Turkey destroying it's support again

[Kharpert]

That all depends on how the situation turns out. If Iraq becomes more stable over the years, then the United States will stay as long as it pleases. But seeing as that Iraq is only becoming more and more chaotic, dangerous, and costly, I don't see how the United States could afford to stay in Iraq for that long.

[elendil]

The U.S. invading Iraq, putting aside all the inhumanity, was a senseless blunder that was bungled beyond all reason. It has brought America into a serious international crisis as well as permanently destroy George W. Bush's legacy.

Indeed it has.

The only reason the Kurds are adopting a pro-American attitude is because America is the only power who can guarentee them security. The Americans betrayed the Kurds twice in 1975 and 1991, so there is no love lost between the two states.

It is true that America betrayed Kurds but we also have to ask a just question who has not? Kurds as you rightly point out do not harbor love for America but with their fledling region state and nationalism they do not have anybody to turn to expect America. Besides when it is state issues love is not a valid term I believe.

Arabs may be killing themselves, but that's not to say Americans aren't CONSTANTLY getting in the crossfire! Currently, 2,561 American soldiers are declared dead. A quick look at the media shows 4 American troops killed in Iraq on June 27, only about 2 weeks back. The U.S. military hasn't seen this kind of stress on its soldiers since the Vietnam War. Even if we put aside the casualities, both military and civilian, American or otherwise, let's take a look at the prohibitive cost. Check out this website. The war in Iraq has costed America about $300,000,000,000 and that number is still rising. Some of the world's greatest economists predict in the end Iraq is going cost over a trillion dollars.

Once again you are correct, indeed the war has cost America billions of dollars and it will even more. But the price is so little compared to the dominion of American companies over the oil of Iraq.Also when it comes to causalities of war, come onnnn! America invaded a country of 20 million and it lost 2561 soldiers. That is brilliant in terms military. Besides I am sure every single commander in American army expected such a number.
We have a saying in Turkish "Kaz gelecek yerden tavuk esirgenmez" which is close to meaning "Do not keep the chicken from the place where goose will come" America is following a pattern alike.

The minute the last American soldier leaves Iraq, it's going to mean civil war. With muslims killing other muslims, there is no way in hell any citizen of Iraq is going to give their allegience to America. If America leaves Iraq, it's going to lead to fighting for decades to come, and in the meanwhile it will spawn terrorism and anti-American sentiments like a cesspool. As if it's not enough that all of Iraq hates America, all of Iran hates America, too. And as neighbors of Iraq, Iran is going to fight for control of all the shi'ites in Iraq, making things all the worse for America.

Noone wants the allegience of the people of Iraq save the goverment of Iraq. To America the friendship of state of Iraq will be quite enough since their oil pipelines will be protected strongly by Kurdish forces and Iraqi forces.
Let's say it more clearly, the world hates America. But hate and love has no place in the game, I beleive. Only the strong will rule despite the world's progress in science and technology I fear.

China will never have to beg America for oil. After a while, America will lose it's power in the Middle East, because the Arab nations will realize that they don't need to sell to the United States anymore, they can sell to the next largest consumer: China!

If only Arabs were running and building their oil platforms , what you say would be perfectly correct. But alas such is not the case....

[Kharpert]

But the price is so little compared to the dominion of American companies over the oil of Iraq.

Mmmm, not quite. The oil that comes from Iraq is a spoil of war that does little to repair the American economy, does nothing to keep oil prices low, and most of the profit is looted and siphoned away to American oil companies who pocket the profits and contribute little or nothing to the American economy. I highly doubt that the unpumped oil found in Iraq is worth a trillion dollars.

Let's say it more clearly, the world hates America. But hate and love has no place in the game, I beleive. Only the strong will rule despite the world's progress in science and technology I fear.

I think you're overestimating America's strength. Granted, America is very strong politically, economically, and even culturally, but its strength has its limits and it right now it is streched too thin. The entire Arab world has two common enemies: The United States and Israel.

[Joseph]

BBC Article: Turkey growing more anti-western

BBC

Last Updated: Thursday, 20 July 2006, 12:57 GMT 13:57 UK



Mr Gul warned of an anti-US backlash in Turkey

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has warned that moderate Turks are becoming anti-American and anti-EU.

Mr Gul said many Turks were embittered by the US' support for Israel's actions in Lebanon and by Turkey's problems in joining the EU.

He also said Ankara could be forced to act to stop cross-border raids by Kurdish rebels operating from Iraq.

Mr Gul's comments came in a wide-ranging interview with the UK's Financial Times newspaper.

"Moderate liberal people [in Turkey] are becoming anti-American and anti-EU," he said.


Some EU leaders are lukewarm about Turkey's bid


"If our young, educated, dynamic and economically active people become bitter, if their attitudes and feelings are changed, it is not good.

"Their feeling has changed towards these global policies and strategic issues. This is dangerous."

On the EU accession talks, Mr Gul said failure to resolve the dispute with Cyprus was "poisoning" the process that was formally launched in June.

Cyprus has threatened to veto the Turkish bid unless Ankara officially recognises it and opens its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes.

But Mr Gul said Turkish lawmakers would reject such proposals unless the Cypriots also lifted their veto on any direct trade with the Turkish Cypriot government in northern Cyprus, which is not internationally recognised.

He also suggested that some EU states seemed to be hiding behind the Cyprus issues to delay Turkey's accession talks.

Kurdish issue

On the Middle East issue, Mr Gul said US policies were causing a backlash in Turkey and the region.

Washington's support for Israel did not help solve the problem, he said.

And he again warned that Turkey would have to act if the US and Iraq failed to stop by the Turkish Kurdish rebel group, the PKK, which is operating from Iraq.

Washington - a long-term ally of Ankara - has warned Turkey against taking unilateral military action against PKK bases in northern Iraq.

[Joseph]

Anger, Anger

Emin Colasan: When a wolf ages


Here are the words from the mouth of the Talabani, who sits at the head of the puppet Iraqi government: "Turkey cannot enter Northern Iraq. We will not give permission for such a thing...."

That's just what was missing, some words from Talabani on this matter. Anyway, we also know we cannot enter Northern Iraq. Maybe if there's a miracle, we will carry out some sort of operation for show, but nothing more.
*
However, it also looks like we will have to just deal with comments like this from leaders like Talabani and Barzani. Our ancestors said it so well:
*
"When a wolf ages, he becomes nothing but a buffoon for the lambs!"

Just look at the situation we find ourselves in, dear readers! The Turkish Republic, which is busy burying soldiers killed by PKK violence every day these past weeks, is addressed by a few lousy leaders like Talabani and Barzani, and yet it can't even respond or react. Its hands are effectively tied.
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Even more painful is the fact that we expect help from the puppet Iraqi regime's ambassador to Ankara, a man whose word means nothing in his own country, and who himself sits in the lap of the US.

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Only 200 meters from our Baghdad embassy, a culture center devoted to (imprisoned PKK leader) Abdullah Ocalan has been opened up, complete with PKK flags and all. And we help prop up that clearly puppet government by sending an official note of protest about this all from Ankara.
*
There's more. We call in the US Ambassador to Ankara, making an urgent petition. But the US Ambassador is not in Turkey as an envoy, but as a commissioner of capitulation. He addresses not our Foreign Ministry, but the Turkish media directly, making statements on a number of topics. Still, not a peep out of our government. We have decided to accept this, we have been crushed. Even the Northern Iraqi Kurdish government has outdone us. As Osman Bolukbasa used to say:
*
"Aah, for those days when we used to rule, old grizzled king/But the mule has become the head of finances, and the donkey now wields the signet ring!"
*

[imported_oslonor]

Turkey is the target of destabilization by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Azeri Regime in Tehran is planning to impose a taliban state on Turkey. Turkey's secular state is a threat to Iran. Islamic Republic will use the crisis in Lebanon to destablize Turkey. See my thread on Mr. Ahmadinejad.

[Joseph]

Turkey is the target of destabilization by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Azeri Regime in Tehran is planning to impose a taliban state on Turkey. Turkey's secular state is a threat to Iran. Islamic Republic will use the crisis in Lebanon to destablize Turkey. See my thread on Mr. Ahmadinejad.

In any case, both Turkey and Iran have a common enemy, the Kurds. They seem to be working together to counter the PKK.

[imported_oslonor]

In any case, both Turkey and Iran have a common enemy, the Kurds. They seem to be working together to counter the PKK.

Kurds are minor problem for Turkey compared to Mr. Ahmadinejad exporting his Islamic revolution to Turkey.

[Joseph]

Greek Source

THE TURKEY EFFECT
E. G. Vallianatos

Hellenic News of America
Aug. 14, 2006

The collapse of Russia in the late 1980s and the failure of Western
Europe to graduate from American tutelage have left America the
only superpower in the world, an unprecedented political event in
world history.

America?s monopoly of world power is dangerous, however. The United
States is now the new Roman Empire, but without the Roman Empire?s
Greek experience. Military America is now fortress America, dismissing
international law and conventions while flirting with tyranny at
home. The American military giant has already embarked on global
conquest, starting with a war in Iraq for the control of Middle
East oil.

Second, this new military America is also dismissing the Greek legacy
of its Western culture. On November 4, 2004, George W. Bush, the
first uncrowned emperor of the United States, recognized a former
province of Yugoslavia as the Republic of Macedonia! Imagine the
country of the lover of the Greeks, Thomas Jefferson, buying the
lies of Bulgarians and Albanians trying to pass for Macedonians,
who could only be Greek. Or, more accurately, Bush giving a Greek
title to a former communist group of non-Greeks because they deploy
a few soldiers in Iraq.

Third, America?s military alliance in Europe, NATO, should have
expired the moment Russia?s communist empire expired. But it did not.

NATO, emboldened by America, brought into its orbit countries that used
to be part of the Soviet Union. Strangely, this European subsidiary
to American power that includes Greece is reviving the cold war with
Russia while treating Greece like a colony.

The main reason for the bad feelings between the NATO ?allies? and
Greece is the Turkey effect, the insulting decision of the United
States to including Turkey, Greece?s most bitter enemy, in NATO. The
United States, working under the poisonous climate of the cold war,
and not little self-interest, dismissed its cultural and political
debt to the Greeks for the illusion of drawing Turkey against Russia.

But Turkey only follows its own rules, pretending to be on the
same fence with the West while remaining an Islamic country with
deep historical hatred for the West. Turkey uses NATO merely for
upgrading its military. And because Turkey is convinced America is
still fighting its cold war against Russia, it is possible that NATO
encourages Turkey?s outrageous behavior towards Greece.

In 1955, Turkey used a pogrom against the Greeks of Istanbul,
destroying the property and livelihood of some 80,000 Greeks, in
effect, exterminating millennia of Greek civilization in Asia Minor,
the Greeks? Ionia. The British actively encouraged Turkey in that
barbarous onslaught on the Greeks because the British hated the
Cypriot Greeks who were resisting British colonialism in Cyprus.

America dismissed the whole Turkish atrocity outright, telling Greek
government officials to immediately shake hands with the Turks.

In 1974, with the blessings of England and those of America, Turkey
invaded and captured a third of the Greek island of Cyprus. The Turks
killed thousands of Greek Cypriots, forcing close to 200,000 to become
refugees in their own land.

The Turks also plunder Cypriot antiquities, converting churches to
stables and mosques, while vilifying Cyprus? 13-millennia-old culture
and history.

The United Nations issued several resolutions condemning the Turkish
invasion of Cyprus, urging Turkey out of Cyprus, but Turkey, knowing
that America and England share its strategic interests, has been
ignoring the United Nations.

Turkey also keeps violating Greek air space, provoking Greece to nearly
daily confrontation. On May 23, 2006, such unfriendly behavior turned
lethal. Greek and Turkish F-16 fighter jets ?collided? over the Greek
island of Karpathos in the Aegean, killing the Greek pilot.

Despite Turkey?s aggression toward Greece, which is preparing the
ground for war, the European Union, doing America?s favor, is courting
Turkey for a possible EU membership. And Greece, pretending to be
overly forgiving or generous towards Turkey or, more likely, forced
to a pro-Turkish attitude by EU or the US, has been an active booster
for Turkey?s membership to EU. Of course, the pro-Turkish policy
of EU and US, based on the delusion EU membership would neutralize
Turkey?s Islam, strikes another blow against the Greek foundations
of Western culture.

How could anyone expect more than 70 million Turkish Moslems, now
governed by an Islamic government, to become Europeans? They have no
legacy of European civilization. Thinking of Europe one immediately
comes up with a galaxy of Greeks: Homeros, Aischylos, Sokrates, Platon,
Hippokrates, Aristoteles, Aristarchos, Archimedes, Alexander the
Great, Ploutarchos, Galen, Ptolemy; and another galaxy of non-Greek
Europeans: Dante, Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Melanchthon, Galileo
Galilei, Nicholas Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Beethoven, Voltaire,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Emile Zola, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein,
Pablo Picasso, and Leo Tolstoy. But thinking of Turkey no name comes
to mind, except the violent legacy of a state that terrorized and
slaughtered the people of Southeastern Europe for about five centuries.

The Turks are still celebrating their capture, in 1453, of
Constantinople, the capital of the Greek medieval empire. Turkey is
the country that George Horton, the American consul general in the
Ottoman Empire during World War I, described as ?the blight of Asia.?

The Ottoman Empire became Turkey while Horton observed its genocidal
policies against its non-Moslem minorities. In early twentieth century,
in fact, the Turks sealed the doors between them and Europeans: They
killed 1.5 million Armenians; then they turned against the Greeks,
murdering 1 million of them and expelling from Asia Minor another
1.5 million.

So the Turks don?t fit in Europe: Turkish Islam and the
exterminationist strategies of Turkey against the ?infidel?

non-Moslems are antithetical to Western values. Even the few millions
of them living in Germany and other European countries, including
Greece, find it difficult, if not impossible, to become European.

They care less about the West. Turks in Greek Thrace look to Turkey for
culture and protection. Next to Turkish aggression in the Aegean, they
are the main trigger for a future Greco-Turkish war. Greece ought to
find an acceptable humanitarian method of repatriating them to Turkey.

Fortunately, the people of France and Holland put the Turkish project
of EU into deep freeze. They rejected the EU constitution primarily
because of the Turkey effect.

If the Turks really want to join Europe, they will have to reinvent
themselves, probably an impossible task. They never had a Renaissance,
Enlightenment or Scientific Revolution. Theoretically, they must water
down their Islam, opening their culture to democracy, secular ideas,
human rights, and the rule of law. They will have to start that process
by coming to terms with their history, admitting and apologizing for
their genocide against the Armenians and the Greeks. Second, they
must change their behavior towards EU, which they claim they want
to join. Congressman Donald M. Payne is right in suggesting that the
Turkish government is displaying near contempt for policies affecting
its European orientation.

Above all, Turkey must get out of Cyprus and cease provoking Greece.

Both NATO and EU must oversee the removal of all Turkish forces and
Turkish settlers from Cyprus. Failure in this crucial policy affecting
a full member of EU, Cyprus, would have deleterious consequences for
both alliances, including terminating any prospect for a European
association of Turkey. The recent, 2002-2004, misuse of the United
Nations by the United States and Britain to force the dissolution of
the Republic of Cyprus by legitimizing the 1974 atrocity of the Turkish
invasion of Cyprus should never be repeated or the ?international
system? will become meaningless. Fortunately, Greek Cypriots smelled
the rat in the UN?s Annan plan, rejecting it in April 2004.

EU has also to become real EU by protecting its homeland first. The
test of that solidarity ought to be in guaranteeing the integrity
of Greek borders and the independence of Cyprus. If the majority
of Cypriots decide Cyprus ought to become part of Greece, no one
ought to prevent or be able to prevent such a union. In that case,
Cypriot Turks should have the option of becoming Greek citizens or
repatriate to Turkey.

If this modest proposal could materialize, especially now that the
Middle East is in flames and Cyprus showed the world its hospitality
and essentiality in a hazardous region, the Turks might decide that
it would be in their interests to respect international treaties,
a crucial requirement in becoming part of a civilized world.

It would help, of course, if Turkey?s patron, the US, ceased to boost
its ego while distancing itself from Turkish policies. Start that
transition by speaking truth to Turkey about Turkey?s genocidal past,
standing by John M. Evans, American ambassador to Armenia who discussed
publicly the Turks? Armenian genocide. Yet the State Department fired
Evans this past May, showing that the US is still doing the bidding
of Turkey, a country unwilling to face its past.

Unless and until that changes, Turkey remains a dangerous country.

And as long as America trades its values for the extremely unlikely
prospect of Turkish alliance in its war against Islam, American
policies will remain a double-edged sword for EU, Greece, Cyprus,
and Armenia.

With this unsavory record, EU should test Turkish intentions and
policies for at least a generation before deciding if Turkey could
be trusted in Europe.

E. G. Vallianatos is the author, recently, of ?This Land is Their
Land: How Corporate Farms Threaten the World? (Common Courage Press)
and the forthcoming ?The Passion of the Greeks.?

http://www.hellenicnews.com/readnews.html?newsid=5442&lang=US

[Bulgarian]

Kurds are minor problem for Turkey compared to Mr. Ahmadinejad exporting his Islamic revolution to Turkey.

The Kurds are a very large problem for Turkey.

Since Erdogan and Ahmadinejad are both Muslims and friendly to each other Iran and Turkey have enjoyed good relations in the last few years.

You have to ask yourself Would Iran (shiite) like Turkey (sunni) to become an Islamic republic (the Turkish army and a large section of Turkeys secularised public wouldnt want Turkey to become).

I am not an expert on these things but it appears that I know (and make more sense) than you do.