CASUS BELLI
BY TURGUT TARHANLI (RADIKAL)
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s controversial visit to
Syria is set to begin tomorrow. During his contacts, Sezer
is expected to discuss international developments with his
Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad and express his satisfaction
at the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. At the same
time, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ali Tuygan,
accompanied by a delegation, will travel to Washington to
hold a series of contacts with top American officials.
Armenian genocide allegations, the Iran issue, as well as
bilateral ties are expected to dominate the talks. The
Cyprus issue will also be discussed. Tuygan will also urge
US officials to end the international isolation of the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). /Turkiye/
Speaking to Turks at a meeting in Oslo yesterday as part
of his contacts in Norway, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said the Kurds were also citizens of Turkey, adding
that they should not be conflated with the terrorist PKK.
“All ethnic communities in Turkey are equal citizens,” said
the premier. “We have three red lines. We are opposed to
ethnic, regional and religious nationalism.” Claiming that
certain groups were trying to divide Turkey, Erdogan said
that the Turkish people would not let them realize this aim.
Then Erdogan met with his Norwegian counterpart Kjell Magne
Bondevik. At a press conference, Bondevik said that the two
countries had very good relations, adding that his country
supported Turkey’s European Union membership. For his part,
Erdogan stated that Ankara hoped to develop trade ties with
Norway. Stressing that the Iraq and EU topics were taken up
during their talks, the Turkish premier stated that they had
vowed to act together against terrorism. /Turkiye/
Greek Foreign Minister Petros Molivyatis is due today to arrive in
Ankara to pay an official visit. During his stay in Turkey,
Moliviatis is expected to meet with Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul to discuss a number of issues, including
Turkey’s European Union membership bid, bilateral relations,
and the Cyprus issue. Gul will reportedly ask that
Moliviatis encourage Greek Cypriots to seek a resolution on
the island. The foreign minister is also expected to tell
Moliviatis that the EU should keep its promise to bring the
international isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus (TRNC) to an end. Later, Moliviatis is expected to be
received by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to discuss
bilateral relations. After completing his contacts in
Ankara, the top Greek diplomat will proceed to Istanbul.
/Cumhuriyet/
The European Union Commission is due to begin preparing a new Cyprus
plan in order to make Greek Cypriot leader Tassos
Papadopoulos sit at the negotiating table again for a
resolution on the island. The new plan is expected to
include both Ankara opening its harbors to Greek Cypriot
ships and direct trade beginning with the TRNC. Under the
plan, Turkey could make a gesture by withdrawing some of its
troops from the island. The plan also reportedly requires
that two deputies from the TRNC be observers in the European
Parliament and that the EU release about €260 billion in
economic aid to Ankara. /Aksam/
Speaking at a press conference following his meeting with Fritz Kuhn,
the foreign policy spokesperson of the Greens in Germany,
Parliament European Union Harmonization Commission head
Yasar Yakis said that a draft bill prepared by the Greens on
the so-called Armenian genocide was rife with falsehoods,
adding that the measure could harm relations between Germany
and Turkey. /Turkiye/
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Trabzon Governor Huseyin
Yavuzdemir said that police intervention on Sunday had
prevented the beating of five members of the Families of
Prison Inmates Support Association (TAYAD) from escalating
into a larger incident. He added, “Once again, on Sunday
some disturbances occurred, and the police again intervened
to prevent it from growing more serious. Those who violate
the law will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. No
one has the right to disturb the public peace.” /Turkiye/
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) intends to take concrete steps
towards breaking the ice between Turkish Industrialists’ and
Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) Chairman Omer Sabanci and
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Managers of five AKP
head offices are meeting several TUSIAD members in Istanbul
today. Among the AKP members set to attend the meeting are
Dengi Mir Mehmet Firat, Nazim Ekren, Saban Disli, Bulent
Gedikli and Reha Denemec. All TUSIAD members except Sabanci
will attend the meeting, which will be held at the TUSIAD
main office. /Hurriyet/
Attacks on Turkish truck drivers in Iraq, which to date have taken some
90 lives, are ongoing. Iraqi security officials announced
yesterday that another Turkish driver, Cevat Bahtiyar, had
lost his life in a blast in northern Baghdad. Last week, in
the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a Turkish truck driver
was also killed, while six others were wounded. /Turkiye/
It would be erroneous or even dangerous to assume that widespread
Turkish opposition to many Bush administration policies are
symptomatic of a broader strategic hostility, wrote Graham
E. Fuller, former chairman of the National Intelligence
Council at the CIA, in a commentary in yesterday’s Los
Angeles Times. “And it would be exceptionally shortsighted
for US policymakers to argue that the democratically elected
moderate Islamist government in Turkey is not sufficiently
pro-American or that it should be pressured to change its
leadership,” he added. “In reality, US interests — in the
broader scheme of things — have been exceptionally
well-served by this Turkish government, which has brought
broad democratic reforms to the country as part of its
explicit commitment to gain European Union membership.”
Fuller remarked that since the end of the Cold War, Turkey's
reliance on US leadership in foreign policy has dropped
sharply, especially when Turkish leaders believe that US
policies run counter to their own national interests. “In
the new world order, unilateralism has its limits,” he
argued. “Turkey is not lost to us; we just need to take a
more realistic view of the limits of our own power, be
sensitive to the risks of ignoring other states' nationalist
feelings and interests, and adopt a longer-term, more
enlightened view of our own interests. Turkey is doing
fine.” /Hurriyet/
Columnist Mehmet Barlas comments on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s attitude since Dec. 17, when Turkey got a date
from the European Union to start its membership
negotiations. A summary of his column is as follows:
“Why has Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed
since December 17? Although he was the one who managed to
get a date for our country’s European Union membership
talks, his remarks and attitudes on the EU have done a
complete turnaround since that pivotal date. Why?
I wonder if he started to believe that the EU would never
accept Turkey after seeing Brussels’ vexing pressure on
Ankara about the Cyprus issue. Or whether he’s beginning to
see his party’s future lying in a ‘nationalist’ discourse.
Maybe he’s quite upset about our media’s recent comments?
Maybe that’s why he has yet to appoint a chief negotiator?
Or maybe that’s why he’s not tackling the rise of
nationalism but choosing to neglect it in silence? Is this a
metamorphosis in a Kafkaesque sense?
The change he’s undergone is obvious. ‘The Intellectuals
Warning Declaration’ bearing 200 signatures underlines this
situation very clearly and warns the government about recent
trends.
‘Recent developments concern us greatly because they
could constitute significant obstacles to our country’s
democratization efforts,’ the declaration said. ‘The new
penal code has oppressive articles to restrict the freedoms
of the press and expression. The reaction against the Newruz
incidents has taken a turn into racial and ultra-nationalist
attitudes. The rise of such extremist movements could result
in tension and violence. We’re concerned that our country
will be plunged into a new spiral of violence and conflict.
A district governor overstepped his authority and launched a
campaign against a novelist [Orhan Pamuk] to confiscate his
books, echoing the Nazi reigme’s suppression of freedom of
expression. The issues of a so-called genocide and minority
rights which are being debated in the international arena
could also raise this tension in Turkey.
‘We believe that under these circumstances peaceful
policies are necessary and they should be regarded not as
concessions, but rather indispensable for rationality and
common sense. We cannot allow a separatist, oppressive
mentality to dominate our country, which is why we’re
calling on all state officials to act with common sense and
do their utmost not to dim our hopes for democracy and human
rights’.”
Columnist Turgut Tarhanli comments on Turkish-Greek relations and the
dispute over the limits of Greece’s territorial waters. A
summary of his column is as follows:
“There is a longstanding disagreement between Ankara and
Athens over the limits of Greece’s territorial waters.
Greece adopted the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea in 1982, but Turkey refused to sign it, because the
convention allows the extension of territorial water limits
to 12 miles, which Greece from time to time claims it has
the right to do.
Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc recently made a proposal
to lift the ‘casus belli’ [cause for war linked to the
territorial water issue] declared years ago against Greece.
Arinc’s proposal spurred a broad discussion.
Some of the most frequently asked questions are, ‘Can
Turkey declare war on Greece in accordance with the casus
belli decision?’ and ‘How can we defend our own rights in
the Aegean against the Greeks if we lift the casus belli?’
First and foremost, casus belli doesn’t mean ‘all-out
war’ on Greece. At any rate, it’s unlawful to resort to
violence as a means of solving disputes between nations. We
should take that into account while discussing the issue.
If anything, casus belli means that should Greece extend
its territorial water limits to 12 miles, Turkey won’t
recognize this. Turkish ships will follow their usual route,
thus ‘trespassing’ the 12-mile limit. Unless Greece reacts
with force, there will be no problem. But if it does, Turkey
will have the right to retaliate accordingly. This is the
worst-case scenario. But this would be possible only if all
the bridges of dialogue and democracy between Turkey and
Greece were destroyed.
Besides, the casus belli was just a medium used by the
Parliament to draw the world’s attention to the issue. In
1997, however, Greece declared that it would avoid
unilateral action on the issue, and Turkey announced that it
wouldn’t adopt a violence-based policy. The last eight years
in Turkish-Greek relations have served to prove that
dialogue and compromise are far more effective at improving
bilateral ties and solving disputes than military
intervention, weapons and saber-rattling.”
