Gulf Times, Qatar
Sept 2 2006

Turkey seen getting EU thumbs down in reform
Published: Saturday, 2 September, 2006, 10:16 AM Doha Time

Rehn … due to meet Turkish officials for talks on Thursday
BRUSSELS: European Union lawmakers are set to approve a report
slamming the slow pace of reform in Turkey in the latest warning from
Brussels that the accession hopeful must do better.
A draft of the report to be voted on by the European Parliament’s
foreign affairs committee on Monday complains of insufficient
progress on freedom of expression and raises concerns over the lot of
religious minorities, corruption, and violence against women.
The report comes weeks before a crucial European Commission
assessment of Ankara’s reform efforts and follows a growing chorus of
concern from EU officials that Turkey has been dragging its heels
since opening entry talks last October.
`The European Parliament … regrets the slowing down of the reform
process,’ the draft report said, highlighting what it called
`persistent shortcomings’ across a range of areas.
`The report is a clear signal that if Turkey wants the process to be
successful, the speed of reforms must be increased,’ Camiel Eurlings,
the Dutch conservative charged with drafting the report, told
Reuters.
Eurlings, in a telephone interview from Istanbul on a trip to meet
religious minorities, urged the European Union’s Executive Commission
to put more pressure on Ankara by setting deadlines for reforms in
specific areas to be implemented.
Legally, the European Parliament must give its assent to any state
joining the bloc but has never sought to veto any past accession.
However, it has been effective in pressuring EU hopefuls to speed
reforms in previous enlargement rounds.
Ankara has denied that the pace of reform has slowed since last
October and has said it may call parliament back from its summer
recess two weeks early in mid-September to push through the latest
package of reforms.
The report praised recent acquittals of academics prosecuted for
`insulting Turkishness’ but cited concerns over cases such as that of
Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink, given a suspended six-month jail
term for remarks about claims that Ottoman Turkey committed genocide
against Armenians in World War I.
A forthcoming law aimed at protecting religious minorities did not go
far enough, the report added, whereas a law passed in June increasing
the number of crimes classified as terrorism could undermine recent
advances in human rights, it said.
Progress on reforms was lacking in other areas including
civil-military relations, law enforcement, women’s and trade union
rights and the independence of the judiciary, it said.
The report affirmed EU calls for Turkey to remove what could be the
main stumbling block in the talks this year, notably its refusal to
implement an agreement with the EU opening its sea and air ports to
Cypriot traffic.
The EU has warned that failure to implement the protocol this year
extending Turkey’s customs union with the EU to 10 new members could
jeopardise Turkey’s negotiations with the union.
EU officials from Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn down have warned
Ankara in recent weeks it needs to speed up efforts to meet EU
standards, particularly in areas such as freedom of expression and
combating violence against women.
Rehn is due to meet Turkish Economy Minister Ali Babacan, Ankara’s
chief EU negotiator, for talks in Brussels next Thursday.
Recent polls show not only that most Europeans are against the poor,
mainly Muslim country entering the bloc but that Turks themselves are
becoming increasingly disillusioned with the EU accession process,
seen taking over a decade. – Reuters

OhmyNews International, South Korea
Sept 3 2006
Fly the Flag for Martyrdom
[Opinion] As more terror arrests unfold in Britain, it’s time to
rethink this terrorism thing
The anti-terror raids continue in the United Kingdom. In barely two
weeks, close to 50 people have been detained, a few have been
released but many have already been charged under terrorism laws
passed after heated debate in the past year. It remains to be seen
what will become of the latest string of mass arrests.
If past experience is anything to go by, we should expect a raft of
commentary on the subject of terrorism reflecting the political
spectrum of views in the days to come. It appears though that, in
recent times, the venomous, usually violent and hysterical, attacks
on the Islamic faith in the wake of such events have waned, a
development for which we are all immensely thankful.
In many ways, the discussions of terror and its ramifications for
society have become a whole lot more cool-headed and encouragingly
plural in the diversity of opinions and remarks witnessed. But does
that mean it has become any more insightful, perceptive or rigorous?
I am afraid not. More and more the notion, preferred by the political
establishments of the leading Western nations, that terrorism is
wholly reactionary, that is: that its perpetrators are interested
only in rolling back winds of democracy now blowing across the Middle
East, sounds hollow to our ears, even mildly irritating. So also is
the assertion that the phenomenon is inspired by cultural conflict,
i.e. that Mr. or Mrs. Terrorist aims simply to “undermine our way of
life.”
But I reserve my deepest contempt for a thesis popularized years ago
to dignify despotic regimes in the so-called communist world, such as
the Khmer Rouge, by Noam Chomsky and kindred intellectual spirits,
and now resurrected to deal with the “novel” species of terrorist
action. This argument can be summarized as follows: “for all causes,
roots, motivations, means and goals of terrorism, look to the
‘foreign policy’ of the West.”
As applied to terrorism, I find this perspective one of the laziest
framework of analysis ever advanced for any phenomenon in the social
universe.
Surprisingly, the only rebuttal establishment figures seem to be able
to proffer is that terrorism “pre-dates the Iraq war,” or as British
Cabinet Secretaries are wont to put it: “9/11 happened before Iraq.”
As if “Iraq” or “Afghanistan” or indeed Palestine and Lebanon are the
only foreign policy issues someone bent on grievance can adjure for
the purpose of castigating “Western foreign policy.” Critics of the
West if they are so inclined can go as far back as the colonial era
to unearth samples of possible Western wrongdoing. With regards to
the United States, they can mention the support of the CIA for the
Shah of Iran’s less than saintly SAVAK, which dedicated to rooting
out communists introduced some of the elements of repressive rule
still in use by certain members of the Iranian security agencies.
They can point to corporations in Germany and France that helped
Saddam acquire his deadly biological and chemical warfare capacity,
and thus, at least, were complicit in the murder of all those Halabja
Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Iranian infantry. They can point to Britain’s
longstanding security alliances with several Gulf States and her
continuing efforts to arm the House of Saud.
If you want to find fault with the foreign policy of the West, you do
not need a PhD in international relations. It is a layman’s job.
The perversity of the logic which assumes for western foreign policy
the complete cause of terrorism lies, in actual fact, in its complete
“emptiness.” For a start, we have to admit that terrorism is not
limited to the Islamic variant. So that, Tamil suicide bombers cannot
possibly be reacting to “Western foreign policy.” Joseph Kony who
professes himself a Messiah of the Jungles is an obvious East African
terrorist whose appalling deeds can clearly not be linked to “Western
foreign policy.”
The Millenarian Japanese sect that poisoned the Tokyo subway had no
anti-western grievance to nurse, nor even a Western audience to
ponder the meaning of its acts. Having thus agreed that terrorism
across the world comes in different shapes and sizes, we are forced
to focus solely on Islamic terrorism to justify our stance that
Foreign policy is the causal agent in the dynamic of international
terrorism.
It is here that the logic completely falls apart. Why should it only
be “Western foreign policy”? Presumably, Russian foreign policy is
behind Chechnya? Indian foreign policy is behind Kashmir; and
Philippine foreign policy is behind the Abu Sayaf insurgency in the
southern archipelagoes, and its vicious manifestations in central
Manila? Yet all these nations will strongly protest that these issues
are matters of “domestic policy” and some will indeed balk at the
idea that some notion of “foreignness” is in operation.
Indeed, China, unlike Russia, so abhors that notion that the
Government simply refuses to acknowledge the possibility of foreign
influence on the Muslim Xingjian secessionists who have frequently
resorted to the deliberate civilian targeting we usually refer to as
“terrorism.” Malaysia, increasingly the target of South Asian
regional terrorist movements, often adopts the same insular approach.
Are we then to conclude that the “foreign policy” of every country,
in so far as it involves Muslims is likely to incur the wrath of
international terrorists regardless whether that country designates
the matter as internal or external? When faceless Islamists blow up
resorts in Egypt, Turkey or apartment buildings in Saudi Arabia, as
they invariably do, is it of any use to devise a long chain of causal
linkages until “Western foreign policy” is reached?
And even if we were to accept that logic, that international
terrorists will avenge the lives of any Muslims endangered by the
foreign policy of any country, in what category should we place
Darfur? Here, we have a supposedly Islamic regime that kills other
Muslims, admittedly of a different color, in their thousands. Where
are the bombs going off in Sudanese chanceries abroad? What happens
when different Islamic regimes clash? As was the case with Iran and
the Taliban? How does our international terror “foreign policy”
analysts determine their loyalties, and, even more crucially, how
does that translate into violent action abroad.
I find the whole scheme of argumentation ridiculous.
But perhaps, we can narrow it down further and speak precisely of
Western-born Muslims who participate in terrorist activities against
the West. Surely, I would agree that these people are “radicalized”
by “Western foreign policy”? Why else would they do what they do?
Surely, only a blind fool (where blind is metaphorical) will argue
that “Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and Lebanon” play no role in
the decisions these people make to commit mass murder?
Perhaps I am very thick, but I remain unconvinced. I still do not see
why it should be those particular contexts, alone, that trigger such
would-be terrorists. I am not persuaded that they cannot similarly be
enraged enough by the massacres, of Muslims, going in Darfur to mount
attacks on Sudanese Chanceries in Britain, Germany and France. Or on
the offices of the Arab League — which opposes international
peacekeeping missions to arrest the humanitarian disaster. After all,
have we not seen U.N. offices blown to smithereens in Iraq?
If these people are citizens of Western countries but identify so
strongly with Palestinians as to be willing to violently renounce
their citizenship in the cause of what, in any other circumstances,
will be a foreign pursuit, then I do not understand their
unwillingness to identify with any other cause save that cause is in
some way linked to “Western foreign policy.” After all, let’s bear in
mind that their motivation is to “avenge Muslim suffering.”
And yet, how many travel to Xingjian to fight the Han? How many are
flooding to Azerbaijan to confront the Armenian and how many to
Ethiopia to protest the latter’s incursions into Somalia?
But there are even lower depths of ludicrousness to which we can
sink. We can decide to ask why it is that only Muslims feel so
outraged by “Western foreign policy” to want to “do something about
it.” When France destroyed the Ivorien airforce for the alleged
killing of a French Soldier; when Britain descended upon Sierra Leone
to restore a an overthrown Government, when Australia backed the
Apartheid Regime of Botha in South Africa, when the United States
invaded Granada to thwart perceived Communist designs, when thousands
and thousands of Western foreign policy goals clashed with the views
of so many around the world, people naturally protested and in
certain parts of the world conflicts broke out.
Yet, African-Americans, Britons of Latin American origin and
Surinamese Dutch who invariably joined such protests often aligned
themselves with other civil society movements within their countries
of origin in the West. Is the Muslim case different? Is it a case of
Muslim identity, alone of all identities, superseding national
citizenship? If so, why?
And yet again, why should it be only specific “foreign policy”
issues? What about “world poverty,” “climate change,” “social
inequity,” “economic recessionism,” “the AIDS crisis”? Are these not
also concerns?
But even granting the dubious premise that Middle Eastern foreign
policy is of a different moral caliber, one is still at a loss why
every grievance must be directed at the West. What about such issues
as the plight of Palestinians in Arab refugee camps where they are
denied even the most basic of rights? What about the appalling
conditions in which foreign immigrants, many of them Pakistani
Muslims, live in Qatar and Dubai? What about the suppression of the
Shiite Muslim faiths, often so violently, in Sunni-dominated
countries, and of the Ahmadi and Sufi Muslim faiths in almost every
Middle-Eastern country?
When Muslim Kurds explode anti-personal bombs in Turkish resorts, are
we to twist our way backwards until we reach Kemal Atakurk and his
supposedly semi-Western reforms before having something meaningful to
say?
Do all these play as mush a part in radicalizing British and Spanish
Muslim youth as does Israeli projectiles in Qana?
I believe that the sooner we ditched this wholly worthless debate
about “foreign policy” and begun a more sophisticated dialogue the
better.
Terrorism is not an ideology. Terrorism is a political instrument
adopted by non-state actors to exert influence in a world in the
throes of techno-social transformation, where notions of state
monopoly over violence, resources and identity should have been
discredited long ago. The means to conduct terrorist action is the
only true determinant.
Those who have access to the infrastructure will use it because
terrorism is cost-efficient. It is symbolism, destruction, propaganda
and psychological warfare rolled into one. It impacts like a Frigate
mounted with radar-guided missiles at a tiny fraction of the cost.
Martyrdom-inspired terrorism is, of course, an advanced version, even
more potent. It leads its victims on the path of self-doubt, assuring
them that their cause –their will to resist — cannot possibly match
the martyr’s in moral power, nor can their claim to life contend with
the Martyr’s contempt of death. Remember how Khomeini withstood
Saddam, despite all the latter’s armament? He unleashed the Martyrs,
that’s how.
If we seek causes and roots, in my view not an entirely useful
exercise, then we should open our eyes to “structural” events
underway across the globe.
Stronger currents of globalization — long fanned by the Hajj and
other doctrinal injunctions — pervade the Islamic reality than it
does any other international social situation. That just-described
globalization implies a wider reach for Islamic political aims and
means. That is not an acknowledgement that the Islamic world has a
monopoly over grievance. Or that whatever ails the Middle East does
not ail other regions. The notion that the complex problems in this
part of the world — complex in the way that all international social
problems are — could all be wished away by the simply sanitization
of Western Foreign policy is as empty a plea as saying that we should
all simply stop being mean as a way of ushering in a new era of
universal peace.
As mentioned, Islam is cosmopolitan by its very nature, thus Muslim
grievances will be magnified beyond proportion by key actors in the
Islamic world, because they have the means to do so; and those that
desire to employ terrorism to further their political designs will
manage to do so much more easily than can your average anarchist in
Padova who similarly wants to blow up the world because (s)he is
repulsed by all the social inequity, greed and decadence currently
choking the planet. It is a question of infrastructure. It is a
question of the achievable. It is a question of politicking.
We should learn to see terrorism as a criminal enterprise and attack
it as ruthlessly as we will any other such criminal activity that has
the capacity to cause so much devastation. Else, we will soon
discover that groups, of all sorts, similarly claiming to hold some
grudge against East, West, North and/or South, are embarked
forcefully on the terrorism business, and succeeding mightily in
fueling useless disputes amongst their victims over their motives.
Terrorism is what it is; let’s deal with it.

UNPO, Netherlands
Sept 2 2006
Abkhazia: Echoing Kosova?
2006-09-01
Abkhazia’s case for independence from Georgia has echoes of Kosovo’s
from Serbia, reports Thomas de Waal from the Black Sea territory.
Below article, written by Thomas de Waal, was published by Open
Democracy on 10 May 2006, titled “Abkhazia’s dream of freedom”
“A mile from the Black Sea in central Abkhazia you can see the
crimson-and-mustard striped domes of New Athos, a grand 19th-century
monastery built at the height of the czarist empire. Nearby is a
green-roofed wooden building camouflaged by the bedraggled palm trees
into the hillside, a house that you would only spot if you knew it
was there. It is Joseph Stalin’s dacha – or rather one of them,
because this small strip of enchanted coastline was his favoured
holiday destination.
When I visited in February 2006, the dacha was shut up, but you could
peer through the crystal-paned windows to see a long oblong table and
sixteen chairs in a meeting room, a cinema booth with the reels of
film still stacked there and a billiard table with dusty white balls.
The rest of the grounds had gone to ruin as surely as Stalin’s Soviet
Union and we clambered through broken walls and decades of matted
leaves to an eyrie, where the generalissimo would have taken his
evening stroll and looked out across the Black Sea.
As I wandered round this forlorn estate, I wondered what the ghost of
Stalin would make of it. Not only has his superpower fallen apart,
but even tiny Abkhazia, his favourite holiday spot, is a destitute
territory detached from Georgia and outside international
jurisdiction.
Yet his affection was one of the reasons for the disaster that has
befallen Abkhazia. It was fated to be perhaps both the most
privileged and most cursed part of the Soviet Union. Privileged,
because everyone from Leon Trotsky to Mikhail Gorbachev, but
especially Stalin, came and rested here; cursed, because although the
Soviet elite loved Abkhazia it did not necessarily care about its
inhabitants.
A twilight country
Abkhazia was one of those once-cosmopolitan Soviet territories all
too vulnerable to the jealousies and rivalries produced by what Terry
Martin has called “the affirmative-action empire”. In the 1920s it
was a thoroughly multi-ethnic land with trading links across the
Black Sea, a thriving tobacco industry and Turkish the lingua franca.
The Abkhaz, who are ethnic kin of the Circassians of the north
Caucasus, were the largest ethnic group but not the majority.
By 1991 the Abkhaz comprised less than one fifth of the population,
thanks in large part to mass settlement by ethnic Georgians in the
mid-Soviet period, encouraged by Stalin and his chief Georgian
henchman, Lavrenti Beria. The Abkhaz resented the Georgianification
brought by the incomers, while the Georgians resented the way the
small “titular” minority dominated all major positions in the
republic.
That is all a distant memory. The Georgians are gone, driven out at
the end of the bitter war of 1992-93. Abkhazia’s population, once
half a million, is now less than half that. Sukhumi, once a city of
Greek tobacco-merchants, then of Georgian workers, is still
half-ruined, grass growing in the streets.
Abkhazia has become one of those twilight territories that exist on
the map and have a functioning government, parliament and press, but
are international pariahs, unrecognised, told by visiting dignitaries
that they are actually part of Georgia.
Yet virtually nothing is left to remind you of Georgia and the
younger generation does not even understand the Georgian language.
Instead the Russians have adopted Abkhazia and are gently annexing
it. The currency is the rouble, Moscow pays Russian pensions and
gives out Russian passports, the Russian tourists have started coming
back and Russian companies and ministries are renting out guest
houses and sanatoria. Above the resort town of Gagra stands the
elegant Armenia Sanatorium, an illustration of Abkhazia’s bizarre
history. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev got married here in 1992 – he
was part of the broad anti-Georgian alliance of Cossacks, north
Caucasians and Russian special forces that helped the Abkhaz – and
now the sanatorium is leased out to the Russian defence ministry.
Yet it would be a mistake, one most distant observers make, to regard
Abkhazia merely as some kind of rogue Russian puppet-state. In terms
of democracy and civil society, it is no more criminal or corrupt
than any other part of the Caucasus. Its black economy is more
developed because all transactions are done in cash, but it is also a
lot poorer so there is less to steal than in Georgia, Armenia or
Azerbaijan.
As for the Russians, the Abkhaz are Caucasians after all and know
their history, in which Russia has been the imperial overlord as much
as Georgia has. Most people are grateful that someone is restoring
their economy. But Abkhaz intellectuals are nagged by anxiety,
worrying that they have broken away from what the Soviet dissident
Andrei Sakharov called the “little empire” of Georgia only to be
swallowed up by a resurgent nationalist Russia that seeks to use
Abkhazia for its own ends in its efforts to humiliate pro-western
Georgia.
In a small but brave act of protest in October-December 2004, the
Abkhaz made it clear they were not Russian poodles. Moscow decided
that it wanted former prime minister Raul Khajimba to be the next
president and sent PR-experts, pop stars and Kremlin advisers to
Abkhazia to make sure he was safely elected. But the opposition
candidate, former energy boss Sergei Bagapsh, was declared the winner
of the election and fought a desperate battle to have the result
recognised. In the end, after weeks of failed intimidation and
bullying of the Abkhaz opposition, Moscow climbed down and Bagapsh
became president with Khajimba his vice-president.
Bagapsh was in genial form when I visited him. I believed him when he
said he bore no grudge against the Russian officials who had tried to
destroy him but now greeted him amiably as though nothing had
happened. Bigger things are on his mind. He wanted to talk about
Kosovo and its status talks, which are expected to lead to full
independence.
President Vladimir Putin had deftly stirred things up on 31 January
2006 when he said at a Kremlin press conference: “If someone believes
that Kosovo should be granted full independence as a state, then why
should we deny it to the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians?”
Bagapsh argued fiercely that where Kosovo should lead, Abkhazia
should follow. Bagapsh said: “If the issue of Kosovo is settled (in
favour of independence) let’s say, and not the issue of Abkhazia,
that is a policy purely of double standards.”
It is an argument to which I am quite sympathetic. The Abkhaz are
entitled to look around and see double standards: that the west wants
to “reward” Kosovo for its loyalty after the Nato intervention
against Slobodan Milosevic, while retaining a soft spot for Georgia
by insisting that its territorial integrity is inviolable. Yet if you
were on the receiving end of Georgian armed thugs threatening your
existence rather than Serbian armed thugs, that distinction seems
rather arbitrary. The two cases are certainly not so far apart to be
judged by entirely different standards.
That applies too to the counter-argument that Serbs or Georgians
might wish to make. There is also the matter of those refugees. The
Serbs comprised a far smaller proportion of the population of pre-war
Kosovo. Thousands of them have left. They are the ones who have the
right to set the Kosovo government an exam on whether it is fit to
become a proper sovereign state that looks after its minorities.
Sukhumi waits
In Abkhazia that exam would be even harder. True, some 40,000
Georgians have returned to the southern district of Gali inside
Abkhazia. But they live a precarious existence there, preyed on by
militias and gangsters – Georgian as well as Abkhaz – and vulnerable
to immediate expulsion should the Georgian-Abkhaz peace process break
down.
What about the remaining Georgians, I asked Bagapsh, estimated to be
up to a quarter of a million and comprising half Abkhazia’s pre-war
population? If you followed the Kosovo model to its logical
conclusion, then they should be allowed full right of return.
Naturally, the president replied that Abkhazia should get its
independence first, then invite the Georgians back. But he did at
least concede that “there are more obligations sometimes than
privileges” in being a sovereign state and that it was a tricky
process.
One thing is certain: there is something deeply unsatisfactory about
the intellectual framework around the “frozen conflicts” of the
Caucasus – Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The
unrecognised separatist territories are told that the Soviet borders
are inviolable and that in effect any moves they may make to
democratise themselves are irrelevant. The Kosovo process is useful
because it challenges those assumptions. Surely, now that the
precedent has been set, the debate has to be about democracy and
minority rights more than about territorial integrity.
I remembered what a Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian had said to me, a
question I found unanswerable at the time. “So we were inside
Azerbaijan for seventy years. How many years do we have to spend
outside Azerbaijan for the world to recognise that we have left them
behind for good – twenty, thirty, seventy?”
If the Abkhaz can put together a democratic case for greater
recognition by the outside world, I for one will be glad. And if
Stalin spins a little more in his grave on Red Square, so much the
better.”
Thomas de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting in London.

Ecumenical News International, Switzerland
Sept 2 2006
Israeli bombs united Christians, Muslims in Lebanon, says envoy
Peter Kenny and Stephen Brown
Geneva (ENI). Lebanon’s minister of culture, Tarek Mitri, says the 34
days of fierce fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah movement
forged unity between the country’s Muslims and Christians, despite
many people questioning why the war started.
“Lebanon is still besieged,” said Mitri, despite United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1701 passed on 12 August. “We hear every
day of new conditions that Israel is imposing,” said Mitri saying its
southern neighbour was refusing lift a blockade it imposed in early
July. This began after Lebanon-based Hezbollah seized two Israeli
soldiers and Israel replied with a month-long bombardment.
The Lebanese minister was speaking to journalists on 2 September
during a meeting of the central committee, or main governing body, of
the Geneva-based World Council of Churches where he was responsible
for Christian-Muslim dialogue from 1991 to 2005.
“Lebanon thinks of itself as a society that is tolerant, pluralistic
and democratic,” said Mitri, who represented his country as foreign
minister at the United Nations in New York in August, while the UN
Security Council resolution seeking a halt to fighting was being
hammered out.
Mitri said because he was dispatched to New York he was not able to
meet a WCC delegation that included a Roman Catholic bishop, which
travelled to Beirut, Jerusalem and Ramallah during the fighting. It
was under the leadership of the Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, who is
also the president of the Conference of European Churches.
Earlier in the week, de Clermont reported back to the WCC leaders
about the visit. “The unanimous message we received in Lebanon from
both the non-Christians and Christians whom we met, that a
democratic, multicultural and multi-confessional Lebanon is not only
possible, but is needed to guarantee peace throughout the Middle
East,” he said.
Addressing the WCC governing body, Mitri said the people of Lebanon
had drawn encouragement from the solidarity shown by groups like the
WCC.
“Some of you may have lived in areas that are besieged and the visit
of friends from different parts of the world is a gift from God,”
said Mitri appealing to the church grouping not only to help the flow
of humanitarian aid but also to pressure governments for the peace
process in the region to be resumed.
“Spare no effort as well to allow small countries such as Lebanon to
survive,” urged Mitri, who is a scholar of Christian-Muslim relations
published in Arabic, French and English. “That means pressure on
Israel.”
The first meeting in Geneva of the WCC’s main decision-making central
committee since it was elected in February in Brazil at a once every
seven year assembly, is paying special attention to the role that
churches can play in the Middle East.
And answering a question on how US denominations could help Lebanon,
Mitri said, “The American people in general and the churches in
particular have a real role in challenging the blanket demonisation
of people and religion in the name of the global war on terror.”
Mitri noted at his press conference there had been a history of good
relations between Christians and Muslims since the end of a civil war
during the 1970s, but there had not always been good relations
between religious communities.
“It is not religious wars that have divided us, but wars that divided
religious communities,” said Mitri who studied chemistry and
philosophy at the American University of Beirut and holds a social
science doctorate from the University of Paris-X.
Explaining the complexity of Lebanese politics, and the difficulty of
classifying religious identity, Mitri cited the fact that Hezbollah
has a parliamentary ally in Michel Aoun, a Christian Maronite general
during Lebanon’s 1970s civil war, who has the backing of many
Christians.
Mitri said of Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement: “The movement is not
particular friends of ours [the current Lebanese government].” But
its alliance with Hezbollah had helped ease political tensions
between Muslims and Christians, he noted.
During the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, Mitri said most of the
victims of the bombing of “150 000 homes” were Shiite Muslims. “Many
of them were welcomed in Christian houses and monasteries,” he said,
noting that, “in a fractured society like ours this is always a
pleasant surprise.”
:: Muslims and Muslim related groups make up almost 60 per cent of
Lebanon’s population. Shiite, Sunni, Druze, Isma’ilite, Alawite or
Nusayri are seen comprising this group. The 39 per cent of the
Lebanon population that is Christian is made up of Maronite
Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholics, Armenian Orthodox,
Syrian Catholics, Armenian Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Roman
Catholics, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Copts, and Protestants. Other
religious groups are believed to account for just over 1.3 per cent
of its population.
:: Under Lebanon’s laws; the president is required to be a Maronite
Christian; the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the
Parliament, a Shiite Muslim.

The New Anatolian
Sept 2 2006

Opinions
Unrealistic to say ‘no combat forces’

Ilnur Cevik
We keep on hearing from everyone that Turkish forces to be sent to
Lebanon on a peace mission should go there for humanitarian purposes
and thus should not include combat units … Is this realistic?
Yes, of course, our soldiers should be given missions like in Bosnia
where they will be out of harm’s way but let us not forget that
Lebanon, or any other spot like that, will always have its risks and
our non-combat units should not be left to the mercy of local security
forces or United Nations soldiers from other countries …
Turkish combat forces should go to Lebanon to accompany our soldiers
who will shoulder humanitarian missions but they should be protected
by our own combat units.
Any decision by Parliament to send the forces to Lebanon should not
include restrictions on combat units. Our forces should not be sent to
Lebanon to directly confront Israeli troops or any other Lebanese
militia forces like Hezbollah. But our hands should not be tied from
protecting our own soldiers against all eventualities. If our forces
confront any obstacles or even threats while undertaking their
humanitarian missions, our own forces should be there to protect them.
We are told the Lebanese government, the Israelis and several other
Arab countries, as well as the U.S. and the European Union want to see
Turkish participation in the Lebanese peace mission but we are also
aware that there are some circles against, like the Armenian minority
living in Lebanon who oppose a Turkish presence. These people have
financed the killings of Turkish diplomats in the past and have even
collaborated with Kurdish extremists against Turkish interests in
Lebanon. So Lebanon will not be a bed of roses for our soldiers.
However, despite this, Turkey’s presence is needed in Lebanon and we
feel Turkey should be there.
While we feel the debate on the issue of sending troops to Lebanon is
healthy and should be conducted at all levels of society, we also feel
the debate and the controversies should not drag on and Parliament
should convene as soon as possible to authorize the government to send
troops to Lebanon.
Before the aborted attempt to send troops to Iraq, Turkey was plunged
into a lengthy and very harmful debate which hurt our international
credibility. This should not be repeated.
From: Baghdasarian

The New Anatolian
Sept 2 2006

Opinions
Can Turkey stay neutral?

by Kemal Balci

Next Tuesday, Parliament will make an important decision about sending
Turkish troops to the Lebanese-Israeli border. The decision that
Parliament will make will lead to greater consequences than taking the
risk of sending Turks into the line of fire. The decision to be made
will determine which side Turkey will take in the deepening fault line
both at home and in the world. The issue doesn’t show the tiniest
resemblance to sending troops to Congo, Kosovo or Afghanistan to
assume a peacekeeping task in these places.
It’s becoming less and less possible to stay neutral in the
international polarization, which is becoming more evident with the
Israeli attack on Lebanon. The Turkish Republic can’t alienate itself
from the Western world as it has been turning itself towards this
world since its foundation. Even though the aggressive Bush
administration determined the fronts, Turkey has no chance other than
siding with the U.S. and the European Union countries. The
U.S. allowed the killing of thousands of innocent children, women, the
ill and the elderly using Israel as a tool to reshape the Middle
East. The EU countries, which always claim that they are very
sensitive about human rights, remained silent and therefore approved
the unjust and cruel attack of Israel.
It doesn’t seem possible to consider the problem simply an example of
the clash of civilizations. There were not many countries in the
Islamic world that opposed the massacre in Lebanon. Egypt, which is
aspiring to become the leader of Muslim countries, Lebanon’s neighbor
Jordan and particularly Saudi Arabia were content to just watch while
Lebanon was being devastated. Even worse, they acted as though Lebanon
was populated solely by Shiite people and that Hezbollah represented
all of Lebanon. Neither the Druze, who seem to be the sole owners of
the Lebanese mountains, nor Armenians, who express their hostility to
Turks every chance they get, nor Maronites or the others resisted the
Israeli attacks.
As everybody knows, the Israeli attack on Lebanon is a signifier for
the operation into Syria and the one on Iran, which will be a major
war. Turkey, which is surrounded by fire on all fronts, will be stuck
in a corner and won’t be able to stay neutral. It will have to side
with one party in the end and will have to change its attitude of
remaining passive so as not to alienate anyone.
What’s to be done then? Which path should Turkey pursue to stay out of
this global war without harming its fragile economy, historical and
religious responsibilities, and humanitarian and moral values?
Both fronts are making considerable efforts to remove these suspicions
from the Turkish subconscious. On the one hand, Iran makes an
unexpected move against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorism, an
issue that Turkey is very sensitive about. It started to bomb the PKK
bases in northern Iraq, as it’s unable to launch an operation into the
region because of the lack of U.S. approval. Meanwhile, Damascus,
which allowed the PKK to stay in Syria for years, is acting warm
enough to plan to spend their vacations in Turkey.
The United States, meanwhile, tried to prepare the groundwork for
Turkey to stand by its side and to take on an active role. The
unexpected but high-profile visit of the king of Saudi Arabia to
Turkey should also be seen from that angle. The government is already
eager to aid to the fragile Turkish economy, which is under greater
pressure today due to rising oil prices.
The Turkish government is also aware that the decision to send troops
may give new momentum to its dormant ties with the European Union. On
the U.S. side, it would be an important point to bring to the table
when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with President George
W. Bush next month. Erdogan might be calculating the benefits that
this gift would provide to his government.
But it is very difficult to proceed along the labyrinths and slippery
slopes of the Middle East. Turkey is still slightly sad over losing
its strategic value as the southeastern flank of Europe, a role it
enjoyed during the Cold War. Moreover, Turkey is aware that various
attempts to divide Turkey come from the Western world. But none of
this would prevent Turkey from turning its back on the Western
world. Leaving aside any affiliation to the Iran-Syria axis, Turkey
won’t even consider being neutral when there is polarization. Gray
areas in the New World Order are very small. Like in the movie
“Sophie’s Choice,” the choice (in the movie, to save only one of his
children from the Gestapo) is in fact a non-choice.
Sad, but that’s the truth.

The New Anatolian
Sept 2 2006

Evans unrepentant on ‘genocide’ remarks
The New Anatolian / Ankara
John Evans, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Armenia, said he is
leaving his post without retracting his claim that Armenians suffered
a “genocide” at the hands of the Ottomans, the Azeri Press Agency
(APA) reported on Friday.
“I assessed the 1915 ‘Young Turkish’ government’s actions against
Armenians as genocide and I do not retract this statement,” said
Evans in his last press conference in Yerevan on Thursday before
leaving for the U.S.
He said he has received a “nice note” from Bush that thanked him for
his work in Armenia. He also commended Bush’s choice of the next U.S.
ambassador to Yerevan, Richard Hoagland, as a “consummate
professional.”
Evans was recalled from Armenia this March reportedly for his
statement that Armenians suffered genocide in the Ottoman Empire
“The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century,”
Evans declared during a February 2005 meeting with Armenian-American
activists in California.
But later on, seeing this statement caused great controversy, Evans
told a press conference that his words were unofficially stated and
do not represent the official position of his state.
“This _expression belongs to me only, not a politician,” he said.
Richard Hoagland, currently the U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, has
not been yet confirmed by the U.S Senate as the new ambassador to
Armenia.
The Armenian lobby is trying to hold up the appointment of Hoagland,
for declining to describe what happened in 1915 as a “genocide.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has delayed its consideration
of Hoagland’s appointment because of the controversy. At a June
confirmation hearing, senators grilled Hoagland, who said he wanted
to avoid “getting stuck in the past and vocabulary.”
The Bush administration has described the events in Ottoman Turkey
during World War I as “horrific” and a “tragedy,” but not as
genocide. Turkey, an important US ally, strongly objects to that
description, calling the deaths and deportations the outcome of a
civil conflict with bloodshed on both sides. Ankara has recently
suggested that it and Yerevan establish a joint commission of
historians to study all the historical archives and reveal the truth
about the events of 1915, but did not receive a positive response.

Zaman, Turkey
Sept 2 2006

Beyoghlow: Turkey will Miss Opportunities in Lebanon if it Doesn’t
Take Risks
By Ali H. Aslan, Washington
Saturday, September 02, 2006
zaman.com
Kamal Beyoghlow, an instructor at the prestigious Washington-based
National War College and professor of international relations, said
Turkey would gain strategic benefits if it properly managed the
potential risks of sending Turkish troops to Lebanon.
In an interview with Zaman daily, Beyoghlow indicated the mission to
secure peace in Lebanon was `risky,’ but these risks were manageable
and should not be exaggerated.
He asserted Turkey’s participation in the Lebanon peace force would
play a major role in maintaining the cease-fire and enforce Turkey’s
strategic interest, which he described as `achieving security,
stability and peace in the region.’
Beyoghlow recalled there was no strategy in the world free of
uncertainties, risks and undesired results, adding: `If you don’t
take risks, you will never have opportunities. If you can manage the
risks then you can be very successful. As part of the international
force in Lebanon, if it’s well integrated with the European parties
within the U.N., force then I believe that’s exactly what’s to
happen. This could be a great deal of benefit with minimum cost in my
judgment.’
He further stressed the need for Turkey to closely follow the
developments and obtain assurances as it was doing now.
Beyoghlow noted there were many people in the U.S. and elsewhere who
disfavored Turkey playing a major regional role and referred to
criticisms regarding the Armenian genocide allegations. `I don’t
agree with that. The past is important but the future is more
important. It is natural for Turkey to take that role, because it has
vast economic and political interest in the region. Turkey is very
well situated to play the role of a peace actor and a peace broker.’
Beyoghlow said Turkey’s contribution to the Lebanon peace force
together with European countries sent a strong message to the E.U.
and empowered Ankara in Turkey’s entry process to the union.
`Turkey really dissipated itself from the Arab and the Islamic world;
now its best interest is to build bridges with the Islamic and Arab
world in order to achieve long term peace and stability in the
region.’
Beyoghlow viewed Turkey’s establishing good relations with the
Iranian and the Syrian governments recently as an asset.
It was appropriate and wise of Turkey to have started good relations
with all of its neighbor’s years ago, Beyoghlow said, adding, `In the
long term, unless you talk to Syrians and Iranians about the
problems, you are not going to have peace and stability.’
He stressed it was impossible to resolve the Lebanese crisis only
through the cease-fire and a new strategy was needed. `Israel’s
unilateral approach to peace is not working.’
According to Beyoghlow, a comprehensive peace deal should be achieved
between Israel-Palestine and Israel-Syria.
He said, `If you begin negotiating with Syria right now over the
Golan Heights, for example; if you jump-start the peace process then
there is no problem in terms of an international force suffering from
being caught in the crossfire.’
Beyoghlow asserted the U.S. was the main engine in the region and a
permanent and just peace could not be achieved without it, adding:
`The U.S. is only seeing things through the prism of Israel instead
of seeing through all the regional players’ prisms, including Turkey.
You need to get back to multilane efforts.’
Beyoghlow argued that resolving the Syria-related problems through
negotiations and incentives, as opposed to implementing the Bush
administration’s policies, would make Syria less aligned with Iran.

Louisville Courier-Journal, KY
Sept 2 2006

Book Review
The Great War and our world
Everything you need to know about WWI
By David Walton
Special to The Courier-Journal
Author G.J. Meyer, whose byline covers a long list of subjects and
publications, is more journalist than historian, and his A World
Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 is a comprehensive
history aimed for the general reader. Its virtues are readability,
objectivity and command of narrative. It is one of probably an
unending series of books attempting to tell the whole story of World
War I in one book. But Meyer doesn’t try to have the last word. This
critic read his book recovering from shoulder cuff surgery, and while
one wouldn’t recommend the synergy of the experience for every
reader, it more than held a reader’s interest throughout. You finish
this book feeling you’ve learned everything anyone reasonably needs
to know about The Great War.
Every decade we learn anew the profound effects of that war’s
unfinished conflicts and problematic settlements — today in Iraq and
the Middle East. An understanding of the war, and especially of the
nationalistic and ethnic rivalries that fueled it, is essential to
understanding the modern world. Meyer organizes his book
chronologically, and accompanies each chapter with a short background
essay: on Europe’s ruling families and military commanders, on the
war’s principal weaponry, on corollary topics like the Turks’ murder
of their Armenian minority, on Lawrence of Arabia, on the war and
poetry.

The battle of Verdun is accompanied by a capsule history of the
military importance of the site. In theory, you could skip these
background sections, but you won’t. This is one of those books where
you read every page.
Meyer’s account has the very best qualities for this kind of
comprehensive approach: a gift for compression and an eye for the
telling detail. His theme is what this most terrible of wars,
stripped to its essentials, offers as its lessons: blunders and
endless bad luck and misjudgment on all sides, “blindness and loss
and perspective” and what Meyer calls “the strange dark poetry of The
Great War.”
Only a comprehensive account of “the killing machine” that claimed so
many million lives can convey the scale of tragedy the war became for
a whole society, in nation after nation.
Describing one fruitless action by British Gen. Douglas Haig in 1914,
one of the war’s few breakthroughs and one of its many missed
opportunities, Meyer writes:
“His gains included little beyond the ghost town of Neuve Chapelle.
He had lost 11,600 men, the Germans 8,600 — the numbers being mere
abstractions that, as always, veil thousands of stories of lives lost
and ruined.”
Why did the war go on so many months and years of stalemate, with no
gains, and millions dead and mutilated in its endless failed
offensives? The answer is succinct and requires only two sentences:
“None of the warring governments thought they could possibly accept a
settlement in which they did not win something that would justify all
the deaths. The war had become self-perpetuating and
self-justifying.”
David Walton is a writer and critic who lives in Pittsburgh.

Ottawa Recorder, Canada
Sept 2 2006

Turks conflicted about U.N. in Lebanon
2006/9
By SELCAN HACAOGLU, Associated Press Writer 33 minutes ago
ANKARA, Turkey – Some Turks see participating in the Lebanon
peacekeeping force as a chance to reassert Turkish influence in the
region, decades after their Ottoman Empire ruled across southeastern
Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
But others see a more dangerous outcome if they send troops to help
enforce a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah militants: a
Mideast quagmire that could engage Turkish troops in hostile fire
with fellow Muslims.
“However, such a risk taken under these unstable conditions will draw
Turkey into the line of fire, and I don`t even want to think of the
consequences,” he added.
The lawmakers were expected to vote on the resolution Tuesday – the
day U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is to arrive in Ankara. The
government has yet to determine the number of peacekeepers it would
send, but it was expected to range between 500-1,000.
Europe, the U.S. and Israel are eager to see peacekeepers from Turkey
– NATO `s only Muslim member and one of the few Muslim nations with
ties to Israel – in the hope it could avert the impression the U.N.
force is primarily Christian and European.
The Ottoman Turks – who began conquering nearby lands with the
decline of the Arab empire in the 14th century – added Lebanon and
Syria to their domain in 1516. By the 19th century, however, the
Ottoman Empire was unable to stop Western interest in the oil-rich
Middle East and regional desires for independence. After World War I,
France and Britain divided what remained of the empire into
protectorates: today`s Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.
“Turkey has an obligation as a regional power and the old guardian of
the Middle East to exert its positive influence on developments,”
editor in chief Ilnur Cevik wrote in The New Anatolian.
“It would be treason to our history, our future and the high
interests of our people to stay away,” Erdogan told the nation in a
televised address Thursday, playing on the emotional outpouring of
support in Turkey for the Lebanese people.
The government is also aware that responding to the international
call for help could boost Ankara`s efforts to join the European Union
.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso highlighted
Turkey`s “strategic role” in the U.N. force Wednesday, praising the
“significant reforms” Ankara has made on democracy and the economy,
according to Turkey`s state-owned Anatolia news agency.
“No good can come of this deployment for Turkey,” said Michael Rubin
of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think
tank. “There is no real peace between Hezbollah and Israel. Does
Turkey really want to be in the middle of it?”
Rubin said joining the U.N. mission would have little meaning other
than being “a triumph for Erdogan`s neo-Ottomanism.” He also warned
that any confrontation with Hezbollah could pit Turkey against Iran ,
a key backer of Hezbollah with which it now has cordial relations.
“Such an unwanted development would amount to an undeclared war
against Iran,” said Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst with the Economic
Policy Research Institute in Ankara.
And then there is the potential for fierce opposition at home.
Many Turks fear their soldiers could end up facing hostile fire with
fellow Muslims. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who serves in a
figurehead role but has enormous influence in the country, has
already spoken out against such a mission.
“It is not our responsibility to protect the interests of other
countries,” he said last week.
Lebanon`s Armenians, who make up about 4 percent of the country`s
population, have also come out against Turkish participation – a
reminder that some in the region have not completely shed bitter
memories of Ottoman rule.
Armenians accuse the Ottoman Turks of killing 1.5 million ethnic
Armenians in 1915 in what they call a campaign of genocide. But
Turkey vehemently denies any systematic genocide, insists the number
of dead is significantly inflated and says most died from disease and
hunger when they fled or were deported to Syria and Lebanon during
World War I.
An estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenians live in the country today –
some 50,000 in Beirut alone.
The spiritual leader of Lebanon`s Armenians, Catholicos Aram I, has
released a statement calling Turkish participation in the
peacekeeping mission “morally unacceptable,” and also warning Annan
against the deployment.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress