Current Turkish government faces internal and external challenges as a consequence of its foreign policy miscalculations

Current Turkish government faces internal and external challenges as a consequence of its foreign policy miscalculations

    Monday, June 29, 2015   No comments

 Army asks gov’t to work out political and diplomatic avenues before Syria incursion

The Turkish military has reportedly asked the government to lay the diplomatic groundwork to facilitate its pending operation along the Syrian border to neutralize emerging security threats posed by the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as well as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Several Turkish dailies have reported over the weekend that the military was already given orders to take measures, including an incursion in Syria, to stem possible advances by ISIL or the PYD and prevent the change in demographic composition of the Syrian provinces near the Turkish border. Although the military in principle said it will comply with the order by the government and fulfill the task, it asked the government to work with the US, Russia and Iran in order to coordinate diplomatically and reduce the likelihood of further complications.

Erdoğan vows to prevent Kurdish state in northern Syria, as Iran warns Turkey

Erdoğan vows to prevent Kurdish state in northern Syria, as Iran warns Turkey

    Sunday, June 28, 2015   No comments

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Syria, while Iran warned Turkey over military intervention into its neighbor.

"I am addressing the whole world: We will never allow a state to be formed in northern Syria, south of our border," Erdoğan said at a Ramadan event organized by Turkish Red Crescent in Istanbul  late June 26.

"We will keep up with our struggle whatever the cost is. They are trying to complete an operation to change the demographics of the region. We will not condone," he said.

‘False legitimacy’: Saudi Arabia hosting UN Human Rights Council slammed by watchdog

‘False legitimacy’: Saudi Arabia hosting UN Human Rights Council slammed by watchdog

    Monday, June 08, 2015   No comments

The decision to hold a UN-backed human rights summit in Saudi Arabia in early June, attended by the Human Rights Council’s chief, has sparked an outcry from rights organizations, claiming that the visit gave the Gulf kingdom “false legitimacy.”

The main point of the international summit held in Jeddah June 3-4 was declared to be combating intolerance and violence based on religious belief.
 The conference was attended by the Human Right Council president Joachim Rücker, who said in the opening statement that “Religious intolerance and violence committed in the name of religion rank among the most significant human rights challenges of our times.”

Later, Rücker was accused by the Geneva-based human rights campaign group UN Watch of giving the summit “false international legitimacy.”

Western and Gulf States fuelled the rise of ISIL to weaken regimes they don't like

Western and Gulf States fuelled the rise of ISIL to weaken regimes they don't like

    Sunday, June 07, 2015   No comments

 Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

by Seumas Milne

The sectarian terror group, ISIL, won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place.

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

Obama under pressure to release secret pages of 9/11 report 'showing Saudi Arabia financed attacks'

Obama under pressure to release secret pages of 9/11 report 'showing Saudi Arabia financed attacks'

    Friday, June 05, 2015   No comments

The Obama administration is facing renewed pressure to release a top secret report that allegedly shows that Saudi Arabia directly helped to finance the September 11 attacks.

Rand Paul, the Libertarian Republican senator from Kentucky, is demanding that Mr Obama declassify 28 pages that were redacted from a 2002 US Senate report into the 9/11 attacks.

Mr Paul, who been vocal in attacking the bulk NSA spying programmes revealed by the rogue security contractor Edward Snowden and is running for president in 2016, has now promised to file an amendment to a Senate bill that would call on Mr Obama to declassify the pages.

The blacked-out pages, which have taken on an almost mythical quality for 9/11 conspiracy theorists, were classified on the orders of George W. Bush, leading to speculation they confirmed Saudi involvement.

 According to Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who was chair of the Senate Intelligence committee at the time of the report, they show that Saudi Arabia was the “principle financier” of the attack.