Tag Archives: Turkey

Quake Delivers Earth-Shattering Blow to U.S.-Led NATO Hypocrisy, by Finian Cunningham

Posted on February 9, 2023 | 2 comments

Billions for the corrupt Ukraine regime, nothing for Turkey or Syria, and no relief for Syria from U.S. sanctions. And we wonder why most of the world despises the U.S. government. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

When a real-world emergency happens, all of NATO’s pious and self-regarding talk implodes in a pile of dust.

A 7.8. magnitude earthquake hits Europe’s southern neighbors Türkiye and Syria – and the NATO alliance does next to nothing in response. What sort of security organization is that?

Rather, it seems to be too busy trying to start World War Three by undertaking an unprecedented mobilization of resources and equipment in Ukraine against Russia. A mobilization that is completely unwarranted and indeed is an audacious gaslighting charade played on the Western public.

The United States-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization has an annual military budget that exceeds well over $1 trillion spread over its 30 member nations. One of those members is Türkiye.

What sort of priorities has NATO? Not rhetorical, theoretical, or presumed priorities, but real-life practical, demonstrable priorities.

On Monday morning this week, southern Türkiye and neighboring Syria were devastated by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and multiple huge aftershocks. The death toll in both countries has risen to over 11,000 with tens of thousands injured and made homeless. With thousands of missing people trapped under rubble, the casualties will increase over the coming days.

Many countries were quick to send emergency rescue teams to the zone of havoc that straddles the border between Türkiye and Syria. Russia and Iran – experienced in such natural disasters – were among the first neighboring countries to send in aid and salvage crews.

By contrast, the apathetic response from the U.S.-led NATO bloc has been abject. What’s even more incredible, Türkiye is a long-time prominent member of the organization and is considered a vital partner for the European Union.

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US Alarmed As Erdogan Hints At Assad Meeting Amid Moscow Reconciliation Talks, From The Cradle

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Syria hasn’t been able to kick the U.S. military out of the country, but if it teams up with Turkey and Russia, it probably can. That thought terrifies U.S. policymakers. From The Cradle via zerohedge.com:

During a speech in Ankara last Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may soon take place, “as part of efforts for peace.” He added that a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia and Syria is scheduled to be held in the near future for the first time since 2011.

Erdogan said, “As Russia-Turkey-Syria, we have launched a process through the meeting of our intelligence chiefs and defense ministers in Moscow. Then, God willing, we will bring our foreign ministers together trilaterally. Then, depending on the developments, we will come together as leaders.”

Via Reuters

The upcoming meeting aims to enhance communication after Russian-sponsored talks between the Turkish and Syrian defense ministers were held in Moscow on 28 December. The meeting was the highest-level of official meetings between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian war.

In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 5 January, Erdogan called on the Syrian government to ‘take the steps to achieve a tangible solution concerning the case of Syria.”

The US sis seeking to establish a middle ground between Ankara and the SDF in order to prevent Turkish-Syrian reconciliation.

The Syrian-Turkish rapprochement via declared Russian mediation was paralleled by Emirati-Syrian rapprochement – the latest of which was a “brotherly” meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring historical relations between Assad and Foreign Minister of the UAE Abdallah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, according to SANA.

Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the UAE seeks “to join Russia in sponsoring Syrian-Turkish relations at a high level,” noting that the Emirati foreign minister’s visit to Damascus sought to arrange Turkiye’s participation in the tripartite meeting of Syrian-Turkish-Russian foreign ministers, making it a quadripartite meeting.

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Turkiye’s Erdogan Flips Syria on its Head, by Tom Luongo

Posted on January 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

On multiple fronts, the game is moving against the U.S. in the Middle East on multiple fronts. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

erdogan-putin-s400s-turkey

While we are all, rightfully, worried about what’s going on in Ukraine, those sneaky Russians are shoring up their situation on the south shores of the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.

As reported last week the meeting between Russia, Turkiye, and Syria took place between their Defense Ministers where they all described the talks as ‘constructive’ towards solving multiple outstanding issues like refugees and the backing of radicals.

This meeting was put in motion by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the Moscow Times article notes:

In November, Erdogan said a meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was a possibility, after cutting diplomatic ties with Damascus throughout the 11-year conflict.

In mid-December, he indicated that he could meet with Assad after the two countries’ defense and foreign ministers meet.

“We want to take a step as Syria, Turkey and Russia,” [emphasis mine] he said at the time.

The issues discussed are especially important for Erdogan as the protracted war is sapping his popularity at home in the face of an ongoing pull out of western capital from Turkey that has seen the lira go through what can only be described as a hyperinflation since 2018.

With elections on the horizon and Erdogan’s position tenuous for the first time in his political career, moves need to be made now to improve things. Allowing the millions of Syrian refugees the opportunity to go home would be a big win for Erdogan politically.

This is also a good use of Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister, since he’s not in charge of the operation in Ukraine and hasn’t been since October, with good reason.

Shoigu, I’m sure, has been preparing for this meeting for months, laying the groundwork for talks between Turkiye and Syria that are long overdue.

As Alex Mercouris pointed out in a recent Duran video, Turkiye’s president Erdogan set three steps for a resolution of the conflict between it and Syria.  This meeting of the Defense Ministers is the 2nd of them.

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Is NATO falling apart? By The Saker

Posted on November 23, 2022 | 1 comment

As a lot of freezing and hungry Europeans are going to discover this winter, they’re interests are not those of the U.S. government and its cat’s paw European governments. From The Saker at thesaker.is:

Something quite amazing has just happened.  Following the terrorist attack in Ankara which killed 34 people and injured another 125, Turkish authorities first declared that they will not accept US condolences.  Then the Turks launched a military operation against “Kurdish terrorists in northern Syria“.  Turkey then claimed to have neutralized 184 terrorists.

What is not mentioned in those articles is that the target of the Turkish strike was the US-run center for the training and education of PKK militants in Rojava.  There are rumors that the Turks gave the US enough warning time to evacuate most of its personnel.

Does that sound familiar?

If it does, it is because it is very similar to what the Iranians did when they hit US bases in Iraq following the murder of General Solemani in a US drone strike.

If the above is true, and rumors are very much “if” and cannot be considered as proven fact, then that means that a NATO member state (Turkey) just attacked a US base and, like Iran, got away with it: the “The Finest Fighting Force in the History of the World” just got whacked hard and humiliated for a second time and could do absolutely nothing to defend itself or even save face.

How big a slap in the face did Uncle Shmuel get this time?  According to the Turkish defense minister, Hulusi Akar,

Terrorists’ shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, and warehouses were successfully destroyed,” Akar said, adding that “the so-called headquarters of the terrorist organization were also hit and destroyed.” Overall, the Defense Ministry claimed that the strikes hit nearly 90 targets, which it said were connected to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG).

Even allowing for some “patriotic exaggeration”, it is pretty clear that Ergodan’s revenge strike was both quite substantial and, apparently, rather effective.

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PATRICK LAWRENCE: 21st Century Order

Posted on July 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Whether the West likes it or not, some of the world’s most substantial countries are building a new world order without them. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

As a piece of the new world order that is under construction, Putin’s trip to Tehran last week was of singular importance. 

Railway station constructed in 2013 in Kazandzhik, Turkmenistan, an important crossroad of the Trans-Caspian Railway and North-South Transnational Railway. (Balkan Wiki, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

At last we were able to read, last week, a New York Times story that concerned the Russians but not the brutal Russians. However, if we are not reading about the brutal Russians and their brutal military and their brutal attacks on civilians in Ukraine, we are obliged to read about the lonesome Russians, the pariah Russians, the Russians the world has forsaken. We are never going to read about ordinary, just plain Russians in the Times or in the rest of the mainstream press as it apes the Times. This we must accept.

Vladimir Putin traveled to Tehran last Tuesday for a summit with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. This was an unusual occasion: The Russian president has not been much for foreign travel since the Covid–19 pandemic erupted; it was his second state visit outside the Russian Federation since Russia intervened in Ukraine last February.

And it is a big deal, deserving of our attention. It marks another step, a considerable one, in the construction of the diplomatic, political, and economic infrastructure that will — I don’t consider this a daring prediction — define the 21st century. We witness the new world order many of us anticipate as it is being built.

The new world order many of us anticipate, if you have not noticed, ranks high among the great unsayables in American discourse and among American media. No, we’re still stuck on our “rules-based international order,” which is clunky code for the hegemony America defends. It is hopelessly passé at this point but remains lethally destructive.

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The power troika trumps Biden in West Asia, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on July 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

As the Eurasian axis takes shape, there’s one simple fact that will override American desires to stifle it. The Eurasian nations are playing on their own territory, the U.S. is not. From Pepe Escobar at thesaker.is:

The presidents of Russia, Iran, and Turkey convened to discuss critical issues pertaining to West Asia, with the illegal US occupation of Syria a key talking point.  Oil and gas, wheat and grains, missiles and drones – the hottest topics in global geopolitics today – were all on the agenda in Tehran this week.

The Tehran summit uniting Iran-Russia-Turkey was a fascinating affair in more ways than one. Ostensibly about the Astana peace process in Syria, launched in 2017, the summit joint statement duly noted that Iran, Russia and (recently rebranded) Turkiye will continue, “cooperating to eliminate terrorists” in Syria and “won’t accept new facts in Syria in the name of defeating terrorism.”

That’s a wholesale rejection of the “war on terror” exceptionalist unipolarity that once ruled West Asia.

Standing up to the global sheriff

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his own speech, was even more explicit. He stressed “specific steps to promote the intra-Syrian inclusive political dialogue” and most of called a spade a spade: “The western states led by the US are strongly encouraging separatist sentiment in some areas of the country and plundering its natural resources with a view to ultimately pulling the Syrian state apart.”

So there will be “extra steps in our trilateral format” aimed at “stabilizing the situation in those areas” and crucially, “returning control to the legitimate government of Syria.” For better or for worse, the days of imperial plunder will be over.

The bilateral meetings on the summit’s sidelines – Putin/Raisi and Putin/Erdogan – were even more intriguing. Context is key here: the Tehran gathering took place after Putin’s visit to Turkmenistan in late June for the 6th Caspian summit, where all the littoral nations, Iran included, were present, and after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s travels in Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, where he met all his Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts.

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Biden’s Political Myopia Endangering Europe: Allow the EastMed Pipeline, by Burak Bekdil

Posted on February 28, 2022 | 2 comments

You would think a natural gas pipeline that conveys gas that doesn’t come from Russia and is supported by three U.S. allies (particularly Israel) would get an a green light from the Biden administration. Alas, environmental politics and Turkey are getting in the way. From Burak Bekdil at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Biden surprised EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline on January 9, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified supply of energy to Europe, and further assuring even greater revenues for Russia and its war machine.
  • “The Biden Administration’s actions in this matter are particularly objectionable and hypocritical in light of its tacit approval of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which will only deepen Europe’s energy dependence on a volatile adversary.” — U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis, January 24, 2022.
  • As Biden was busy undercutting three staunch U.S. allies in the Mediterranean [Cyprus, Israel and Greece] to appease Erdoğan and a fantasy of “green energy” — that is years from being either ready or affordable — to appease America’s Democrat Party, Ankara would once again prove to be only a part-time Western ally.
  • “During the vote [against Russia]… Turkey decided to abstain,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said. “We don’t want to break off the dialogue with Russia.”
  • Biden should immediately reverse his decision and permit the EastMed pipeline.
  • In December 2019, Biden had described Erdoğan as an autocrat and promised to empower Turkey’s opposition parties through democratic processes. Was that a joke, or is Biden a crypto-fan of Erdoğan?
President Joe Biden surprised EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline on January 9, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified supply of energy to Europe, and further assuring even greater revenues for Russia and its war machine. “The Biden Administration’s actions in this matter are particularly objectionable and hypocritical in light of its tacit approval of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which will only deepen Europe’s energy dependence on a volatile adversary,” said U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis (pictured) in response. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Netflix)

Once again U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategic miscalculation is coming with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO’s pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe’s energy security.

The past several years saw the East Mediterranean turning into a slow-fuse time bomb sitting over rich hydrocarbons claimed questionably by Turkey as a stand-alone regional force versus an alliance of Greece, Cyprus and Israel.

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NATO appoints Turkey to lead drive into the Middle East and Asia, by Rick Rozoff

Posted on April 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

NATO’s goal is to disrupt the Chinese-Russian led Eurasian Axis, and Turkey is well positioned to be a disruptive force. From Rick Rozoff at antibellum679354512.wordpress.com:

On the first of the year the North Atlantic Treaty Organization transferred command of the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) to Turkey.

On March 30 NATO turned over its current mission in Afghanistan to Turkish Brigadier General Selçuk Yurtsizoğlu.

In a phone conversation on April 1 U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar discussed Turkey’s role in leading the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan among other matters.

Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while both were attending the NATO meeting of foreign ministers and secretaries on March 23-24. (Blinken on the occasion: “Turkey is a long-standing and valued ally.”)

Speaking at an event in the U.S. on March 9 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: “I think that we need to understand that Turkey is an important ally. Because you can just look at the map and then you see that Turkey is extremely important.” [That final sentence is key and will be addressed later.]

A few days earlier Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote on Twitter, “We would like to thank the NATO Secretary General for his objective evaluations on Euro-Atlantic security and defence matters.”

This is notwithstanding Turkey having supported and supervised if not directed last year’s 45-day war by Azerbaijan – the countries identify themselves (or itself) as “one nation, two states” – against minuscule Nagorno-Karabakh, its invasion of Northern Iraq thirteen years ago, its ongoing proxy war in Libya, its both direct and proxy war in Syria, its regular buzzing of fellow NATO member Greece’s aircraft in the Aegean Sea and its – now at 43 years – longest counterinsurgency war in the world against ethnic Kurds in its own country (which has spilled over into Iraq and Syria.) None of that in any manner disturbs NATO, the self-styled alliance of democracies.

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Ten Years Since Beginning of Failed Regime-Change Operation Against Syria, by Paul Antonopoulos

Posted on March 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

When does a long war become a forever war? A decade seems like a good dividing line. From Paul Antonopoulos at antiwar.com:

The initial coalition against Syria has collapsed, with Turkey frustrated over the U.S.’ sustained support for the Kurds and the Arabs pivoting back to Syria.

On this exact day ten years ago, NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Turkey and Israel began a coordinated campaign of regime change against President Bashar al-Assad and the destruction of Syria. This has led to the death of over 500,000 people, millions of refugees, destroyed infrastructure and an economy in crisis. Despite numerous political maneuvers, this alliance against Syria catastrophically failed and could not achieve regime change. Not only did Assad survive the onslaught, but the geopolitical situation dramatically changed as a result.

Each aggressor had its own ambitions in Syria but was united in the goal to achieve regime change. Thanks to the contributions made by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Syrian government survived the coordinated aggression. Whilst NATO and Turkey continue to insist on regime change, Arab states, most prominently Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were forced to normalize their relations with Syria to counter the growing threat of Turkish expansionism and influence into the Arab World that they had not anticipated when they decided to destroy Syria ten years ago.

Although a U.S.-dominated unipolar system was consolidated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s 2008 intervention to defend the de facto republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia against NATO-encouraged Georgian forces was the first sign of an emerging multipolar system. A multipolar system, where there is a more equal distribution of power compacted into spheres of influence, was strengthened whilst the US could only helplessly watch as Russia successfully defended South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a region that falls under Moscow’s sphere of influence.

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US Goes to Economic War Against NATO Ally Turkey: Time for a Civil Divorce? by Doug Bandow

Posted on December 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

NATO lost its reason for being when the Soviet Union collapsed, and so too did the rationale for Turkey’s membership. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

The Turkish-American marriage, solemnized by Ankara’s accession to NATO in 1952, is on the rocks. The partners were ill-matched from the beginning but stayed together so long as the Soviet threat loomed and the Turkish military was in charge.

The Evil Empire, as Ronald Reagan characterized it, disappear more than three decades ago. Nearly two decades of rule by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have transformed Turkey. In Abraham Lincoln’s enduring words, the resulting “passion” has strained the “bonds of affection” between the two nations to the breaking point and perhaps beyond. The incoming Biden administration should stop treating Ankara as an ally and instead recognize it as the independent and often hostile power that it has become.

Tensions have long been evident. Although the AKP’s triumph in 2003 was not welcomed by Washington, which had grown comfortable with the secular nationalists who dominated Turkish politics and the generals who stood behind them, he began cautiously, using domestic liberal and foreign, especially European, support to dismantle the military-first regime. Erdogan’s early reforms won backing even from academics and feminists, who found his government more open than the ruthless nationalists replaced by the AKP. However, his professed retreat from Islamism and support for democracy was always suspect, and within a decade he acted on very different ideas.

Over time he centralized power, pushed aside old colleagues, concocted fantastic conspiracy charges against perceived enemies, deployed state agencies against opposition businessmen, detained journalists, seized critical media, arrested political opponents, and ousted opposition officials on dubious charges. He also variously used Islamism and nationalism to win increasingly unfair elections. The attempted 2016 coup became his Reichstag fire, allowing him to arrest around 100,000 people, most on contrived, often risible charges; 150,000 more were fired from public and private jobs. Hundreds of banks, businesses, schools, and other organizations were closed or confiscated.

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