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Saturday, May 28, 2011
Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?
Barack Obama's approach to Arab-Israeli peace process on May 19 was ill-conceived and shortsighted. The conspicuous absence of a broader moral, demographic, and strategic calculus in Obama's call for Israel to recede within its 1967 borders is beyond belief.
There are many Christian/post-Christian states, dozens of resurgent Islamic states, and three Hindu majority states, but only one Jewish majority state. It is intriguing why Obama has asked Israel whose population density is almost 1,000/sq-mi and a territory less than 10,000 sq-mi to cede any land or stop its expansion in Jerusalem.
Israel is surrounded by a hostile multitude of 600 million Arabs, Turks, Persians, and Punjabis with birth rates between 1.9-5.1 children/woman, cumulatively higher than Jewish birth rates at 3 children/woman. The contemporary Middle-East neither has the relaxed attitudes of Scandinavians, nor the non-threatening birth rates of Japan.
As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.
It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.
Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.
Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.
“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.
“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.
The thriving and occasionally vacillating Indo-Israeli partnership -- due to imperfectly aligned strategic objectives -- should be strengthened within an institutional framework which could be christened Mediterranean-Arabian-Treaty-Organization (MATO), focused on regions neighboring Mediterranean and Arabian Sea.
Core Members of MATO could be the US, Israel, Cyprus, Bahrain, and India. The European Union (EU)- and Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) could participate as auxiliary members. These structural-functional steps should be supplemented with generous non-governmental charity efforts to promote one-child policy and women's education, health, and rights programs in the Sunni world to sharply arrest the ongoing and unsustainable baby boom.
India's full participation in this security structure will be constrained by its expanding need and dependency on energy resources from the Middle East as well as its 170 million-strong Muslim minority. This energy problem will have to be addressed either by a sharply expanding Russian role in the supplier mix, or some unexpected development, including a vast expansion of Thorium based nuclear power.
Obama or perhaps a more gifted Presidential successor can draw a new sustainable strategic doctrine for a diminished America under the umbrella of MATO, which will have EU-Russia securing their South, India containing its West and North, and Israel in conjunction with US Navy monitoring the East-West Axis of the emerging Islamic Spring.
I believe that in not too distant future there will be a drive towards political unification of the Arab-World as well as some security alliance in the Turko-Persian world. To what extent this geopolitical consolidation influences Pakistan's foreign policy trajectory is not easy to predict at this time.
A doctrine of containment which shuns democracy-by-gun with boots-on-the-ground impulse and relies on exploiting internal religious and ethno-linguistic contradictions in Middle East under the aegis of MATO in combination with uncontested sea and air deterrence is the only plausible approach to avoid cataclysmic financial and social crises in America and Europe.
Such an approach will salvage and secure America's socio-economic future and Israel's realm. MATO will forge solid and enduring partnerships which will carry immense strategic heft by utilizing India's enormous manpower and its prime peninsular location as a vast springboard into the Arabian Sea and Indian-Ocean.
This strategy will be global in its scope and outcomes and immensely superior compared to Obama-Brzezinski doctrine which advocates a reduced 1967 Israel. Israel should not be nudged towards making another covenant with death itself.
5.0-magnitude aftershock hits northwest Turkey
Earthquake readiness and preparation in Turkey are currently lacking, particularly given that most of the country lies on the North Anatolian fault line, a major active strike-slip fault running between the Eurasian plate and the Anatolian plate. The possibility of a major earthquake is a reality.
Defects in construction is the main contributing factor in buildings collapsing during earthquakes, but the lack of preparation is also a leading reason behind avoidable injuries and fatalities.
Drawing on experiences from the 5.9 magnitude Simav earthquake that happened only last week in the western province of Kütahya, which left three dead and injured over 120, Turkey's lacked of preparedness for earthquakes was clearly demonstrated by the significant number of injuries that were sustained due to people jumping out of windows and balconies as they were trying to escape from buildings. Other injuries seen during the Kütahya earthquake were related to heart attacks or panic-related shocks. The overreaction and panic demonstrated by people is a very small glimpse into a very significant problem, that is, of people being unaware of how to react during earthquakes.
The atmosphere of panic during earthquakes can be directly linked to systemic failures regarding training and preparation for earthquakes. It would seem that the most rational thing for an earthquake-prone nation to do is to educate their public on how to deal with earthquakes and react during them. However, currently in Turkey, there is a lack of teaching and training for preparation in the event of an earthquake. Inevitably due to lack of training a tendency towards panic is fostered. This lack is somewhat acknowledged by people working in sectors that deal with earthquakes and their aftermath.
Adnan Evsen, a Geology Engineers Kayseri representative, said on Wednesday in Kayseri, "Turkey has not developed any type of scenario on how to deal with a natural disaster." He added: "An earthquake in Turkey can occur at any moment. Do we have a scenario with how to deal with it? We don't. If an earthquake were to occur tomorrow in Kayseri, would anyone know to deal with it? They wouldn't because we do have not scenarios developed on how to deal with it nor have we developed practice exercises.
The epicentre of the quake, which struck around 0600 GMT, was at Simav in Kutahya province about 310 kilometres (190 miles) west of the capital Ankara, Anatolia said, citing the Kandilli seismological institute in Istanbul.
The tremor did not cause any casulties or injuries, but forced people out onto the streets and worried those who have been sheltering in tents since the May 19 quake, with a magnitude of 5.9, killed two and injured more than 80.
Guus Hiddink will consider 'concrete offer' if Chelsea come calling
Hiddink is guiding Turkey through a Euro 2012 qualification campaign but has not dismissed out of hand a return to the role he filled on an interim basis after Luiz Felipe Scolari was dismissed early in 2009.
The 64-year-old Dutchman has already talked about his appetite for club football and a return to the Premier League club to work for owner Roman Abramovich would appeal having previously worked for him at Chelsea and indirectly for the Russian national team.
Abramovich supported Hiddink's dual role with both Chelsea and Russia through his financial support of the Russian team.
Hiddink, at a Turkey training camp, said of speculation linking him with Chelsea: ''If there was a concrete offer, then I would think about it.''
But Hiddink is unlikely to break his contract with Turkey, who face a crucial qualifier with Belgium in Brussels on Friday, with the nation in contention to finish second in Group A and secure a November play-off ahead of the finals in Poland and Ukraine.
However, Hiddink would not commit to a possible return to take over from Carlo Ancelotti.
He added: ''There's nothing concrete. You cannot go into all kind of speculation or rumours because there's nothing concrete. The moment things are concrete, I'll go to where I have to be, direct. First, get this game done next Friday, a difficult game, you know. Then we'll see.''
Former Chelsea striker Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink believes Hiddink would be the obvious replacement for Ancelotti at Stamford Bridge.
''I know him very well,'' he said. ''He was the one that gave me my first cap for Holland. He is a very intelligent football man and a very good football man.
''He has already been here at Chelsea and was a success, so I can understand him being the favourite.Guus has already proved himself, he has already been here.
Certainly, however, speaking at the Turks’ training camp, close to the Dutch border with Germany, Hiddink did little to dampen down the sense that he was expecting Abramovich to make an offer to return to the club he successfully led on an interim basis after Luiz Felipe Scolari was sacked in February 2009.
Crucially, Hiddink also spoke about his appetite for the game — and his desire to remain as a coach or manager rather than become a director of football as has also been mooted. “As long as I feel fresh, as long as young people, players, are not getting annoyed with me, and I’m always asking for signals regarding this — people getting sour or bitter or nasty as an attitude — then I will continue,” he said.
“So far, I feel energetic to go on. Sir Alex Ferguson is a lesson for us. I read that his wife told him to get lost, go, not to sit here in the garden and do the gardening. Get back to work. As long as you have this energy and you’re not repeating yourself, are keeping it fresh and the players and the people you’re dealing with are not turning away, then continue. You should walk away if they do start doing that, but I don’t feel it at this moment.”
Hiddink also dismissed the notion that he did not want to return to club football as a head coach. “When you’re working at a club with a lot of joy, then all of a sudden you say it might be good to be a national team manager because there you’ll be more flexible and you’ll have fewer games,” he explained. “But, when you’ve been working a long time with a national team and still have that energy — like, with this team, I’d like to work every day because I’d have more impact on them and their execution of games — then you like to work every day. I like to work every day. So, we’ll wait.
But the reaction here is rather up and down and, should we lose, I can imagine they would say it would be better if I quit. As they did when we lost to Germany and Azerbaijan. There are rumours, too, that it would be easier for me to leave if we lost to Belgium, but I've been in this business a long time. That is not influencing my approach to the team. The focus is on the job and this game. That's it."
The squad are already familiar with Hiddink, who has acted as an adviser to Abramovich on an ad hoc and unpaid basis since leaving Stamford Bridge in 2009, a loose arrangement he also enjoys with PSV. "The people at Chelsea, including the Boss (Abramovich), were always welcoming after I left," he added. "So, every now and then, we have contact."
The 2010 Premier League champions, who are looking for the seventh manager of Abramovich's eight-year ownership, dismissed Ancelotti after a trophyless season. They would prefer to secure Hiddink as a manager to oversee what will be a summer of relative upheaval at Stamford Bridge, potentially with the prospect of him becoming a director of football at some stage in the future with a younger coach recruited beneath him.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Turkey forex twitter
- Turkey is a fast-rising economic power, with a core of internationally competitive companies turning the youthful nation into an entrepreneurial hub, tapping cash-rich export markets in Russia and the Middle East while attracting billions of investment dollars in return.
- * Turkey’s economic renaissance — last week it reported a stunning 11.4 percent expansion for the first quarter, second only to China....
- * In June, Turkish exports grew by 13% compared with the previous year, with much of the demand coming from countries on Turkey’s border or close to it, like Iraq, Iran and Russia. With their immature manufacturing bases, they are eager buyers of Turkish cookies, automobiles and flat-screen televisions.
- * It is an astonishing transformation for an economy that just 10 years ago had a budget deficit of 16% of gross domestic product and inflation of 72%. So complete has this evolution been that Turkey is now closer to fulfilling the criteria for adopting the euro — if it ever does get into the European Union — than most of the troubled economies already in the euro zone. It is well under the 60% ceiling on government debt (49% of G.D.P.) and could well get its annual budget deficit below the 3% benchmark next year. That leaves the reduction of inflation, now running at 8 percent, as the only remaining major policy goal.
- 3) Seeking Alpha: Turkey's Economic Prospects - As Good as It Gets?
- * In the short term, the Euro area crisis, Turkey’s soaring current account deficit, and domestic politics pose the biggest risks. In the longer term, Turkey must address a low savings rate and weak education system if it hopes to catch up to the fastest-growing emerging markets.
- * The other major long term constraint on growth is education. To improve labor force participation—currently about 50 % overall and less than 25% for women, compared with 71 and 63 %, respectively, in the EU—reform of and greater investment in the education system is needed. Turkey has largely reached quantitative targets in schooling, especially among boys; girls are lagging behind but catching up. On the other hand, the average quality of education is miserably low. The Program for International Student Assessment places Turkey second-to-last among OECD countries.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
No partnership deal with Sweden after 'genocide' vote
The vote, following the adoption of a similar measure by a U.S. House committee, drew a sharp response from Ankara, which swiftly recalled its ambassador to Stockholm in a show of protest.
The Swedish envoy to Ankara was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in response to the vote, which the Turkish government considers a setback in Turkish-Swedish relations. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meanwhile declared that he has canceled a scheduled trip to Sweden.
Erdoğan and the prime minister of Sweden were scheduled to sign an agreement in Stockholm this week under which the two countries planned to hold annual meetings on every level in the fields of politics, business and culture.
“We did hope to welcome Prime Minister Erdoğan to Sweden in order to set up a strategic partnership similar to what Turkey has with Italy and Spain,” Swedish Ambassador to Turkey Christer Asp told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview.
The top diplomat originally planned to go to Stockholm over the weekend in preparation for the Turkish prime minister’s visit but had to cancel the trip after the vote.
“We attach great importance to our relations with Turkey. But, of course, now see what happened, and Mr. Erdoğan canceled his trip. That is another negative fallout,” Asp said, adding that they would continue to work on establishing relations.
The Swedish parliament was not unanimous in its vote, Asp said.
“The opposition side, with the support of parliamentarians from the governing side, managed to carry the resolution. Every year it has been rejected,” he said. “This year, when the issue first came up in the parliament’s foreign-relations committee, it was also rejected, but the opposition side obviously managed to convince some parliamentarians to jump ship at the last moment. That’s why it happened.”
Swedish gov’t policy ‘unchanged’
Sweden’s center-right coalition government has distanced itself from the resolution, which passed by a 131-130 vote. Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Friday that he deplored the vote and assured it would not have an immediate consequence on the government’s policy toward Turkey.
Asp, who explained his government’s position to Turkish Foreign Ministry officials, said: “I underlined that this is the decision by the Swedish parliament. It is not a legally binding decision on the government.”
“According to Swedish constitutional rules, it is up to the government whether to transform the decision into government policy or not,” he added.
According to the top diplomat, the Swedish government believes history should not be politicized and backs the historical commission that has been suggested and agreed upon in the Turkish-Armenian protocols. This position, he said, remains unchanged.
Threat is still there
The resolution is in the form of a recommendation to the government and cannot become a law, Asp explained.
“It cannot be a law because it is in the form of a non-binding, non-legal proposal. It does not have any legal implications,” he said. “According to our constitution, in a case like this, it is entirely up to the government to decide whether it wants to take this proposal up or not. It stays there as far as Sweden is concerned.”
However, the possibility of the resolution turning into a law in fact remains because a different government may legally adopt the measure after the September elections in Sweden. The three opposition parties have already announced they would make it government policy if they came to power.
Swedish gov’t, parliament ‘back EU bid’
Saying he regarded the resolution as a “clear setback to bilateral relations,” Asp made it clear the development would not change Swedish support for Turkey’s European Union process. Sweden is one of the strongest advocates of the country’s EU bid and even challenged France when it was holding the bloc’s term presidency.
“On the EU process, this will change nothing. Even representatives of parties voting for the resolution have said this has nothing to do with the continuous support in the parliament for Turkey’s EU accession,” said the ambassador.
“The vote should be separated from the EU question. There will still be a very strong support from the Swedish government and the majority in the parliament,” he added. “There is strong support from among all the political parties for Turkish membership in the EU. That will not be affected.”
Impact on Turkey-Armenia normalization
The resolution passed in the Swedish legislature follows similar ones in France, Russia, Greece, Germany, Belgium and Canada. But the votes in the U.S. and Sweden come at a time when Turkey and Armenia are making efforts to normalize their ties.
“I certainly think this is not helpful for the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia,” said Asp. “I believe that we should concentrate our efforts on supporting this process.”
Source:hurriyetdailynews.com/
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