TURKPULSE No:135..........JANUARY 31st, 2005
U.S. MILITARY SEEKS A FURTHER $80 BILLION FOR BME
The congressional debates, prior to the changing of the guards in the State Department, did not bring much clarity to the American intentions concerning its Broader Middle East (BME) policy under the new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Instead, the new Bush Administration’s application to Congress last week for $80 billion additional military appropriations for the region was a much more significant development in shedding light on Washington’s intentions. Even though the announcement put this sum for “Iraq and Afghanistan” most diplomatic analysts tended to read it as “Iran and Syria”. At the outset of the Iraq war in 2003 the American Government put the cost of the American presence in Iraq at $50 billion a year or $1 billion a week. This $80 billion plus the $25 billion that already exists in the budget more than doubles that sum for this year. Does it mean the enlargement of the American military operations in Iraq after the 30 January elections or shifting the military action elsewhere? About Turkey’s role and place in these potential developments, please read the article below.
A worldwide BBC survey showed, on the eve of the new Bush Administration’s starting work in Washington, that with 82% of the people, Turks rank first in distrusting the Bush Administration’s foreign policy performance. It was extensively due to a serious clash of national interests in Iraq and elsewhere between Turkey and the United States, but diplomatic misunderstandings may also have played a certain role in this occurrence.
Ambassador - a shock absorber or a shock intensifier
Troubled periods in Turkish-American relations are nothing new or uncommon in the post WW II period, but good diplomacy has always helped to fare these storms to safety thanks to the meticulous care paid by both countries to avoid unnecessary showdowns. More than 40 years has gone by since the American diplomat and CIA official George Harris published his book on Turkey, “The Troubled Alliance”.
Shortly before the BBC’s survey, the Turkish Government boycotted the American Ambassador’s reception at his residence in honour of the “Ecumenical Patriarch Bartalameos”, because he used the title Ecumenical (Universal) for the first time in contravention of the provisions of the Lausanne Treaty which defines the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy as a national Turkish institution.
It was the second time that such a boycott was carried out against the Americans in Ankara, but the relevant American ambassadors’ handling of it made a world of difference in its impact.
The first was on 4 July 1976. An experienced and popular American ambassador then in charge in Ankara foresaw the approaching storm due to the American arms embargo on Turkey. He preferred to host a low profile lunch-time national day party even though it was for the bicentenary celebrations. The Pulse editor with his late wife Janice was one of the few Turks who defied the boycott and tried to make a small contribution to Ambassador Macomber’s strenuous efforts in steering Turkish-American friendship through troubled waters.
This time, however, a relatively small discrepancy about using the word “ecumenical” was blown out of all proportions and Ankara and Washington exchanged subtle threats that they had taken note of this affair. What‘s more, a top Turkish commander, the First Army Commander, General Hursit Tolon, was the one who uttered this sign of impatience when 4-5 Turkish security people were ambushed and killed near Mosul in Iraq by Turkish speaking terrorists, proving that they were PKK terrorists protected in northern Iraq by the American occupation forces.
The difference between the two boycotts to the Americans in Ankara three decades ago and today is the difference between the behaviour of the two ambassadors. While Ankara had full confidence in Ambassador Macomber that he would reflect Turkey’s views to Washington properly and with sympathy, it is hardly the case today as Pulse drew its readers’ attention back in October. (Link to Pulse 129) Ambassador Macomber used to play the healthy role of a shock absorber in transcending over these troubled times and consequently was always welcome when he knocked on any Turkish door, official or private.
Rebuttals against scientific facts is prejudicial to anyone’s credibility
Today the American Embassy team is still going round to the press, especially to newspapers like the conservative daily Zaman published by Washington’s protégé Fetullah Gulen supporters, with claims of “conspiracy theory” about the most undeniable scientific facts concerning the 17 August 1999 Golcuk earthquake in this case.
This “conspiracy theory chorus” always cashes in on the lack of knowledge in public opinion about complicated scientific facts like Nikola Tesla’s Magneto- hydrodynamics theory and especially its applied science products. In a nutshell, their argument goes:
“They say Tesla Coils or Tesla Electromagnetic Generators that were placed in the Marmara fault caused the Istanbul earthquake in 1999. Just imagine the millions of horsepower energy needed to artificially trigger off an earthquake. Which Tesla device can possibly generate such an enormous power?”
The answer is very simple and exists in the relevant American and other scientific publications. Here is an excerpt from an American source:
“…Tesla utilized these ‘Tesla waves’ –longitudinal (scalar) EM (electromagnetic) waves (like sound waves) of pure electrostatic potential with no ‘E’ (electrical) or ‘H’ (magnetic) transverse vibrational fields. He certainly proved that he could transmit usable electrical energy in very large quantities, without any wires and with only minor energy losses, via his EM Magnifying Energy Transmitters. He claimed that he was bouncing these Tesla waves through the earth’s core to the antipodes and back to the transmitter (Tx) site. A relatively small, 10 kW-generator energy supply of just a few horsepower would readily allow the buildup by resonance of millions of horsepower in the coil circuits of this Magnifying Energy Transmitter device.”
The above being the scientific reality about artificially created earthquakes, young Turkish students and scientists have intensified their studies on Tesla’s Magneto-hydrodynamics and emphasize in their websites that ionized liquids create an electromagnetic field while passing through a magnetic area. These MHD generators triggered off the 17 August earthquake in Turkey, they say. They also persistently demand that the Turkish Navy along with the American, British and Israeli warships carried out exercises in the Golcuk area on the eve of the 17 August disaster, planting the relevant MHD generators on the Marmara fault.
How realistic is a Turkish naval captain in trying his hand in diplomacy?
The answer sought to this question brings about interesting information concerning the current state of affairs between Turkey and the United States.
Only a couple of weeks ago, between 9 and 13 January, surface units from the Turkish, American and Israeli navies conducted Reliant Mermaid, a biannual humanitarian assistance exercise in the eastern Mediterranean.
Naval Captain Orhan Babaoglu gives the following background information in the Washington Institute webpage:
“Reliant Mermaid was started in January 1998 as an initiative to bolster peacetime cooperation and interoperability between the U.S., Turkish, and Israeli navies. Since then, Reliant Mermaid has met twice a year for four- to fourteen-day periods, alternatively on the approaches to the Turkish and Israeli coasts of eastern Mediterranean.” Babaoglu goes on to explain that the exercise is not “exclusionary”. Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Morocco, and Oman, “although often skeptical about the exercise, have sent observers to take part in Reliant Mermaid, while some European nations, such as Germany, France, and Greece, have had their naval attaches in the Reliant Mermaid January 2005.” The Turkish naval captain also tries his hand on what he calls “Navy as an Element of Public Diplomacy” and lengthily praises the American Navy’s activities in the current tsunami disaster. He says, “…the first days of 2005 have witnessed a historic moment as the U.S. Navy launched an enormous effort to help the people of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, to deliver aid to survivors…This is a historic moment because it could potentially turn things around for Washington at a time when the U.S. public image in the Middle East and much of the Muslim world is facing speedy erosion.” In his efforts “enhancing political ties and better public diplomacy for the American Navy”, Captain Babaoglu describes the 1999 Istanbul earthquake in total contravention to the Golcuk people’s beliefs and says, “The U.S. Navy’s disaster relief effort after the devastating 1999 earthquake in Turkey, whose epicenter was in the Marmara Sea, near the headquarters of the Turkish naval fleet in Golcuk, was a more recent milestone in this relationship.”
As usual Pulse gives the two sides of the issue and leaves the judgment to the reader, bringing into the picture another aspect of the facts.
Is Turkey blocking the Black Sea to the American Navy’s similar exercises?
The high circulation Turkish media is too much under the control of the American Disinformation Mechanism to report it, but the American press is more informative. Jamestown Foundation, which specializes in Russian affairs, reported on 30 November 2004 that as a big surprise to Washington, Turkey did not allow the American Navy to conduct naval exercises in the Black Sea along with the Russian Navy even though a smaller one, Passage Exercise (PASSEX) was held in the Mediterranean between NATO and Russia. “This modest debut falls far short of NATO’s hopes to elicit Russian participation in the alliance’s Operation Active Endeavor, a large-scale ongoing naval surveillance effort against terrorism, illicit arms and drug trafficking, and WMD proliferation in the Mediterranean Sea…Active Endeavor is being run as a NATO Treaty Article Five operation.”
According to this American publication, “Russia had twice, if vaguely, agreed in principle to join Operation Active Endeavor. In the NATO-Russia Council’s session at the level of Ministers of Foreign Affairs during NATO’s June session in Istanbul, Russia seemed to agree to participate in the operation as of August. Then in the NATO-Russia Council’s annual informal meeting of Defense Ministers in October, Russia seemed prepared to join the operation within two weeks, for a period that would extend into 2005.” As it turned out, Moscow attached certain unacceptable conditions to its participation in this operation and opposed holding an Active Endeavor-type exercise in the Black Sea. “Unexpectedly,” writes the American publication, “NATO member Turkey is making common cause with Russia in opposing such an exercise. Turkey’s argument, that passage of a NATO naval task force through the Straits might lead to erosion of the Montreux Convention on the legal regime of the Straits, is unconvincing to other parties to this debate. By all recent evidence, Turkey appears comfortable with a Turkish-Russian naval condominium in the Black Sea.
“Characterizing the Black Sea basically as a closed sea, and stressing the paramount role of riparian countries in providing for its security, Russia and Turkey give preference to BlackSeaFor, a naval cooperation group that includes all of the riparian countries: Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The BlackSeaFor command rotates annually among participant countries. BlackSeaFor holds periodic exercises focusing on confidence-building, rescue, disaster-relief, and anti-smuggling measures.
“BlackSeaFor is also irrelevant to security, as could be seen in July-August of this year, when Russia established regular maritime traffic to Sukhumi and delivered a warship to Abkhazia, despite Georgia’s protests, even as Georgia held the rotating command of BlackSeaFor for 2004.
“Russia now proposes developing an anti-terrorism role for BlackSeaFor, so as to prevent NATO from performing that role in the Black Sea. However, Romania and Georgia favor creating a Black Sea Task Force as part of, or supportive to, the NATO task force that conducts Operation Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean, and consistent with the legal regime of the Straits.”
The above excerpt from the American press is enough to prove how true the Pulse articles are about the 17 August 1999 Golcuk earthquake. uras@ada.net.tr – January 31st, 2005