (National Endowment for Democracy), USAID (the US Agency for International Development), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, George Soros’s the Open Society Institute, the International Republican Institute, as well as PAUCI (Poland, America, Ukraine Cooperation Initiative), the Centre for Political Studies in Ukraine, the Centre for Political and Legal Reforms in the United States under the guidance of the American Freedom House all of which carried Yuchenko to power in Ukraine, Saakashvilly in Georgia etc.

In this country the Turkish nation clearly said, “Enough is enough” when these subversive activities were brazenly used at Turkey’s domestic policy activities in the CHP and the MHP and its impact was clearly seen in the Turkic Republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in recent weeks.

At the CHP emergency national convention last January Chairman Deniz Baykal waved from the rostrum a “top secret” CIA document claiming that $4 million had been deposited in the accounts of his daughter in Switzerland with an “Enigma” codename. Baykal said these claims were put forward by the CIA’s unit, OSP (Office of Special Plans). Mobilizing all the side forces of the CHP, Deniz Baykal looked into if there really was such a unit in the CIA. The outcome of the investigation was that this unit was set up in the CIA after 9/11 with the Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s initiatives in order to generate information to justify the American invasion of Iraq. A former RAND Corporation official, Abram Schulsky was in charge of the OSP. It was now trying to discredit and topple Deniz Baykal for playing a key role in preventing Turkey from allowing the United States to open the second front from the north in Iraq, according to the information given at the convention by Chairman Baykal. .

The Istanbul convention last week was proof that the CIA plots will never succeed in the CHP where Deniz Baykal with his existing team will certainly carry the day at the national convention a few months later. Will he pay no price for so courageously going against the Super Power? Deniz Baykal’s poster at the Istanbul convention is loud and clear enough of an answer to that question- “We are ready to pay for the price in dignity, but we will not succumb”.

Indeed, a gallop poll carried out by the French daily Le Monde on 18,604 people in seven regions and 36 provinces of Turkey last June shows that the AKP will remain the biggest party at the next general elections with 22.2%, to be followed by the MHP’s 18.4% and the CHP’s 12.6%. The other parties remain below the 10% threshold and consequently out of parliament unless the remaining undecided 30% make up their minds in their favour by the elections.   

The MHP with its racist tendencies is especially growing amazingly in the east and southeast which the West claims to be Kurdish. This in itself is enough to evoke Washington’s keen interest in this party and the outcome of this unwarranted interest that manifests itself as activities aimed to capture the MHP management, has been frustration hitherto. Washington’s candidates for the MHP management are closely followed by Turkish security organizations and they include a Turkish Ambassador who persuaded Deputy PM Bahceli to have early elections in November 2002 without the top party administration’s slightest knowledge. The Disinformation Mechanism’s backbone in the Turkish media, the Dogan Holding’s mess circulation organs like Hurriyet, Milliyet and their TV stations are busy introducing this ambassador as the “skillful negotiator Deniz Bolukbasi” (Milliyet, 21 May 05), going as far as giving him all the credit for Turkey’s 1 March rebuttal to the United States over Iraq and other achievements of Turkish diplomacy. Such disinformation subversion will not easily work in Turkish politics in future; assure the people in the know.

UK’s anti-terrorism bill is under fire

These super mistakes of Washington in its BME policy have not only brought the United States to the brink of liquidation of its forces and bases from the Central Asia, starting from Uzbekistan; but have also induced its arch-ally UK to pass “draconian” counter measures against terrorism that “resemble the worst aspects of the Soviet Union and other repressive states,” as British critics themselves label.

A Pakistani descent British journalist, Ahmad Rashid, of The Daily Telegraph, wrote a book, Taliban, back at the turn of the millennium and strongly criticized the American policy of using Islam and violence as a tool for its foreign policy. In his book and articles e depicts Washington’s Taliban and Al Qaeda policy as “shortsighted, inconsistent and lacking in strategic purpose.” He explains with vivid examples how Pakistan, aided by Saudi Arabia and the United States and opposed by Iran, Russia, Turkey and other Central Asian republics, armed and encouraged their own rival ethnic-religious factions inside Afghanistan.

Ahmad Rashid’s book is the best source to understand how the UK is now pestered by terrorism of this “backward-looking, anti-female, drug-trading, terrorism-supporting, massacre-prone process.”

Seven/seven in London and the dread of its recurrence more violently than its abortive replicate on 21 July have brought the Blair Administration to the point of proposing to Parliament an anti-terror bill which may be legislated before long despite all its uncharacteristic anti-democratic nature opposed by the people.

This 125-clause Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Bill has come under harsh criticism over the last two weeks, when it faced open debate on Parliament’s lower chamber floor. It calls for broad new government powers aimed at tackling terrorism and terror networks in Britain. The bill also gives wide-sweeping powers to track the telephone calls and Internet traffic of both British citizens and foreign nationals. One measure seeks stiff penalties for anyone using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior intended or likely to stir up hatred against a group of people because of their religious belief.”

The most contentious clause in the proposed legislation allows for indefinite detention for suspected foreign terrorists at the government’s discretion and it directly falls at odds with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights – which forbids indefinite detention. Britain is the only country of some 40 signatories to the European convention that has sought to alter its laws to allow for indefinite detention. British critics call the whole bill “an attack on the basic principles of justice and freedom and wrong in principle.”

In other words, the new British bill is reviving the internment system of WW II when the Americans detained more than 100,000 Japanese origin US nationals for years and Britain some 8,000 “Fascism inclined” Brits and German citizens throughout the war. Today internment without trial is allowed in such countries as Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It is a pity that blindly going in the wake of President Bush’s wrong policies has brought the cradle of democracy to such a position. What is the Turkish nation’s outlook and feeling of this situation? I think the letter below I sent to the American press a few months ago is quite a good indication of this feeling:

            Dear Sir,

I was shocked by the photographs and the remarks in your article in the New York Times Sunday Supplement of 20 March on the Turkish Armed Forces and the PKK terrorism. The military boots supposed to be belonging to the Turkish soldiers and brutally treading upon everything in its way reminded me of the photographs and films of the American soldiers kicking down the fragile doors of the poor civilian Iraqi families trembling before the fully equipped GIs armed to the teeth.

Contrary to the overwhelming majority of the Islamic world to which I belong, however, I did not want to put it down to the brutality and utter cruelty of the American soldiers and the nation, but preferred to interpret it as inevitable atrocities of war.

May I finally point out that the Turkish soldiers you are so readily criticizing were not fighting to kill the innocent people thousands of miles away from homeland, but were trying to save them from terrible terrorists indiscriminately butchering the helpless aged civilians, unarmed women and babies in cradles?

May I also remind you that by praising the PKK atrocities so generously you are setting a bad example to Bin Laden and his gang in Iraq.

Yours Truly,

Vedat Uras, Editor of Pulse. uras@ada.net.tr – August 5^th, 2005