Author: Badalian Vardan

HOLY SEE OF SAINT ETCHMIADZIN ATTENDS RELIGIOUS LEADERS’ CONFERENCE IN KAZAKHSTAN

news.am
June 01, 2012 | 12:11

The IV Congress of Leaders of World And Traditional Religions was
held in the Kazakh capital city Astana, on Wednesday and Thursday,
and on the initiative of Kazakhstan’s President, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

At the event, the Holy See of Saint Etchmiadzin was represented by
Archbishop Nathan Hovhannisyan and Bishop Markos Hovhannisyan.

During the Congress, Archbishop Hovhannisyan delivered Catholicos of
All Armenians, Karekin II’s message of salutation to the participants.

SMBAT LPUTYAN: “ARMENIAN CHESS PLAYERS WILL BE ABLE TO REPRESENT ARMENIA AS A POWERFUL AND LEADING CHESS COUNTRY”

ARMENPRESS
1 June, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, JUNE 1, ARMENPRESS: World chess Olympiad will take place
in Istanbul in September-October. On this occasion Armenpress begins
special series dedicated to this event opening it with interview with
Vice President of Armenian chess federation, grandmaster Smbat Lputyan.

– Mister Lputyan, how are Armenian chess players planning to prepare
for World chess Olympiad?

– All members of Armenian national chess team are experienced sportsmen
they also have great experience in World chess Olympiad and they will
prepare for Olympiad in personal programs before they all gather in
Dzermuk and Chaghadzor just before the tournament.

Levon Aronyan, Sergey Movsisyan, Vladimir Hakobyan, Gabriel Sargsyan,
and Tigran Petrosyan: these are the members of our national team;
they plan themselves in which tournaments they will take part. All
players realize that our team must heve good performance in Istanbul.

– In which preliminary tournaments our chess players take part?

– Today our chess players take part in different international
tournaments – in Albena where Armenia is represented by Vladimir
Hakobyan, Tigran Petrosyan and others, in Chicago where the victory
was after Gabriel Sargsyan. They may also take part in international
tournament in Dzermuk after Karen Asryan.

– Armenia is one of the leading countries in chess having the 4th
position after Russia, Ukraine and China. How are ready our future
chess players to continue the tradition of present team?

– Armenian chess federation pays great attention to the popularization
and development of chess. First our national chess team I hope will
play for a long time keeping our good traditions and besides, we have
several talented young chess players.

US SENATOR DICK DURBIN TO VISIT ARMENIA

ARMENPRESS
MAY 31, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, MAY 31, ARMENPRESS: U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat,
Illinois State) will visit Armenia on June 1. The Senator will meet The
President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and the Foreign
Affairs Minister Edward Nalbandyan to discuss issues on regional
security and internal state, Us Embassy informed Armenpresss.

Senator Durbin and his delegation will also have meetings with the
participants of the Armenian -Turkish cross border program, sponsored
by the United States of America and with the women political leaders.

Dick Durbin is the second authoritive personals of the party enjoying
the majority in the Senate, besides Durbin is the member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also involved in the sub
commissions dealing with the Caucasus issues. North-Atlantic Treaty
Organization, the European Union and the organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe-related issues are under the responsibility
of the sub commission.

CONFRONTING THE LIMITS OF CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN ARPINE KONYALIAN GRENIER’S THE CONCESSION STAND: EXAPTATION AT THE MARGINS

Asbarez
May 31st, 2012

The front cover of the book
BY TALAR CHAHINIAN

In her 2011 publication, The Concession Stand: Exaptation at
the Margins, Arpine Konyalian Grenier sets out to puncture
rigid formulations of identity that would classify her as an
Armenian-American poet. As an Armenian born in Lebanon and living and
producing in the United States, Grenier seeks to dismantle reductive
formulations of hyphenated identity.

The Concession Stand consists of eight poetic essays. The collection
develops a technique of ‘over-writing,’ in order to highlight the
under-written – the hidden and [email protected]
– nature of cultural memory and the over-simplified identities it
designates. In Grenier’s case, over-writing means fusing words with
overlapping referents and reformulating phrases as slight variants.

The over-written nature of the collection draws attention to the
unacknowledged elements of cultural memory by critiquing the language
that produces and reproduces it, on two levels: broadly, her essays
problematize language as a system by which we ascribe meaning to the
world around us; more specifically, her use of language problematizes
the possibility of a “mother tongue” in a transnational, post-modern
context. This two-tier critique undermines rigid conceptualizations
of identity in the Armenian diasporic context, particularly ones
built around cultural memory and its primary vehicle and repository,
the Armenian language.

In order to properly acknowledge the foundational role of language in
culture, Grenier’s poetic essays do not simply describe or recount
events; particularly in Part 1 of the Book, her essays comprise a
lyrical event, somehow ‘taking place’ on the page. By pushing her
language toward self-reflexivity – to where the word meets itself –
Grenier attempts to recreate the moment before the word is uttered
and, according to her, destroyed in the utterance. Hinting at this
writing process, Grenier writes:

Words projected unto themselves no longer refer to themselves but to a
sect of meaning and feeling more essential to language. Consequently,
commitments based on the logo-centric and the conventional enslave. So
then, weary of or lacking a conscious desire to attain, one goes
after the unattainable. Cross, chunk, classify, parse, erase, include
and exclude. The poem knows more than I do. At some point, however,
we collide to purge, we change course, adapt. (21)

Grenier rejects the futile attempt to trace in language the
relationship between words and their prescribed meanings in
a supposedly stable and objective world. The attempt enslaves,
because even recognizing the futility of the search paradoxically
drives both poet and reader more powerfully toward it. Grenier’s
poetic experimentations draw attention to just that futile search,
recreating it in its own contorted struggles, enacting a chase that
leads the word back to itself.

As the excerpt above suggests, Grenier also takes pains to distinguish
the poem from the poet, in order to suggest that each works as a
self-directed actor, carrying out the quest for meaning independently
of the other. But rather than metaphorically killing off the author as
a source for meaning in a post-structuralist vein, Grenier reconfigures
the relationship between author and text as multi-directional, endowing
each with the ability to make the other adapt and evolve. Ultimately,
Grenier suggests that language as a system of meaning-making is not
structurally self-sustaining, and the author, as a person constructing
language through the poem, is not a sole proprietor of meaning and
creation. Instead, what we are left with is the simultaneous exchange
between poem and poet, in language, in the form of the lyrical ‘event’
we see on the page.

Writing about the poet’s role in acknowledging the limits of language
and participating in its lyric performance, Grenier suggests, “Syntax
of language breaks at the extremes of experience… Accordingly,
language happens” (30). This juxtaposition of language’s structural
insufficiency, its inability to exist or mean on its own, with its
involuntary performance or production highlights Grenier’s interest
in how what comes before the word is uttered and destroyed by the
confinements its utterance in language imposes on it. Her strategy of
over-writing allows her to free the word from structural or syntactical
demands. By defying the demands of speech, grammar and utterance,
if only momentarily, Grenier’s poetic essays seek to express “a sect
of meaning and feeling more essential to language.”

This attempt to exceed the self-imposed bounds of language and
expression helps Grenier’s writing cross commonly prescribed
categories. It thus breaks the barriers between prose and verse,
moves back and forth across languages – infusing English speech with
French, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian, and Latin words or phrases – blends
dicta and meditations, mingles textual references and autobiographical
memories, and most cleverly, creates countless instances of word play.

The overabundance of allusions and cross-references overwhelms and
exposes the reader’s futile desire for interpretive closure. But in the
process, the reader also gains authority as a third actor alongside
author and text, another meaning-maker in the lyric event that is
Grenier’s poetry. By placing us, the readers, at the intersection
of language and meaning, Grenier’s over-writing makes us profoundly
aware of both the limits and the fluidity of language.

By contrast, the essays in the second half of the book are more
concretely autobiographical, focusing on themes of exile, genocide,
witnessing, mourning, and the Armenian Diaspora’s use of identity
discourse. Ironically, it is precisely through such ‘subtractions’
that Grenier brings the under-written nature of Armenian diasporic
cultural memory into even sharper focus. For instance, she refers
to herself at one point as the “messed up offspring of a messed up
offspring of a messed up survivor” (51). Even in the apparently more
conventional narratives in the second half of the volume, therefore,
Grenier traces the trans-generational transference of trauma and
her family’s exilic past to suggest the impossibility of locating a
pure form of cultural identity, defined by rigid markers such as a
mother tongue or a singular narrative that ignores cultural contact
and exchange. She writes:

I have no mother tongue as my mother tongue has lost me. I implode
within this loss, seeking the chaos sustaining the world of languages
with a voice that has the body and place of an absent body, after a
derivative of the past whereby the new would occur, time and history
abolished because of what escapes or survives the disintegration of
experience. (43)

Grenier describes her lack of a mother tongue as a “loss,”
ascribing her search for a speaking voice with the remnant of a
lost and disintegrated experience. As a third-generation survivor,
she casts her loss as one without origin, an originary traumatic
experience that has disintegrated over the years. As a result,
Grenier experiences all attempts to locate her sense of self as
more than a cultural loss but as a profound, a more fundamental,
absence. In another stark contrast, Grenier juxtaposes this vague
sense of absence with the culturally rigid sense of loss, suggesting
that cultural experiences and constructions are a product of dynamic
exchange rather than isolated construction.

Grenier’s personal quest to embrace a more dynamic cultural identity
leads her, in the second half of the book, to Turkey. Not surprisingly,
the land is marked for Grenier by its contradictory identity as both
the land of her ancestors and the country Armenian cultural memory
vilifies. In her most linearly narrated essay, “A Place in the Sun,
Malgre Sangre,” Grenier recounts her experience traveling to Turkey and
finding proximity and a history of exchange and borrowings between
the two cultures, Armenian and Turkish. She concludes the essay
by declaring, “I developed, moving from unknowingly being Armenian
Turkishly to knowingly becoming American, Armenianly” (68). In coming
face to face with Turkish culture, she’s able to embrace its influence
over her understanding of Armenian culture. That recognition of
Armenian culture as historically multi-faceted and dynamic in turn
allows her to configure her current American cultural coordinates
under the influence of her Armenian heritage.

It is through this both personal and lyrical journey that Grenier
resists the pressures of a different assimilation, reducing her
cultural identity to presumptive formulations; through the experimental
writings and explorations in The Concession Stand, Arpine Konyalian
Grenier rejects an under-written, hyphenated existence, embracing
instead an over-written, multiple identity.

Talar Chahinian holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA
and lectures in the Department of Comparative World Literature at Cal
State Long Beach. She or or any of the other contributors to Critics’
Forum may be reached at [email protected]. This and all other
articles published in this series are available online. Sign up for
a weekly electronic version of new articles . Critics’ Forum is a
group created to discuss issues relating to Armenian art and culture
in the Diaspora.

NEW BOOK EXAMINES ROOTS OF JEWISH ANTI-GENOCIDE LOBBY

ASBAREZ
Thursday, May 31st, 2012

Model Citizens of the State

Book traces forced Turkification of Jews, their fight against
Anti-Semitism, and Turkish-Jewish Leadership Lobbying against
Recognition of Armenian Genocide

TORONTO-The Zoryan Institute is proud to announce the translation and
publication of a new book by noted author Rifat Bali, Model Citizens of
the State: The Jews of Turkey during the Multi-Party Period (Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group,
2012).

This book provides an expose of the treatment of the Jewish community
in Turkey from 1950 to the present, their fight against anti-Semitism,
the struggle for their constitutional rights, and the attitude of
the Turkish state and society towards these problems.

In a review of the Turkish edition that appeared in the Armenian
Weekly, Turkish journalist Ayse Gunaysu and a member of the Committee
Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association
of Turkey (Istanbul branch) since 1995, described the book as
“groundbreaking … unearthing facts and first-hand accounts that
unmistakably illustrate how the Turkish establishment blackmailed the
leaders of the Jewish community-and through them Jewish organizations
in the United States-to secure their support of the Turkish position
against the Armenians’ campaign for genocide recognition . . . The book
also offers rich material about how Turkish diplomats and semi-official
spokesmen of Turkish policies, while carrying out their lobbying
activities, threatened both Israel and the U.S. by indicating that if
the Jewish lobby failed to prevent Armenian initiatives abroad-Turkey
might not be able to guarantee the security of Turkish Jews . . . It
has been a routine practice for Turkish authorities to invariably
deny such threats. However, Bali’s industrious work in the archives
reveals first-hand accounts that confirm these allegations.”

In explaining his motivation for writing this book, Bali states,

There are a number of facts which triggered my starting to research the
history of the Jews in the Turkish Republic. They can all be summed
up in the fact that I was tired of listening to and reading the rosy
narrative that was repeated over and over by the leaders of the Turkish
Jewish community, as well as by Turkish intellectuals, politicians and
historians. The same narrative was also predominant outside Turkey. I
wanted to discover what was really behind this rhetoric.

Bali details how, despite the attempt of Jewish community leaders
in Istanbul to fit into the mold of the “model” Turkish citizen as
defined by Kemal Ataturk, and regardless of the official government
policy toward the Jewish community, the anti-Semitic attitudes of
the majority Muslim population in Turkish society were ever present.

The book describes how, initially, the Jewish community received
similar treatment by the government of Turkey and had similar problems,
fears and reactions as the Armenian and Greek minorities during the
Single Party period, 1923-1949, to such things as the Capital Tax
Law and policy of Labor Battalions. During the first two decades
of the Multi-Party period, it endured the September 6, 1955 pogrom,
the May 27, 1960 revolution, and the 1971 military coup. All three
minorities suffered equally from these critical events, with loss
of life and property and consequent emigrations to Greece, Israel,
Europe and North America.

Bali explains how a shift in the Turkish state’s treatment of its
Jewish citizens started in the late 1960s and early 1970s due to three
pivotal events outside of Turkey: the 1967 Israeli Six-Day War, the
1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and the movement for international
recognition of the Armenian Genocide. He shows that the Turkish
government in the 1970s reversed its policy of prohibiting minorities’
links to outside organizations by encouraging the Jews of Turkey
to connect with American Jewish organizations, once it realized the
importance of American Jewish political lobby groups.

Since then, Turkey has adopted a policy of utilizing the American
Jewish lobby against the Greek lobby to lift the Cyprus related
arms embargo, and against the Armenian lobby to further its genocide
denial policies. Bali details efforts to distance the American Jewish
community from the Armenian community by propagandizing that the
Armenian Genocide is a non-truth, or that whatever may have happened
in 1915 it can not be compared to the Jewish Holocaust and therefore
can not be called genocide, and that Turks have been very tolerant
and friendly to Jews since their expulsion from Spain in 1492.

Bali illustrates that with this new policy, successive Turkish
governments obtained the cooperation of Turkish Jews to convince the
American Jewish lobbies to actively support pro-Turkish measures,
including fighting against Armenian Genocide resolutions in the US
Congress, excluding the Armenian Genocide from the Holocaust Museums
in Washington and Los Angeles, prohibiting papers on the Armenian
Genocide from being presented at Israeli Holocaust conferences,
prohibiting the showing of Armenian Genocide related movies in US
and Israel, etc. The tactics used by Turkish governments included
financial assistance, economic concessions and other privileges,
but also veiled threats that lack of cooperation by the Jewish lobby,
the State of Israel, or Turkish-Jewish leaders would jeopardize the
safety and economic well-being of the Jews in Turkey.

When asked about the possible effect his research could have,
Bali answers,

I do not believe that the book will have any sort of negative impact
on Israeli-Turkish and/or Turkish-Jewish relations. Real politics
and strategic concerns always dominate and even embellish past history.

However I hope that at last the English-speaking public will have
the opportunity to read the “real” story of Turkish-Jewish relations
instead of an embellished one.

In documenting the Turkish state’s manipulation of its vulnerable
Jewish minority and their acquiescence, this book serves as a
valuable case study of how Realpolitik in domestic politics and
foreign relations distorts the truth and how coercion by the powerful
contributes to the violation of collective human rights. It will be of
interest to academics and students of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey,
political lobbyists in America, Israeli policy-makers, as well as to
the Jewish, Greek and Armenian communities around the world.

Rifat N. Bali, born in 1948 in Istanbul, is an independent scholar
specializing in the history of Turkish Jews and an associate
member of the Alberto-Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and
the Sociocultural History of the Jews (Ecole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes/CNRS/Universite Paris-Sorbonne). He is the winner of the
Alberto Benveniste Research Award for 2009 for his publications on
Turkish Jewry.

The Zoryan Institute is the parent organization of the International
Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, which runs an annual,
accredited university program on the subject and is co-publisher
of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal in
partnership with the International Association of Genocide Scholars
and the University of Toronto Press. It is the first non-profit,
international center devoted to the research and documentation
of contemporary issues with a focus on Genocide, Diaspora and
Armenia. For more information please contact the Zoryan Institute by
email [email protected] or telephone 416-250-9807

BAKOU SALUE LA DECLARATION DE L’OTAN DENONCEE PAR EREVAN
Stephane

armenews.com
vendredi 1er juin 2012

L’Azerbaïdjan s’est felicitee de la declaration adoptee au sommet de
l’OTAN a Chicago, disant qu’elle a approuve la position de Bakou sur
le conflit du Nagorno-Karabakh.

Elman Abdullayev, un porte-parole du Ministre azeri des Affaires
Etrangères a pointe l’appui de la declaration pour l’integrite
territoriale de l’Azerbaïdjan et des autres anciennes republiques
Sovietiques coincees dans des conflits territoriaux et ethniques.

” Le fait que la declaration a ete signee par des acteurs
internationaux importants temoigne de l’appui serieux [de L’OTAN] pour
la juste cause de l’Azerbaïdjan dans le conflit du Nagorno-Karabakh
” a declare Elman Abdullayev cite par l’agence de presse azerie Trend.

Le document de l’OTAN n’a fait aucune mention du principe
d’autodetermination, un fait denonce par l’Armenie. Un fonctionnaire
d’Erevan a dit c’est la raison pourquoi le President Serge Sarkissian
n’a pas participe au sommet de Chicago a la difference de son homologue
azeri Ilham Aliyev.

Le ministre armenien des Affaires Etrangères Edouard Nalbandian,
qui a represente l’Armenie au sommet de Chicago a affirme que les
propositions de la paix internationales existantes sur le Karabakh,
conjointement redige par les Etats-Unis, la France et la Russie,
sont basees sur les deux principes internationalement reconnus.

La reaction du Ministère azeri des Affaires Etrangères intervient un
jour après qu’un haut fonctionnaire a accuse l’OTAN et les autres
structures internationales de ne pas faire assez pour accelerer un
règlement du conflit du Karabakh. Le fonctionnaire, Ali Hasanov,
a pretendu qu’ils ” manquent de volonte pour intervenir ” dans
le conflit.

TURKEY OPENS FIRST PARTICLE ACCELERATOR

Hurriyet
May 31 2012
Turkey

A scientist informs Prime Minister Erdogan (L) about the proton
accelerator. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SONMEZ Turkey’s first
particle accelerator facility which will serve the health sector and
aims to diminish dependence on external markets opened yesterday near
Ankara by the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK).

“This facility will serve as the hub of nuclear technology as we are
preparing to generate nuclear energy,” Prime Ministyer Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said during the facility’s opening ceremony.

Research on nuclear physics, electronics and even space studies
will be carried out in the facility, according to Erdogan. Turkey is
committed to build two nuclear plants by 2023, in a move to lessen its
dependence on carbon fuels and generate cheaper electricity, he said.

“In 10 years, the consumption of electricity will be doubled.

Unfortunately, parallel to the increase of our energy consumption,
energy prices are rising. That’s why we prefer nuclear plants.”

The proton accelerator facility will mainly serve in producing
equipment needed in nuclear medicine, such as magnetic resonance
imaging and tomography, which Turkey spends $10 million annually to
import. “Hereafter, we will be able to produce these equipments in
our own facility,” Erdogan said.

The accelerator technology is one of the significant generic
technologies and has a leading role in scientific studies ranging
from biology to hmetallurgy.

In further remarks, Erdogan criticized the international community for
singling out Iran on nuclear issues. “We raise this issue [to] almost
all international platforms. We urge them to take the necessary safety
measures. But those who have nuclear facilities, who see nuclear as a
right to them, do not hesitate in criticizing Iran,” he said, recalling
Armenia’s very old nuclear plant, located only from 16 kilometers from
the Turkish border, which posed a danger to its immediate neighborhood.

According to Erdogan, every country has the right to have nuclear
energy facilities. “You have to be fair. You will overlook the insecure
plants in Armenia, Israel’s nuclear activities but you will spark
crisis over Iran. This is not fair.”

KIM KARDASHIAN GETS WET ‘N WILD IN LATEST TWITTER SNAP
By Ashley Percival

Huffington Post UK

May 31 2012

Anyone for a bit of half-naked Kim Kardashian action?

Oh go on then, if we must.

KK got wet and wild as she stripped off yet again in the latest snap
she posted on her Twitter page.

With her wet hair and soaked through bra, it’s not hard to see what
Kanye sees in her.

The star has also been at the centre of controversy after she made
derogatory comments about Indian food on Sunday night’s Keeping Up
With The Kardashians.

In a blog entitled Just Want to Clear Something Up…, she apologised
for the gaffe, saying she didn’t mean to cause offence.

“I said that I thought Indian food was disgusting. In NO way was this
intended as an insult to the Indian people or their culture,” she said.

She also added that she’s also turned off by food from her own
Armenian culture.

“This is just my own personal taste,” she said.

Perhaps these snaps will go some way to aiding your apology, eh?

PRIME MINISTERS OF RUSSIA, ARMENIA DISCUSS RUSSIAN-ARMENIAN ECONOMIC COOPERATION

Interfax
May 30 2012
Russia

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Armenian counterpart
Tigran Sargsyan have discussed the development of economic cooperation
between the two countries.

Medvedev and Sargsyan met at the meeting of the heads of governments
of the CIS countries in Ashgabat.

“Our agenda is traditional. I have an idea of what you will be asking
me, but we can still discuss any issues related to the development
of economic and humanitarian relations between Russia and Armenia,”
Medvedev said at the beginning of the meeting.

Sargsyan, in turn, said Armenia attaches special importance to the
development of relations with Russia.

“Russia is our strategic partner and number one economic partner.

Russian investment in our economy exceeds 60%,” he said, adding that
Armenia is interested in intensifying this cooperation.

IS TURKEY MOVING AWAY FROM THE WEST? A CRITICAL REDUX
Miguel Vargas

Foreign Policy Blogs Network
May 31, 2012 Thursday 1:25 AM EST

Dear FPA Blog followers,
You might now that I feature some analyses and articles not published
elsewhere for the benefit of this blog. This post is one of them; it is
written by an exceedingly capable student of mine at Princeton Miguel
Vargas, whose final article for the course International Relations of
the Middle East provided more insight and sound analysis than much
of the scholarship that comes out of Washington s policy debate on
Turkey and whether it is moving away from the West or not.

Is Turkey Moving Away from the West? A Critical Redux by Miguel Vargas
([email protected])

According to Bulent Aliriza, the director of the Turkey Project at
Washington s Center for Strategic and International Studies: There
is a ceiling above which Turkish-American relations cannot improve,
and there s a floor which it can t go below We are getting pretty
close to the floor and the ability of the two countries to improve
their relations really has a huge question mark over it. We are now
talking about an undeclared crisis in the relations. [i] He is not
alone however in this assessment, as State Department officials such
as Philip Gordon have echoed Aliriza s remarks. [ii] But to what is
extent is this true? Has Turkey moved away from the West? In short,
no. While Turkey is expanding Eastward, forging a new strategic
set of economic and diplomatic alliances, in an attempt to become
the hegemonic influence of the Muslim world, it is not abandoning,
nor interested in leaving, its still strategically necessary ties to
the West.

Some of Turkey s recent behavior is consistent with the idea of
Western abandonment however. According to Ariel Cohen, a senior
research fellow at The Heritage foundation since taking power in a
landslide democratic election in 2002, the Just and Development Party,
or AKP, is leading Turkey in a new direction both domestically and
in terms of foreign policy. [iii] This new direction, Cohen further
attest, includes rapprochement with Iran; working more closely with
the Islamist regime of Sudan despite the indictment of its president
on genocide chargers; supporting Hamas movement which rules Gaza;
and fostering stronger ties with two of the West biggest rivals in
China and Russia.[iv]

This latter alliance is particularly surprising, as the former Soviet
Union was one of Turkey s earliest enemies and one of the sources,
if not the original source of Turkey s alliance with the United States.

[v] Nevertheless, after 32 years without a visit from a Russian
president, Turkey received Vladimir Putin in December of 2004; this
meeting was the first of many more high-level politician contacts
between the two nations as each not only shared business but also
geopolitical interests. [vi] As of 2008, Russia is Turkey s largest
trade partner with a projected trade volume of $100 billion dollars
between 2008 and 2013. [vii] Further, bounding these two nations
together is Turkey s $20 billion investment in 2010 for the Russian
construction of nuclear plant to be built on Turkey s southern
coast.[viii] Not only does this new relationship provide realist
economic benefits for Turkey, but it also secured peaceful relations
between the two former enemies that allow for Turkey s greater mission
of becoming the hegemonic influence of the Middle East. [ix]

The Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, with the Turkish prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the Botas gas pumping station near Samsun.

(Reuters)

But what is the motivation behind such expansion. According to Stephen
Larrabee, while the AKP s Islamic roots have influenced Turkish
policy, [it] has not been the driving force behind it. [x] Rather,
Turkey s new alliances and expansions can be credited to Turkey s
new foreign minister Ahmet Davuto lu and his Strategic Depth foreign
policy. According to Larrabee, holder of the Distinguished Chair in
European Security, the concept of Strategic Depth is part of a larger
debate in Turkey about the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. [xi] Ever
since Mustafa Kemal, Atatürk, founded the Turkish Republic in 1923,
Kemalists have sought to attach a negative image to Turkey s Ottoman
legacy. Kemalists argue that Turkey s Ottoman heritage including its
public identification with Islam is inherently backwards and as such
an inhibitor to Turkey s modernization.[xii]

However, as Larrabee points out, just as the AKP have brought back
Islam back to politics in Turkey, today many Turks have begun to
view the Ottoman Empire in more nuanced and positive terms. They
see aspects of the Ottoman legacy, particularly its emphasis on
multicultural identities, as potential building blocks for a more
active regional and global role for modern Turkey. [xiii] Instead of
seeing the Kemalist Republic era and its avoidance of the rest of the
Middle East as a role model example, these Turks have instead viewed
this era as an anomaly. [xiv] Thus, the policy of Strategic Depth
is a means of reinstating Turkey, the once center of the Ottoman
Empire, as the dominant power in the Middle East. Though Turkey has
no intention of physically expanding and conquering these nations,
the AKP instead seeks through diplomatic and economic ties become
the hegemonic influence of the Muslim world.[xv]

As such, Turkey is not holding back in its formation of new allies.

While Cohen believes that Turkey would oppose any strengthening
of the Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, recent evidence suggests
otherwise.[xvi] According to Turkish international relations expert
Soli Ozel, given the instability of Iraq, especially in the face of a
US withdrawal, and the fact that relations with Bagdad are rotten now,
it now transpires that the Kurds are the Turk s natural allies in
Iraq. They are the second largest export market, and if you include
informal trade, they may very well be the first. [xvii] Furthermore,
Turkey s geopolitical position with regards to the shipment and sale
of Iraqi oil and gas has drastically changed the manner by which
the Turkish government deals with the northern Iraqi Kurds; the
relationship between leaders of these two states is vastly different
today than it was in the past.[xviii] So much so, that whereas talks
of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq used to strike fear in the
Turkish leadership who believed that their own Kurdish populations
would follow suit, today, Turkey upon hearing such rhetoric fails to
reply with any opposition. [xix] Given the instability of the Iraqi
state and the large presence of Kurds in Turkey, an economic alliance
with the Northern Iraqi Kurds makes strategic sense, as such alliance
would effectively deter the PKK s ability and desire to destabilize
the Turkish state.

To the apparent dismay of the West, Turkey has also extended support to
the Iranian regime. According to Cohen, above all else, it is Turkey
s support for Iran s nuclear program that proves to Washington that
Turkey s foreign policy objectives are changing. [Whereas] Ankara,
was once an important ally in helping to contain Iran, [today, Turkey]
has become a friendly diplomatic ally of the Islamist dictatorship in
Tehran. [xx] However, like Robert Wexler, president of the S. Daniel
Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, suggests Turkey s relationship
with Iran does not appear to be intended to undercut American
foreign policy on Iran.[xxi] Instead, it seems that Turkey may have
actually believed that it was doing what Americans wanted them to
do, as Turkey, like America does not want Iran to develop a nuclear
weapons program. [xxii] This position makes more sense as both Iran
and Turkey have goals of becoming the Middle East s hegemonic power;
Iran s nuclear attainment would undermine all of Turkey s influence on
the region.[xxiii] Thus, the difference between American and Turkish
foreign policy with Iran appears to be a difference in means not ends.

According to Wexler, America and Turkey share the same objective but
have a fundamentally different view as to how to get there. Turkey
has regional interests that may at times be different from American
interests. The challenge is to take those differences and channel
them in a positive way. In the case of the Security Council vote,
however, the channeling was anything but positive. [xxiv] Furthermore,
by appearing defiant to Western regimes, Turkey can appear to be
an independent Muslim power and further its influence within the
Middle East. After all, Turkey s new foreign policy concept is to
emerge as regional hegemony through developing economic presence,
interdependence, and a conspicuously important diplomatic role. [xxv]
One of the only nations to which Turkey has not extended a friendly
hand to has been its former ally, Israel. After the tragic Israeli
raid and murder of several activists on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish
ship carrying humanitarian relief to the Palestinians, Turkey has
gradually abandoned its role as a neutral mediator between Israel and
its Arab neighbors and instead has become an active supporter of Arab
and Muslim causes against Israel. [xxvi] This shift in alliances did
not occur however without granting Israel a chance to redeem itself.

According to Gul Tuysuz, after the raid, Turkey offered Iran an
ultimatum: apologize for the raid, pay compensation to the victims,
and lift the blockade on Gaza, or face reduced diplomatic relations,
the departure of the Israeli ambassador in Turkey, and possible
prosecution on behalf of the International Court of Justice. [xxvii]
After refusing to apologize, Turkey made good on its threat to
eject the ambassador and downgrade relations. [xxviii] Furthermore,
when Turkey rewrote the Red Book, an assessment of Turkey s national
security threats, Iran was taken off its critical threats list and
in its place Israel s name was placed. [xxix] In sum, as President
Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Erdo an hastened to clarify [Turkey
s] friendship with Israel is over. [xxx] Making sense of this move
is a bit more difficult, as hostility to Israel does not favor an
alliance with the West. However, like Turkey s apparent defiance at
the UN, hostility to Israel may also advance Turkey s popularity in
the rest of the Middle East. Nevertheless, as will be shown below,
this behavior may have actually arisen from a Western source.

In order to arrive at the thesis of this paper, we must analyze all of
Turkey s foreign policy movements in a greater context, as otherwise
the evidence seems clear that Turkey is going East.[xxxi] The reality
of the matter is that Turkey is seeking to become a member of the
European Union[xxxii] and that as such it is expected to behave as
other European nations do. While scholars such as Ionnis N.

Grigoriadis cite as a milestone in the deterioration of US-Turkey
relations the refusal of the Turkish Parliament on March 1, 2003 to
allow US troop the use of Turkish territory in preparation for their
invasion in Iraq, [xxxiii] such scholars fail to realize as Tarik
Oguzlu points out that the absence of support from the European Union,
particularly that of France and Germany, is considered to be one of the
reasons as to why Turkey was reluctant to partake in the War in the
first place.[xxxiv] Furthermore, the European Union as evidenced in
the European s Commission most recent progress report is not only in
full support of Turkey s foreign policy activism under its Strategic
Depth but encourages it.[xxxv]

If Turkey s foreign activism is not an indication of it moving away
from the West than what is. According to Ihsan Dagi, in accusing Turkey
of turning against the West [critics] are mainly looking at Turkey s
critical position with Israel. [xxxvi] While the Turkish government
did call Israel s attack of the Mavi Marmara, disproportionate and a
war crime, Turkey was only joining the opinion of the body of nations
it sought to join, as European states repeated the same comments
regarding Israel s atrocities in Gaza. [xxxvii] Furthermore, as Dagi
points out even if Turkey s political stance towards Israel is out
of line with that Europe and the United States, why should it mean
a departure from Turkey s pro-Western foreign policy orientation? Is
Israel the West? Obviously, it is not and as such Dagi indicates it
would be a mistake to equate an aggressive stance against Israel with
one against the West. [xxxviii] Turkey has never been this integrated
with the West economically, socially, and politically. It is in fact
breaking its self-imposed isolation and opening up the world around
itself. Turkey today is not bullying in its region but trying to
establish cooperative relationships with Armenia, Iraq, the Iraqi
Kurdish administration, Iran, Syria, Georgia, Russia, Bulgaria,
and Greece. [xxxix] According to Dagi, Turkey has never become more
Westernized in its foreign affairs. [xl]

However, not everyone is convinced; after all, Europe is not the entire
West. According to Ian Lesser, Turkey is now a place where public
opinion counts [During the Bush Administration], opinion polls point
to a dramatic decline in public perceptions of the U.S. and Turkish
views of American policy are among the most negative in Europe. [xli]
According to Ionnis N. Grigoriadis recent findings allude to the
development of an emerging anti-US bias in large segments of Turkish
society. This could presage the establishment of anti-Americanism as
a permanent feature of Turkish political discourse The deterioration
of the US image in Turkey could be considered a result of the recent
US political and military involvement in the Middle East and the
perceived clash of US and Turkish national interests in the region
.The election of Barack Obama has mitigated this trend but not
reversed it. [xlii] Continuing polls do not show promising signs,
as President Obama s gains in the first two years of his presidency
(14%; 17%) has dropped to an all time low of 10% merely a point better
that president Bush worst rating upon leaving office.[xliii] Despite
a long and enduring alliance between the United States and Turkey,
Turkey now ranks among the countries where the United States enjoys
its least popularity. Although the shift of public opinion against
the United Stated is not tantamount to a wholesale rejection of the
US political and cultural model, it still has the potential to harm
bilateral relations and US interests. [xliv]

According to a 2007 PEW Global Attitudes Survey, 64% of the respondents
from Turkey defined the U.S. as a “threat”; a figure that began to
lower slightly following the Obama administration

The publication by Wiki Leaks of classified cables between Ankara
and the United States embassy that portray Prime Minister Erdogan
and Foreign Minister Davuto lu negatively have not aided the public
opinion situation. [xlv] However, while embarrassing, the leaked
cables represent a diplomatic tempest in a teapot and not a serious
crisis in bilateral relations. [xlvi] Mid-level diplomats wrote
these cables during the Bush administration a time when strains in
U.S.-Turkish relations were much worse than they are today. [xlvii]
Indicating a desirability for the West, Davuto lu has gone out of his
way to downplay the significance of the leaks, stressing the close and
cordial ties that exist at the highest level with U.S. officials in
the Obama Administration, and both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
and President Obama have publically reiterated the importance that
the United States attaches to good relations with Turkey. [xlviii]

Despite the decline in public support inside of Turkey, according
Joshua W. Walker, it is clear that Turkey has not suddenly switched
sides but rather still objectively represents America s best ally [as]
Turkey represents a critical partner to the U.S. on its three most
urgent strategic issues: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. [xlix] According
to David Ignatius, President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan have developed a working relationship that is one of
the most important but least discussed developments shaping the Arab
world. [l] After Turkey voted not in favor of, a previously mentioned,
UN sanctions resolution against Iran in 2010, Obama and Erdogan
discussed their foreign policy goals and established this new sense of
partnership.[li] Sources from the White House claim that just in 2011
both of these leaders have spoken by phone 13 times.[lii] Currently,
the most delicate piece of Turkish-American business is trying to
organize a peaceful transfer of power in Syria [where] Erdogan, once
the closest foreign ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is now
a bitter foe. [liii] According to Ignatius, Turkey s shift in policy
towards Syria originates from a diplomatic negotiation failure where
Erdogan promised Obama a reform deal within 72 hours that Syria left to
dry.[liv] Even with Iran, Turkey has demonstrated has turned a new leaf
as Erdogan has recently agreed to deploy forward-based radar system
as part of a NATO missile defense plan aimed chiefly at Iran. [lv]

According to a senior Obama administrator, Erdogan s signing of
this missile defense plan is probably the biggest strategic decision
between the U.S. and Turkey over the past 10 to 15 years. [lvi]

Lastly though no less important is the issue of public support in
Turkey. According to Ian Lesser, in order for public opinion of
the United States to increase, the US must aid Turkey in its fight
against the PKK. [lvii] Not surprisingly, the administration has
stepped up military cooperation and assistance to Turkey in its
struggle against the PKK Turkey s number one security problem and a
source of tension with the Bush Administration [lviii] Furthermore,
the Obama administration has recently entertained pleas from Turkey
s regime asking for a Predator drone base to deal with the PKK in
Northern Iran and has supported Turkey s desire to purchase drones
of their own.[lix] Combined with massive grants of intelligence
and diplomatic support against the PKK, it is not surprising that
commander of the Turkish armed forces, Gen. Iker Basbug has deemed
the US and Turkish relationship perfect. [lx] Furthermore, the Obama
administration has strongly backed Turkey s bid for EU membership,
the rapprochement with Armenia, and the Erdogan government s Kurdish
Opening three other important Turkish policy priorities. [lxi]
According to Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar, the most troubling of
Turkey s relationships with the West is that Ankara no longer has a
fallback U.S. option in case its relations with EU sour. Turkish-US
relations have become a casualty of the war in Iraq. [lxii] Given what
was just presented about Obama & Erdogan s relationship, Gordon and
Taspinar s observations could not be farther from the truth. Rather as
Larrabee points out Turkey still wants and needs strong ties the United
States. [lxiii] Furthermore, despite frustration at the slow progress,
most Turkish politicians still insist EU membership is a goal worth
pursuing, even if they have to wait many years to get there. [lxiv]
Turkey benefits greatly from the military assistance it gains from
both the US and the economic gains in energy and business deals with
Europe. [lxv] Thus, Turkey has a strategic interest in remaining with
the West for the benefit of its security and its economy. However,
there is no denying that Turkey s Strategic Depth plan of expansion
East is also providing it large strategic benefits.

Regarding, the West the more influential Turkey is in the Middle
the higher the likelihood that the US will continue supporting it
militarily and the higher the likelihood that the EU will not reject
Turkey s ascension.

However, its expansion East is also providing it other strategic
benefits similar to those it gains from the West. Turkey s involvement
in the Middle East has been accompanied by soft power and the expansion
of economic relations. Growing tourism from Arab states, coupled with
cultural interactions mainly with the popularity of Turkish soap
operas has improved the image of Turkey in the Middle East. While
Turkey s trade with Arab countries stood at $6.5 billion in 2000,
it reached $35 billion in 2011. Last year approximately 1.5 million
Arab tourists visited Turkey. [lxvi] Furthermore, its popularity has
increased incredibly with one poll conducted by the Turkish Economic
and Social Studies Foundation measuring that of Middle Eastern citizens
78% have at least somewhat favorable view of the nation, 71% believed
it should have a larger role in the region, and 61% thought of Turkey
as a role model. [lxvii] What does this money and influence translate
to Davuto lu the designer of Turkey s long term plan Strategic Depth
frames Turkey s strategic, or realist, goals best: A new Middle East
is about to be born. We will be the owner, pioneer and servant of this
new Middle East. [lxviii] Turkey is neither leaving nor interested
in leaving the West, for the West provides Turkey the security and
stability it needs to dominate the East.

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[vii] Arial Cohen, Washington Concerned as Turkey Is Leaving the West,

[viii] Arial Cohen, Washington Concerned as Turkey Is Leaving the West,

[ix] Farruk Akkan, Turkey and Russia Develop Strategic Alliance,

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[xiii] Larrabee, Stephen F. Turkey s New Geopolitics.

[xiv] Larrabee, Stephen F. Turkey s New Geopolitics.

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[xliv] Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, Friends No More? The Rise of
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[lxviii] Opportunities and Limitations: Turkey s Diplomatic Strength
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