Istanblog

2002-08-13T16:38:00.000+03:00

Anonymity and Credibility

Unqualified Offerings takes up for anonymous blogging, which is apparently being discussed among some of the blog kids. Go there for the details.

I'm personally not too bothered if some people find my blogging less credible because I'm anonymous. I'm not trying to build a reputation like Demosthenes.
I blog because I want an outlet to bitch about the events of the day, if people read it and find what I say interesting, great. I don't have the time to take this seriously.

But generally I don't see that anonymity really has a great effect on the credibility of a blogger. Opinions and logical arguments rely more on the facts and logic than the identity of their writer. Even for specialized topics, Sgt. Stryker or Flit derive more credibility on military matters from their expression of that knowledge than from their claims to be serving in the US and Canadian armed forces. If they were talking out of their assess, someone else would have busted them by now.

Anyway, I don't want to overplay the "dangers" which lead me to remain anonymous. Even if I used my real name and this blog came to the attention of the Wrong People, I doubt there'd be much in the way of repercussions. But Turkey doesn't have a culture that favors criticism of authority, and I'd hate make trouble for friends, family, bosses etc. We're not talking dangers to life or liberty, but even losing job prospects or bureaucratic hassles are unnecessary for what is just an outlet for me.

2002-08-12T11:59:00.000+03:00

Expat blogs

Stumbled across a couple of blogs of expats. Russell Beattie is a Java/Unix guy who took a 3 month job in Spain, fell in love, and is still there. He suggests a webring of expat blogs. He also mentions So many islands, so little time, a blog by a Christian living in Indonesia. Some interesting stories about living in an economically volatile country, something a bit familiar to me.

2002-08-12T11:35:00.000+03:00

Make no more enemies than necessary

I really really should be working, and the post I'm responding to is kind of crusty, almost a week old, but there's a point that really seems to be getting lost in the warblog world.

Deep in this monster post, Eric Olsen says:

Saddam must be defeated because of the direct and immediate danger that he is, BUT, as Nick says, he must also be defeated utterly, abjectly, to discredit once and for all - like fascism and Japan's "divine" nationalism were discredited - the way of thinking that ultimately led to 9/11: Islam is the only true religion, all nonbelievers are inferior and to be subjugated by any means necessary, theocracy is the only legitimate form of government, Allah will do whatever it takes to assert the truth of #s 1, 2 and 3.

In a nutshell, the flaw here is assuming that defeating Saddam would teach this lesson. It wouldn't.

Point: Unlike Japan or Germany in WWII, Islam isn't a new ideology adopted by the rulers of particular nations. It is a religion which is spread throughout the world, embedded deeply within the people.

Point: Islamic fundamentalism could be viewed as being like fascism, in that it's an ideology distinguishable from mainstream Islam, and it has been adopted by many seeking power and influence. But it is deeply intertwined itself with the proposition that the West is deeply committed to the destruction of Islam.

Therefore: Any war by the west on an Islamic nation, which fails to be self-evidently justified by some event such as 9/11 and supported by other Islamic nations, will be viewed as confirming the Evil West's committment to the destruction of Islam. A war which is justified by its proponents as necessary to teach Muslims that their belief system is inferior will reinforce this.

The Japanese and German people could easily abandon fascism with defeat because it wasn't a deeply held personal belief, it was the ideology of their rulers. And it was a new-fangled, non-traditional ideology rather than the cornerstone of society.

Military defeat of rulers who pay lip-service to Islamism isn't going to teach the Muslim people that Islam doesn't work as a basis for society or government. It's going to teach them that fundamentalist imams and mullahs were right, that the West is out to destroy them, that the rulers who were insufficiently pious (the House of Saud, and most definitely Saddam) came to their just end because of their lack of piety.

One thing that's easy to miss amid the news and propaganda from all sides is that the vast majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists. Anti-western talk does have some resonanance with the mainstream, but only in a general way, the way that reading about corporate scandals might piss you off about greedy CEO's. Yes there are nuts who will join a cult and learn how to carry out terrorist attacks, but they're the nuts, not the guy next door.

But if America steps into the role the fundamentalists paint for us, it will prove them right. If we defeat the "Armies of Allah" and overthrow Muslim rulers, it will fuel the resistance to American imperialism.

Terrorism will not decrease. No matter how satisfying it will be to teach the Arabs a lesson about how fucked up they are, it won't make our lives more secure, it will make them much worse.

If we're going to fight Islamic terrorism and oppose fundamentalism, let's make sure that's what we're doing. Our actions should be carefully conducted to ensure that both we and the Islamic world are very clear that we're fighting extremist elements within their world, rather than the basis of their culture.

Saddam Hussein, evil though he may be, is not an Islamic fundamentalist. Whatever the pragmatic reasons for overthrowing his regime are, striking a blow against bin Laden's jihad is not one. We can talk ourselves into believing fighting Saddam is fighting Islamism, as many warbloggers seem to be doing, but convincing yourself to believe propagada is dangerous. It leads to making strategic decisions based on your distorted view of the facts, which leads to loss.

2002-08-12T10:38:00.000+03:00

Ignorance is Strength

Via Doc Searls, members of the North Carolina legislature says "teaching about Islam undermines national unity in a time when the United States is at war". One pol says "allowing students to read about our attackers" is "insensitive".

If North Carlinian politicians feel that it's unhealthy to expose kids to a close-minded, backwards culture which discourages learning about the world and brands other cultural groups as evil, maybe they should send their kids to college in another state.

2002-08-08T18:15:00.000+03:00

Details on Turkish reforms

In case you missed it, the Turkish parliament has passed a series of reforms as required by the EU to qualify for the list of second round candidate countries early next year. Of course these are just the words on paper, and the establishment has a long way to go to change their habit of using oppression against what the see as threats to national stability, in particular Kurdish separatism and Islamism.

The Turkish Daily News gives details of the reforms, which include:

Abolition of the death penalty

Banning human smuggling (i.e. Afghanis and others smuggled from central Asia, heading for EU countries such as Italy)

Loosened up restrictions on international NGO's, both those based in Turkey and foreign ones operating here

Broadcasting in and teaching other languages (e.g. minority languages such as Kurdish, Laz and Cherkez) is allowed

Underage people can't work in gambling joints or places that server alcohol, and aren't allowed in nightclubs. (I had no idea that was a sticking point for the EU.)

One I'm happy with is:

From now on, Turks will be allowed to criticize the Republic, Parliament, the government, the ministers, the military, the police and the judiciary through the media.

Apparently some imprisoned journalists are also going to be sprung, their terms converted to hefty fines.

Of course there's plenty of ways for the government to be oppressive within these rules. For one, teaching in Kurdish requires registering with the government, which gives them plenty of ways to discourage a renaissance of Kurdish. In the past right-wing paramilitary groups have violently fought against Kurds and others, illicitly supported by the government and police.

The Turkish government has put some of the right things down on paper. Here's hoping they'll follow through with actions.

2002-08-08T17:56:00.000+03:00

Albawaba's got Middle Eastern News

Thanks Ken Layne for turning me onto Al-Bawaba, a Middle Eastern news site which has a decent section on Turkish news. Found out about a project to extend the modern subway system under the Bosphorous. Cool!

2002-08-05T16:07:00.000+03:00

Proud of our Genocidal history

Dave Winer mentions a joke which he finds funny, even though "it's not politically correct, in about 18 ways". Of course, pointing out that something isn't PC is the traditional way of suggesting that anybody that finds a joke offensive must be the type of humorless liberal who gets miffed when someone calls a "Postal Carrier" the "mailman".

OK, so the joke takes pride in one of the darker aspects of our country's history, which ought to let me shrug it off as stupid racist crap (next joke, "What did Abe Lincoln say the morning he woke up with a nasty hangover?"). But it bothers me that anti-Islamism seems to be creeping up as an acceptable norm, at least in the blogosphere.

Yes, after 9/11 there was an enormous national effort to reassure ourselves and everyone else that Islam is all about peace, Muslims by and large are fine folks, etc. But that seems to be wearing off.

InstaPundit says that Nick Denton is right that we ought to go to war with Iraq to teach the Muslims that "Medieval Islam cannot compete with liberal capitalism". Reynolds follows up by suggesting that anyone who would object thinks attacks on America is a good thing. (What ever happened to Matt Welch's crusade against strawman arguments?) Oh yeah, he also brings the "PC" hammer into play, opining that the Bush administration isn't using this "let's teach Islam that it's time is done" argument to gain support for attacking Iraq because they're afraid of being Politically Incorrect.

Obviously it bugs me to think that people back home are falling into the age-old pattern of gearing up for war by lumping the enemy together as a people who are inherently deficient in some way that justifies, nay requires that we teach them a lesson. Are we going to war because Saddam Hussein is evil and dangerous, or because the culture from which he comes is evil and dangerous?

The cultural war thing frustrates me because the rhetoric meshes so well with that of Osama bin Ladin and the others who have worked so hard to bring that war of cultures about. Al-qaeda's primary objective is not the destruction of America, but the unification of the Muslim world under their particular brand of Islam; war with the West is the tool they want to use to achieve that unity.

The Bush administration brilliantly avoided fighting the Afghanistan War on those terms, carefully cultivating Muslim support and making it a war of allies against an oppressive regime.

I hate to see the American public adopt bin-Laden's view that the West is at war with Islam, particularly if they cast his dark flavor of Islam as being that of all Muslims, because I would hate to see his dream made real.

It isn't necessary. If we're going to take it onto ourselves to remove an evil dictator, that's one thing, but he's not Islam, he's not the Arab world, he's not al-Qaeda, hell, he's not even a proponent of Islam, fundamentalist or otherwise. 9/11 roiled up a lot of emotion, and that emotion is channelling itself into jingoism to support the upcoming war. Since the target of our war doesn't seem to have been connected with the cause of 9/11, that channeling process is broadening the emotion, blurring our picture of exactly what this war is about.

2002-08-01T18:14:00.000+03:00

To war or not to war

Sullivan, Welch, Offerings (and others) are chewing over the issue of public support for going to war with Iraq. Sullivan dug up a Washington Post reference to a poll which says 60% of Americans approve of a war on Iraq. Yikes, are the folks back home really that hungry for war? Welch wisely points out that we don't know how the question was phrased.

An earlier Offerings post mulls the question of whether the Bush administration, which is apparently working hard to dig up evidence to link Iraq and 9/11, will seek Congressional approval for attacking Iraq. Mr. Offerings seems to be on a big Constitutionality kick lately. (When was the last time the US legally declared war on a country before attacking it? WWII?)

The common wisdom seems to be that the Bushies can expect a popularity boost if and when they do go to war, and if they time it right it will get the administration another 4 years, and polls like the one from Newsweek add to that impression. But this all seems to assume a quick, painless victory with no aftertaste. Is that a wise assumption?

The Gulf War left behind the impression of just that type of war, and Kosovo and Afghanistan have reinforced. But the easiness of the Gulf War victory is deceptive: if you look back at the pre-ground forces operation, we had a massive buildup, not just of military forces, but also of public expectations. We thought we were headed for another Vietnam, we were emotionally geared up for a major conflict. In the end, we never really invaded Iraq proper, we just pounded on Iraqi troops in the desert. We didn't go into the ground in populated areas, there was no urban combat.

Kosovo was luck. Clinton fully expected Milosovec to fold after we bombed Kosovo, if we had needed to go in on the ground we would have been massively embarrassed. When bombing was shifted to Serbia itself the Serbs eventually did fold. Whew!

Afghanistan, let's remember, used local troops to do the heavy lifting of overthrowing the Taliban.

So maybe Iraq will be similar. It's no Vietnam - the people don't seem to be all that attached to Saddam, and we've starved them long enough that they probably will be relieved to get out of the doghouse. But the Pentagon is saying they'll need 500,000 troops, and the people of Iraq don't necessarily think Americans mean them well - the embargo combined with Saddam's propaganda hasn't done a lot to persuade them that Americans are out to help their Arab, Muslim selves.

Will popular support survive a war, especially if it's longer and messier than we expect? What about post-war occupation and "nation-building"? We've gotten other people to do the hard, icky work of nation-building in Afghanistan, but the work there has been largely confined to Kabul, not a big place.

Iraq is a big place, it's going to require more than a few thousand troops. Persuading other countries to do the job for America is going to be tough, especially the invasion is launched without broad, strong international support. If we insist on making a big mess against the advice of our allies, how can we expect them to clean it up for us?

Turkey would help with peacekeeping, but it's going to cost a lot, especially if it takes a while. Hiring foreign mercenaries has its risks. (Hell, both the Arabs and the Byzantines brought the Turks into their regions as mercenaries, and both were supplanted by them.)

Anyone who wanted to disrupt a post-war Iraq which depended too much on Turkey's involvement could much things up very, very easily: just get the Kurds riled up - supply weapons and propaganda to the Kurds back here in Turkey, and see how popular it is to have the military distracted in Iraq. Who would do such a thing? Are there any counties which dislike Turkey, America, and for that matter Iraq, and has a history of supplying weapons abroad? Anybody which borders both Turkey and Iraq, has domestic Kurds of its own?

Anybody still wondering why Turkish folks aren't all that thrilled with the idea of war in the neighborhood? I'm not convinced a few billion bucks would really make it worthwhile.

2002-08-01T11:12:00.000+03:00

Turkey and Southern (US) states: compare and contrast

Krugman of the NY Times compares the American state of Tennessee to a third world country, saying:

The only reason Tennessee doesn't look like Argentina right now is that it isn't a sovereign nation; since the federal budget was in good shape until recently, there's a safety net.

Having lived for many years in a Southern US state and since moved to Turkey, I've often thought that Turkey is very much like one of those states, without the benefit of being a part of a larger federal nation. This comparison rings true whether looking at the political and economic characteristics or at the individual, social level. To put it crudely, Turks don't seem all that different from Southern hillbillies.

That sounds insulting to both Americans and Turks, but it isn't really. Southerners and Turks are reknowned for their generous hospitality as well as for racism, bad cops, and regressive religion. Just as some people's views of Turkey are formed by Midnight Run (a film which took some very creative liberties with the real life story it was based on, without which the movie would have been short and not very interesting), I know Europeans who are afraid to visit places like Georgia because they've seen Deliverance.

The biggest differences to my mind are that, unlike Turkey, people from states like Tennessee can easily interact with other places in the country. Imagine if someone from Tennessee had to be wealthy or very lucky to attend a university in a different state, and that the faculty of local universities were almost exclusively born and educated in Tennessee.

There's a lot wrong with Turkey structurally, in terms of government and bureaucracy, which perpetuate the country's situation. But the best way to improve this is to improve the exposure of Turks to different societies, and to better education. Maybe joining the EU wouldn't be such a bad thing after all, in the long run.

Federal government has certainly improved life in Southern states. Also imagine Tennessee never had TVA to bring electricity to rural homes, that there was no federal funding for insterstate highways, if the judicial system was completely unexposed and uninvolved with the federal system.

It isn't unreasonable to assume that if borders between American states were as firm as those between nations, anyone from Tennessee would have to show copies of their bank statements and other proof that they didn't want to immigrate if they wanted to visit friends in New York. Someone with a degree in Economics or Political Science from the University of Tennessee might have great difficulty getting into California to work, and even then would only be able to get work at places like McDonalds, or as a household servant.

2002-08-01T09:48:00.000+03:00

Turkish Parliament still wrangling over elections

The Oxford Business Group has a decent summary of the current state of the endless Turkish election saga. It's amazing how long it's taking just to agree what everyone already knows is going to happen, elections on November 3. Actually, as big an issue is reforms for the EU, namely passing two amendments to the constitution. One would ban the death penalty, the other would allow Kurds to broadcast in their own language.

This is a big deal because folks are worried that if the current parliament doesn't pass these, a new parliament will be either unable or unwilling to do so before the end of the year, which will cause Turkey to miss a deadline to get to the next stage of its EU membership application. So they're trying to ram it through quick. The hard-right member party of the governing coalition doesn't want these changes, so it's not an easy call.

Not only don't they want these changes, they'd like to have the imprisoned Kurdish terrorist leader Ocalan executed, apparently not worried that it might bring a return to the terrorism and warfare that ended when Ocalan was captured 3+ years ago, and persuaded his followers to call it quits.

Anyway, I think it's pretty silly to tick off a laundry list of laws that the ruling establishment (especially the military) doesn't believe in. They'll find ways around the laws, and no matter what check boxes Turkey fills out on its application, the EU isn't going to accept it until there's an end to institutionalised police torture, and until the democratic government has authority over the military and police rather than the other way around.

But a lot is riding on getting to the next stage of negotiations. Turkey's economy is either going to boom or crash depending on whether it makes it the next stage. All of the players in the economy, including Turks rich and poor, as well as foreign investors, are all looking to that event to decide Turkey's future prosperity. Regardless of what real impact getting to the next stage of negotiations has on the economic fundamentals of the country, belief that it's a make or break event will affect economic confidence in a major, major way.

So whoever ends up running the country after the election, if Turkey doesn't pass those EU-mandated laws, the new government's biggest challenge will be coping with possibly the biggest economic crash this country has seen in decades. The economy now is moribund, a year+ long recession, but as I've said before, people are not hopeless; they're eating, shopping, and living life, even if budgets are tight. But if Turkey has an EU-membership setback, things could get very, very ugly. If the new government is shaky, unsupported by the military establishment (i.e. if the popular Islamic party AKP gets in), we could see major trouble.

2002-07-29T15:10:00.000+03:00

America to oppress the Kurds?

Our pal Unqualified, along with some high ranking US military folks, worry that after knocking down Saddam, the US would have to get involved in oppressing the Kurds and Shiites, who might want to form independent states. The US has loudly promised Turkey it won't let Iraqi Kurds form their own nation, which might inspire a return to warfare in Southeast Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Turkish military may want to play a major role in the Iraqi nation-building project.

My guess is that should the US depose Saddam and find the need to discourage Kurdish self-determination, they'll be happy to use proxies rather than use US firepower directly on the Kurds. The proxies would be the new, US-installed Iraqi regime, and Turkey. The Bush administration has promised to pay Turkey billions of dollars if it goes to war in Iraq, to help boost Turkey's shaky economy which would go into the toilet in the event of war. A large chunk of that aid would probably go to weapons, which could and would be used in Northern Iraq and Southest Turkey.

Since the Bush administration considers nation building beneath its dignity, and Turkey is earning points by running the peacekeeping in Kabul, it does seem likely Turkey would have the opportunity to be involved in post-war Baghdad, which would put it in a good position to influence how the Kurdish folks are incorporated into a new government.

Ideally they would make sure that the Kurds feel that being a part of the new Iraq would be better for them than being independent. This would mean convincing the Kurds that the new Iraq would give them a full voice in government, encourage their unique culture, and give them the opportunity to develop economically. Unfortunately the Turkish government, and especially its military, has never demonstrated this philosophy towards separatists, instead believing that bombing the hell out of villages is a better way to keep them in the fold.

2002-07-22T22:17:00.000+03:00

Area bloggers bored by Israel/Palestine

I haven't had much time to blog, but I've been waiting for others to mention the whole thing with Israel deciding to deport families of bombing suspects, and later backing down. That's a pretty blatant violation of human rights, so I expected it to generate a bit of commentary. (Note: no, suicide bombing isn't exactly nice, but enlightened societies aren't supposed to discard human rights no matter what the barbarians do. That's what why they're enlightened, and why those who don't act that way are barbarians.)

I won't bother ranting against it since the Israelis have backed down, it just struck me as odd it didn't come up in the blogs, and that people like Ken Layne could say on Friday that bsolutely nothing of interest [is] going on.

And hey, speaking of the suicide bombings, Hamas' spiritual leader (there's a job to be proud of) says that if Israel unilaterally ends the occupation, Hamas will "study" stopping its campaign of suicide bombing. Isn't that a relief, the war is as good as over!

2002-07-22T19:28:00.000+03:00

Elections, well, maybe, but I'd rather not

PM Ecevit is saying he'd really prefer not to have new elections, which is giving "the markets" jitters (but then, what doesn't give the Turkish markets jitters?) But his coalition no longer has a majority, so he'd have to put together a new one, and nobody has enough confidence in his leadership to make any such new arrangement stable.

Parliament met today, but not enough members showed up for a quorum. Apparently this was due to disagreement over when the new elections should be scheduled, although I don't quite get what refusing to showing up to argue and vote about it is supposed to accomplish.

The Economist has an excellent summary of the Turkish situation, but unfortunately it's pay only. If you're not a subscriber but are interested in the topic, including it's ramifications for the War on Terror, run out and grab a copy, or better yet, subscribe.

2002-07-18T09:42:00.000+03:00

FT article on Islamic party leader

The FT has an interview with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the AKP, which is currently the highest polling party in Turkey. Erdoğan (pronounced AYR-do-ahn) says he is not an Islamist, just a good Muslim "trying to do what the religion says." The FT suggests that the 10% threshold rule might mean the AKP could end up as the only party to get seats in parliament, or at least could get a number of seats disproportionate to its 20% popularity level.

2002-07-17T11:21:00.000+03:00

Wolfowitz in Turkey

US Defense Department bigshot Wolfowitz is in Turkey, talking about how much the US respects Turkey's "interests" in Iraq, i.e. that they really don't want a major war on their border, thanks.

Wolfowitz arrived in Ankara at a time when the government is in turmoil and fears abound for a multi-billion dollar International Monetary Fund ( news - web sites)-backed economic recovery. The United States is clearly anxious that stability return to what it regards as a key strategic ally on the edge of the Middle East.

Turkey has said it opposes military action against Iraq, fearing a conflict in the region would further imperil its crisis-hit economy.

"We are very aware that Turkey has been going through a period of economic difficulty, and it's important to the United States to do everything we can to help Turkey get through this patch of economic difficulty," Wolfowitz said.

He also reiterated Washington's position against the creation of an ethnic Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

The talk about not messing up Turkey's economy doesn't mean there wouldn't be a war, just that Turkey will be given a boatload of cash if there is.

As for the Kurdish state, what exactly are the US administration's plans for Iraq after Saddam? Oh, right, we don't like to get into "nation-building". Regime change is a Good Thing (i.e. generally easy), nation building is yucky (i.e. very hard). The US administration might find the Turkish public less trepidacious about war (assuming they care what the Turkish public thinks) if the they demonstrated more interest in what happens after they throw Iraq into turmoil. Not letting the Kurds have their own state may avoid getting the Kurds in SE Turkey worked up for secession, but what will they have? Another government which uses them for chemical weapons testing?

2002-07-17T11:09:00.000+03:00

It's official

Turkey will hold elections on November 3. The governing coalition fell below a majority of parliament due to resignations from Prime Minister Ecevit's DSP party, so the three party leaders got together and Ecevit agreed to give up the ghost.

Of course November is a long time away, and I'm not sure what the government is going to do in the meantime; presumably parliament will still have work to do. An interim coalition could be formed to get a majority, or they could simply carry on and hold votes the old fashioned way. Turkey has an end of year deadline to get to the next stage of EU candidacy, although it seems unlikely that the divided parliament is going to pass controversial measures to eliminate the death penalty and ease bans on the Kurdish language.

Much is of course being made of the strong polling for the AKP, a moderate Islamist party. None of the 3 parties in the current coalition has been polling well enough to pass the 10% minimum needed to get seats in the next parliament. But the AKP and conservative Islamists SP are the only parties which have been doing much work - their predecessor party was banned last year, and they've been working hard to build up their organizations. Now that elections have been scheduled, the other parties will crank up their machines, so we can expect some changes in their popular standings.

However, the AKP and SP will be strong contenders, and the AKP is likely to have a significant presence in the new parliament, even if a government is formed without them. They benefit from being the underdogs - the establishment continually works to undermine them, exploiting any excuse to charge their leaders with crimes, put them in jail, ban them from politics, etc. This has a darwinian effect, forcing the Islamists to work harder to survive, making them tougher than their establishment competition. They have learned to tone down Islamic rhetoric, positioning themselves as pro-Republic, pro-democracy, uncorrupt reformers. They've governed Istanbul, Ankara, and other cities well, improving services and avoiding the corruption endemic to mainstream parties. They have also built a very effective grassroots-based network of supporters, which accounts for their popularity and will help them going into new elections.

The AKP (Justice and Development Party) is the more moderate, and more popular of the parties. What would their inclusion in a new government coalition, if tolerated by the military, mean? They oppose the EU, and would no doubt be less supportive of America's War on Terror and Israel. The effects of the second two positions would be dampened by the commitment of the military establishment, but an anti-EU government would put Turkey's chances of joining back, not that the country is going to be admitted in a hurry, either way. What many people fear are the policies which aren't being touted pre-election, but might emerge later, such as "decency" laws dictating the lengths of women's clothes. It's a damned hot summer in Istanbul, I can't imagine Turkish women (at least in the cities) accepting a ban on short skirts and tank tops (thank you!)

2002-07-16T10:00:00.000+03:00

US manipulation of Turkish government

American influence over Turkey is fairly open. Turkey supports the US militarily and politically, and the US ensures the IMF is friendly - Turkey is the largest debtor to the IMF, owing something like $20 billion. But how explicit, to what level of detail, does the US dictate Turkish affairs?

According to the paper version of the Turkish Daily News, a paper called Ortadogu printed the following:

The first act of the troika [the new party] is over. The United States put aside all considerations and spoke out: Dervis will stay no matter what government comes to power. The Washington administration imposed the Dervis condition once more and listed its conditions. The White House offered Turkey $36 billion on the condition that Dervis would continue to manage the economy. According to the US proposal, they will extend $10 billion in loans to Turkey during the first stage and will lend another $26 billion during certain intervals on the condition that Turkey keeps fulfilling those conditions. Another condition for the loan is that Turkey would take part in a possible operation against Iraq.

None of these claims seems too unlikely, but I'd be surprised to see them publicly announced by the US. The claim that the US is dictating that they want Dervis involved in the government sounds like FUD intended to discredit Dervis as a puppet of the West. I would expect more subtlety from the State department; they might well say they want the reforms program to stay on track, and hint that they find Dervis' presence in government very reassuring, but to specifically say they will only continue loans if he stays in seems too clumsy.

I can't find anything about Ortadogu, so if anyone has more info on these things, please share it.

2002-07-16T09:48:00.000+03:00

Government turmoil update

There hasn't been much of substance going on since I've posted before. The coalition of DSP defectors is being heralded by some as the answer to the country's problems, but they're not without their problems. A Turkish Daily News editorial questions whether they should be allowed to escape responsibility for the mistakes of the current government. All three of the parties in the current coalition are doing poorly in polls because people are fed up with their inability to resolve the continued recession, so should these three insiders be able to reposition themselves as the answer to the country's woes? I suspect Mr. Cevik is over-optimistic about Ecevit's chances of holding on to power, however.

Those in my social circles tend to be longtime supports of the CHP, Turkey's oldest party founded by Ataturk, which is a leftish establishment group. They've been out of parliament for 3 years or so, having gotten the same popular boot that the current governing parties are due for. But time heals wounds, and people may be ready to bring back these old reliables.

New-party conspirator Kemal Dervis has publicly said he thinks the new formation should ally with the CHP. The other conspirators and the CHP leader Deniz Baykal don't seem enamored of the idea. Baykal seems a bit jealous of the superstar glamor of the new formation, and may not be willing to turn over his seat to Cem. A post-election coalition would seem possible, depending on how the numbers turn out.

I'm wondering how well the new party will do? They certainly have the respect of most people, as being capable folks, but those I've talked to have reservations. The trio of Dervis, Cem, and Ozkan are the darlings of the westernized elite, but many regular folks, even educated, modern types, are worried that they are too sychophantic towards the West.

One issue in particular I've heard mentioned is war with Iraq. Current PM Ecevit has been a voice of opposition to an American invasion, but former Foreign Minister Cem seems to be in favor. Of course Turkey will end up supporting the invasion if it happens no matter who is in charge, but Turks aren't thrilled by the idea of stirring up the madman they share a border with, and possibly taking the brunt of his revenge if he can't reach the US with his nasty weapons. They also remember how the US encouraged Saddam to make war on Iran in the 80's, destablizing the region with unpleasant side effects for Turkey. The US has an image of being more fond of starting wars in other peoples' neighborhoods than cleaning up after them.

So the new party may be appealing to westerners, certainly the western media loves them. But that doesn't mean they'll sweep the Anatolian voters.

2002-07-16T09:26:00.000+03:00

Jim's Blog on Sharon

Jim's Blog, AKA Objectional Content, emails to give some concrete examples of why distrusting Sharon isn't simply an irrational attempt to be "preposterously even-handed". Jim appears to be an Arab-American, his mother from Nablus, so he presents an articulate view from the other side.

I do believe that Sharon's acts are indeed "paving the way for settlers" as you originally claimed. Sharon has proposed, for example, a Palestinan state on only 42% of the West Bank and Gaza. Naturally, if this were to happen, the other 58% of the land would go to Israeli settlers.

Here's a link to a telling interview Sharon did with a Ha'aretz journalist.

But his history is also revealing. Sharon voted against the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt; he opposed participation in the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and, while a member of the Knesset, voted against the Oslo accords in 1993.

Jim blogged more about this last January. He says, Sharon's "history makes it difficult to believe that he understands that there is a way to make peace that doesn't involve the defeat of an enemy."

This is Sharon, who said "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours ... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

So while it may be hyperbole to say that IDF tanks are "paving the way for settlers", it is justified to say that Sharon is an expansionist, who has spent decades supporting the expansion of settlements in Palestine out of a desire to hold the land permanently. This is why his more recent policy of military occupation of Palestinian land smacks of the same old thing, and his spokespeoples' claims that this is intended purely to deter terror smacks of insincerity.

On the other hand, Tal G. says the occupation seems to be having some positive effect on reducing terror.

That succinctly expresses what I think is a general sentiment currently ... We're hearing about the IDF apprehending Islamikazes and intercepting car bombs (I'm not even bothering to blog these) - and in spite of high alerts there have been no successful major attacks since the IDF went back into area A.

At the same time we do hear all about the curfews in the West Bank cities - on the radio each of the past few days they've been say things like "The curfew in Kalkilya will be lifted from noon till dusk; while in Jenin it continues". Today on Army Radio there was a (surprisingly dull) interview with fellow named Ashraf who is stuck inside his house in Jenin and has nothing to do but watch al-Jazeera. The latest news is that the IDF is expected to leave some West Bank cities by the end of this week (report).

But Jim lists some incidents of enforcement of the curfew which sound as if this peace is coming at a price.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Palestinians are put under forced curfews for weeks at a time. If they are found in the streets after curfew, they are shot. And this happens. They are shot. Two brothers, six and thirteen years old, are killed when they go out to buy a bar of chocolate. The curfew had been lifted before they went out, and reinstated before they got back.

2002-07-11T19:56:00.000+03:00

Dervis persuaded to stay

OK, now Turkish President Sezer has talked Dervis into staying, and Ecevit into allowing him to stay, alarmed that his resignation would derail the IMF funded economic reform program. Apparently Ecevit insisted Dervis resign when the special economy minister admitted that he was signing on with foreign minister Cem (who is still resigning) and Ozkan to form a new party. Ecevit is stubborn as hell about staying in power, since he insists resigning will hurt the economic and political reform process. How he expects to continue reforms while he boots out his most important ministers remains to be seen.

The TV is also saying that Dervis revealed that Cem would be the leader of the new party.

2002-07-11T17:24:00.000+03:00

Two major resignations

Wow, it's going down fast. Kemal Dervis, the special economy minister and the most critical member of the administration, has resigned hard on the heels of foreign minister Ismail Cem. So the rumors that these two would join up with Ozkan, who resigned Monday, to form a new party look increasingly likely.

Dervis' resignation is big, big, big. The IMF, which has sent a team to town this week to check on the economy's progress, will probably withhold loan money without Dervis in government.

Dervis is not a politician, and unlike most government ministers, was not elected to office. He is a former World Bank VP who was appointed to the job last spring to help smooth the way between the Turkish government and the IMF and World Bank. Every time a new tranche of cash from the IMF and WB loans were due, it was Dervis' assurances that the government was on the right track that kept the money flowing.

The new party would be something of a super-party, featuring Dervis plus the 2 heaviest hitters from Ecevit's party. Dervis himself is controversial. The establishment pols hate him for wanting to clamp down on the corruption that keeps the political wheels turning. They accuse him of being an agent of the IMF, the equivalent of accusing an American politician of being a tool of the UN, wanting to subvert the nation to shadowy foreigners.

Last spring the people were hailing Dervis as a savior, tearfully hopeful that he would turn the economy around. Things have muddled along since then, not great but not disastrous, but he isn't lauded in the press the way he was back then. I have no idea how he's polling now, but even moderate Turks may not be comfortable with him, since he's spent the last 20 years living in Washington, has an American wife, German mom, etc., so he may not seem sympathetic to the man in the street.

But with Cem and Ozkan, who knows?

Anyway, it seems most likely that parliament will meet Sept. 1 and call new elections, probably in November. September seems a long time away considering what a frenzy this week has been, what else can happen?

2002-07-11T10:24:00.000+03:00

A new party? Why won't Ecevit resign?

Rumors are circulating that the DSP defectors - now said to be numbering as many as 45 - will form a new party, and that the party will include lead defector Ozkan, foreign minister Cem, and special economy minister Dervis. This leadership roster sounded like sheer speculation to me, but apparently the trio had dinner at Cem's home the other night. That doesn't mean they've agreed on forming a party, but they're not talking about the World Cup.

Ozkan needs a new party, unless he's hoping Ecevit will ask him to come back and take over, which seems unlikely at this point. Cem is still with the DSP, where he is now the biggest fish after the PM himself. Dervis needs a party also if he's going to get in the game, as he says he will. Would the three agree on who would be top dog? Dervis has big name value, although his 20 years living in Washington DC don't make him a man of the people.

But the government isn't dead yet, in fact it claims it's feeling happy and might like to go for a little walk. There are dozens of scenarios being floated for forcing new elections, everything from convening an emergency session of parliament to arrange the election for September, to President Sezer (who doesn't have a role in day to day affairs of government) weighing in. Most of these scenarios are being floated by people who can't pull them off.

One interesting possibility I haven't seen floated yet is suggested by Ecevit's meeting with Tansu Ciller, head of opposition party DYP. She has previously been the shrill lead of the chorus calling for his resignation and new elections, but after her meeting seemed to say his hanging in until 2004 isn't such a bad idea. Ecevit has also been courting coalition partner - and now the largest party in parliament - the nationalist party leader Bahceli, who sparked the latest crisis by calling for elections last Sunday. The remains of the DSP added to the DHP, and DYP would be enough to form a new government excluding ANAP, which is loudly worrying about how to arrange new elections to avoid disrupting Turkey's EU bid, which has an end of year deadline to get some legislation passed.

Ecevit certainly doesn't seem willing to consider stepping down. Last Sunday he said, "For me to resign I would have had to make mistakes, acted in a way that would have hurt Turkey. Just the opposite. This three-way government has brought solutions to long-outstanding issues facing Turkey." Ecevit sounds like many folks getting to his age (77 or 78) who refuse to admit they shouldn't be driving anymore.

Whether or not he is physically capable of continuing the job, his political support is crumbling. He can't do it anymore. The sooner he admits that to himself and names his preference for a successor, the sooner the country can get down to the business of choosing a new government and hopefully stability.

2002-07-10T09:39:00.000+03:00

More inside the political wranglings

The English language Turkish News site is screwed, the front page includes such up to the minute stories as the World Cup team's determination to beat Brazil. Turkish Daily News is updating, but they still don't have permalinks, so this story will be a totally different article in a day or two.

But it's got some interesting tidbits.

It appears that Ozkan's resignation came after a meeting with Ecevit. The sound of things is that Ozkan hadn't been vocal enough in putting down suggestions that a new coaltion government should be formed with himself as chairman, and Ecevit and his wife (currently acting as something like a party whip for her husband) as advisors. The proposed replacement of the nationalist DHP party in the coalition by the DYP, the strongest opposition party currently in parliament, may have been a back room deal between the DYP's Tansu Ciller (Turkey's first female PM a few years back), and ANAP, the third party in the current coalition.

So if Ozkan wasn't plotting this, his crime in the Ecevits' eyes was not coming down strongly against anything that involved replacing the PM with himself. Bahceli's calls for new elections - something he probably has the votes to force and still seems to be pursuing - was a response to ANAP's plot to kick his party out of the government.

ANAP is also worried about new elections, because it isn't popular enough to pass the bar required to get into parliament at all this time around (at least by current polling). According to TDN, ANAP wants to finish negotiations with the EU to get Turkey into the next stage of candidacy, in hopes this accomplishment will garner it votes. It also hopes to get votes from Kurds for supporting EU required human rights reforms.

A struggle for power within Ecevit's DSP seems likely, especially if they go into a new election this fall (I've been hearing October and November as suggested dates). The foreign minister Cem, State Minister Gurel, and the recently resigned Ozkan are all contenders, but the DSP suggests that Kemal Dervis could decide to join the DSP (a possibility I mentioned weeks ago) and bid for leadership. Certainly Dervis needs a party to back him if he wants to be a contender, and he might be acceptable to Ecevit as someone who will carry on his legacy.

Ecevit doesn't show any sign of being willing to step down, but it's hard to imagine him having the gas to campaign for reelection. If the new elections are called he may have to face the inevitable and turn over the reigns.

Also unheard from are several parties which are not currently in parliament. The CHP party got booed out of office a few years back, but it is the oldest party in Turkey, and has many loyal supporters who may put it back in the game.

2002-07-09T17:03:00.000+03:00

Tal G. takes on my preposterous even-handedness

Thanks to an email from Tal G. I've discovered his blog, Tal G.in Jerusalem. His entries are rather eye-opening, giving us tiny samples of the continual warnings and reports of attacks people are living with on a daily basis. He also tackles some of my postings on the situation in his country, accusing me, not entirely unfairly, of "preposterous even-handedness". His point is that I am resorting to hyperbole and exaggeration to make Sharon out as a bad guy.

In my opinion, you yourself signal the weakness of the "even-handed" approach by resorting to misstatements and hyperbole. "Sharon uses tanks to pave the way for settlers". No, he doesn't... "Destruction of Palestinian homes" ... Do you mean the booby-trapped ones in Jenin? Or the ones in East Jerusalem built without a permit? (If you mean the latter, then go ahead and criticize the municipality as unresponsive or draconian even)...

I'll concede that calling the actions of the IDF "paving the way for settlers" is hyperbole. I'm certainly not of the camp that claims Israel is committing genocide, although they have apparently committed bonafide war crimes (e.g. preventing medical teams from going into Jenin). Israel is a modern, democratic nation whose people are obviously unwilling to have genocidal actions committed on their behalf, in spite of the relentlessness of the terrorist campaign against them.

So why don't I like Ariel Sharon?

One part of my discomfort with Sharon is his support for settlements. What I've read suggests that he is an active supporter of the settlements, and probably wants to keep expanding them to fully dominate the land currently held by the Palestinians. If those who are better informed than me can correct or ameliorate this impression, please do. The fact that expansion of settlements is "mostly frozen except in a few places" isn't good enough, nor that the IDF is discouraging unauthorized outposts; these seem more realpolitik than evidence of a change of heart.

The other part of my distrust of Sharon is that his policies since becoming PM seem to have three properties in common. One is that they are justified by terrorism, the second is that they increase the pressures which cause terrorism, and the third is that they involve increasing Israeli control over Palestinian terroritory.

The second bit is probably the contentious one. I'm not trying to claim that Israeli actions are responsible for terrorism; clearly Palestinian society is dominated by groups who benefit from the war against Israel. What concerns me is that Sharon's policies appear to strengthen these groups' hold on Palestinian society by encouraging the view that Israel is not sincerely interested in peace.

I can see a lot of objections to that line. For one, the Palestinians are effectively doing the same thing - nobody can honestly suggest the terror attacks will stop no matter what offers are made by Israel. Whether the attacks continue because Arafat is unwilling to stop them or because he's unable to, the result is the Israelis don't believe the Palestinians will end their war against them no matter what they're given.

I don't trust Sharon because he appears to be achieving the same thing, that is, offering no believable hope of peace to the other side. I'm not talking about capitulation - give the Palestinians what they want and then smile, hoping you'll get something nice in return. I'm just talking about making it seem to the Palestinians that the Israeli leadership would accept an independent Palestinian state if it could and would stop the violence.

It probably seems obvious to most Israelis that this is true - if a Palestinian leadership were to arise which was capable of this, the Israeli government would have no choice but to negotiate for peace and an independent Palestine - the Israeli voters would demand it. But I don't think this is obvious to Palestinians. If it seems to me that Sharon is less interested in peace than in expansion, to the Palestinians it must be a core belief.

The occupation policy is the case in point of what I'm saying. Tal G. describes the settlements as useful to Israel essentially because they are bargaining chips; without them, Palestine and their western supporters would be demanding further concessions from Israel as basic requirements for peace. A similar logic would apply to the occupation - taking more land is adding more chips to Israel's pile, making their bargaining position that much stronger.

But given that most Palestinians see Sharon as someone who wants to take their land for settlements, the occupation policy has the side effect of bolstering arguments that Sharon has no intention of making peace, but is only looking for excuses to achieve his agenda. This feeds anti-Israeli sentiment, encouraging further violence, which will result in further occupation. Does anyone on the Israeli side really think something different will come out of it?

2002-07-09T14:47:00.000+03:00

I am not David Bromwich!

I've just tweaked the blog's template - I have a quote from David Bromwich under the title, whose credit had been giving people the (incorrect) impression that I am David Bromwich. Mr. Bromwich wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post a few months back, and I liked the line about not making any more enemies than necessary.

I'm remaining anonymous for the time being, not so much for fear of my life or imprisonment, as for fear of sacrificing my (non-journalism related) living. Many people in Turkey take offense at criticism of their government (as do many people in other countries, naturally), and I want to be able to vent without worrying about losing work.

2002-07-09T14:32:00.000+03:00

Banks 'n stuff

I'm clearing out my mail queue this afternoon. Onur Sarisaban clears up the situation with bank mergers and such from my previous post:

BDDK and BRSA are one and the same. BDDK is the Turkish abbreviation, and BSRA is the English abbreviation. The Yapi Kredi & Pamukbank merger is off, Pamukbank has been taken over by the BDDK, and corruption and fraud charges are going to be brought against its owner (Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, the wealthiest man in Turkey, worth over 5 billion USD, used to be 8 billion USD before the 2001 crisis)

Thanks for the clarification Onur.

2002-07-09T11:17:00.000+03:00

Turkey's government chaos and the War On Terror

Many warfans are probably wondering what impact governmental chaos in Turkey will have on America's War on Terror. The answer is probably not much.

Turkey contributes a lot to the War; it provides logistical support to operations throughout the region, is home to USAF bases used to patrol northern Iraq, gives a (weak) PR boost to the idea that the war isn't the West vs. Islam, and is currently leading the peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan.

Turks are proud of their loyal support of the US, and rightfully so considering they live next door to the hornet nests Bush and his hawks are eager to poke sticks at from thousands of miles away. Thankfully few Turks know that the average American doesn't have a clue about any of this.

At any rate, those of us (Istanblog readers obviously included) who do appreciate this can be pretty sure that new elections in Turkey, no matter what their outcome, are unlikely to affect this support. Supporting US military policy is a core value of the Turkish army, and the army's policies are not influenced by politics; unlike fully democratic countries, the elected politicians answer to the military rather than the other way around.

Elected governments come and go at a rapid pace in Turkey. The current dustup will certainly have an impact on the country's economy, and possibly its progress towards joining the EU. If the wrong people get elected they could flub the country's relationship with the IMF, currently doling out huge tranches of loan money; this would mean even more economic woe.

The most interesting possibility is that an Islamic party could get a major share of the votes in the next election. This shouldn't be interpreted as a desire by the Turkish people to support Islamo-fascism, but rather a desire to have a government which isn't blatantly corrupt. The military, however, will see an Islamist party in government, no matter how reformist and non-fundamentalist its agenda, as a threat to the secular Republic, and so such a government would be unlikely to last more than a few months, if it were allowed to happen at all.

The biggest danger is that the economic situation, which is currently rated "shitty", could, with bad management, become "intolerable", causing people to become violently angry. This doesn't look likely to happen in a hurry - the economy is bad, but people are eating, shopping, and living their lives.

But there are plenty of people on the political scene who would happily do very stupid things trying to pander to populist sentiment, things which could result in hardship for a lot of people. Hopefully that will be avoided.

2002-07-09T10:44:00.000+03:00

Turkey's government on the verge of collapse

I leave the country for one week and look what happens.

A brief recap of the story up until now: Prime Minister Ecevit has been in and out of the hospital for a few months now, and the sharks have been circling. His DSP party is a part of a 3-party coalition government, along with the right-wing nationalist DHP, and the center-right Motherland Party. There have been loud calls from opposition parties for new elections, so a government can be formed that doesn't depend on a sickly senior citizen, and presumably one which includes those calling for elections. The coalition partners, although never exactly bosom buddies, have all refused to consider elections, since they're polling so badly they probably wouldn't even get back into parliament, much less cushy cabinet posts.

This week the PM's supporting leadership has resigned, and both of its coalition partners are advocating new elections. The government is almost certainly finished.

The Prime Minister's DSP party has been having internal problems, with key ministers publicly squabbling. Deputy PM Husamettin Ozkan, who seems to be Ecevit's main operational man, has been accused by another minister of plotting to squeeze out his boss. Ozkan has now resigned, and two other ministers and possibly a third followed his lead. Given Ecevit's poor health, it doesn't seem likely he'll be able to keep the show running without Ozkan.

Before Ozkan's resignation, right wing coalition partner Bahceli called for new elections. This was an about-face from the DHP leader, caused by public reports that Ozkan wanted to get rid of the DHP from the coalition government and replace it with opposition party DYP. This alone was possibly enough to end the coalition. Since Ozkan's resignation, the third coalition partner has also said new elections are necessary.

The only way my crystal ball can see elections being avoided is if Bahceli changes his mind, now that he has the most votes in parliament (thanks to Ozkan's resignation), and works with Ecevit to cobble a new deal together. I can't see Ecevit agreeing to Bahceli becoming PM, however, so this doesn't seem likely.

My dollars are suddenly worth a lot more, but I'm not sure how business is going to hold up in the next few months.

2002-06-27T10:43:00.000+03:00

Turkey is done

Oh yeah, Turkey lost the match against Brazil yesterday. Disappointing. My money is on Brazil for the cup.

2002-06-27T10:40:00.000+03:00

Bush asks Sharon to sort out Middle East for him

One of Bush's campaign selling points was that he is a big delegator. In putting together his cabinet and advisors, he picked competent people and let them get the job done. Apparently he's taken the same tack on the Middle East crisis. He's tried to avoid dealing with it, as he tries to avoid any difficult responsibility (c.f. "nation building"), preferring easy jobs such as rattling his sabre at countries which are too screwed up to actually do anything.

So since Ariel Sharon seems like a fine fellow - takes a hard line on terrorists, etc. - Bush has apparently decided to just let the Israeli leader decide what to do. If Sharon insists that the Palestinian people will not be given any hope of independence so long as they insist on keeping the leader they've chosen for themselves, then that's good enough for Bush. If Sharon decides that the best way to deter terrorism is to build more homes on Palestinian lands, then that'll be US policy too. It's good to have someone who knows the region well handling things for us.

That's not to say the Palestinians wouldn't be better off without Arafat, or that he and the PA need to have their asses kicked to do something concrete about the terrorists (like shut down Hamas, arrest Fatah terrorist leaders, etc.) They would definitely be better off doing so. The problem is that the Palestinians aren't being given any incentive to do so.

The stick or the stick

The problem with the US/Israeli peace plan is that there is no carrot for the Palestinians. There's a general feeling that since Palestinian terrorists are doing evil stuff, and
the Palestinian people seem to generally support them, then they don't deserve even the possibility of a carrot.

An independent state, free from Israeli settlers and soldiers, is the carrot. But the Palestinians don't see any sincerity on the behalf of Sharon's Israel in offering that carrot. Sharon has been saying for decades the Palestinians shouldn't have the carrot, because he wants it for the Israelis. Now that he's running the show, he doesn't need to give it to them. He can wave it around, to give the impression to the West that he would do the right thing if the Palestinians behaved themselves, but he just isn't credible - nobody on either side really believes Sharon will let the Palestinians have their land, no matter what they do.

President Bush is destroying the American administration's credibility for peacemaking in the Middle East. By adopting Sharon's position, Bush also saddles himself with Sharon's baggage. People in the Middle East don't see Sharon as sincerely interested in peaceful coexistence with an independent Palestine, because Sharon has long said he doesn't want that. Now Bush will be perceived as simply stringing the Palestinians along to allow Sharon to pursue his agenda of occupying and colonizing all of Palestine ("Greater Israel", as Sharon calls it).

I guess I need to restate the obvious, Palestinian terrorism is evil. Killing children, old folks, or any civilians is despicable. Arafat is a pathetic excuse for a leader, his shuck and jive, telling each side (Palestinian people, Western leaders and media) whatever they want to hear, cowardice to even face his own people, and his failure to stop violence and lead his people constructively, are all core reasons why his people are in such terrible shape today.

But, if you want to encourage peace, you've got to give a believable carrot. President Bush is now parroting radical policy from one side of the conflict while ignoring reasonable claims from the other side. Arafat, bad as he is, was democractically elected by his people, and no doubt will be reelected again. To refuses to accept this is anti-democratic. Meanwhile, Bush is saying nothing about Israeli settlements. This isn't supporting peace, it's supporting conquest.

Joshua Marshall is right on, as usual.

New US foreign policy

Bush told allies he "won't be putting money into a society" dominated by corrupt leaders.

For an American living in a country dominated by corrupt leaders, which receives massive amount of money directly and indirectly from the US government, this sounds pretty scary. So the question is, should I believe that Bush is a man of his convictions, or that he's a lying politician?

2002-06-24T10:40:00.000+03:00

Football (AKA "Soccer")

Unqualified Offerings generously proposes that the Blogosphere root for Turkey, and ponders why Soccer isn't popular in the US. I think he and DC radio sports jock Steve Czaban are right in suggesting it's because there aren't "intermediate successess" - there aren't as many goals, and there aren't other things that can be tracked with stats (e.g. downs). About the only stat I've noticed is penalties, and that doesn't really reflect how well the teams are doing.

But really, that doesn't explain why everyone else in the world loves football/soccer. Why are Americans the only ones who need incremental progress stats to make a sport appealing?

The scoring thing used to bother me in football. The players run back and forth interminably before making a goal, it's boring to watch if you're not into it. But the more I watch, the more I appreciate the play. I've come to understand what they're doing in all that time, battling over control of the ball, trying to position it for the strike. This is the appeal of the game, the suspense - non-fans don't appreciate it because they don't understand what they're seeing (which is why most non-Americans find baseball incredibly dull - at least in soccer you can see they look like they're working).

And if you understand the way soccer plays, you can get a gauge on how well the teams are doing, not by totting up stats, but sijmply by seeing how well they're playing. Which side is keeping control of the ball more, handling it better, which is more aggressive and which seems to be along for the ride?

The popular explanation in Europe for why Americans aren't into football is that it's not profitable for TV. There are no timeouts or other intervals to show commercials. The players go non-stop for 45 minutes, take a break, then go another 45. I have no idea how the networks make money from soccer without commercials.

2002-06-20T13:10:00.000+03:00

Kemal Derviş

Kemal Derviş, the former World Bank VP who is now Turkey's Special Economy Minister For Making Sure Turkey Doesn't Blow Its Reform Program, has been on the TV a lot the past few days. He says says the country's banking reforms are on track, so the IMF is going to hand over the next chunk of cash due from previously agreed loans, $1.1 billion this time around.

The banking watchdog agency BDDK recently published an audit saying most of the country's banks meet the agency's requirements for capitalization. However a bigshot at S&P's banking division says they're still undercapitalized. I'm not really well versed in the details of the system and reform efforts, but it seems like the IMF cash is going to be used to "recapitalize" the banks. Since the banks' problems have a lot to do with huge amounts of bad loans given out to bigshot scumbags, I worry that this is just bailing out bad banks so they can continue ruining the economy. But I dunno, Derviş seems to be fairly well on top of things.

Two major banks, Pamukbank and Yapi Kredi, appear to be merging. But the Turkish News article I linked above says Pamukbank is being taken over by the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA). I'm not sure what's going on here, or whether BRSA has anything to do with the BDDK.

I do like what Derviş says about elections. The headlines have been giving the impression that he's hot to have new elections, perhaps because he wants to toss his hat in the ring. I've repeated that assessment myself, but here's what he says:

I have never said that early elections are needed. I simply said that early elections would not be a national disaster for Turkey. If we could implement the economic program and not deviate from the program, and if the economic administration, officials, autonomous agencies and the Central Bank are in charge and fulfill their duties, then changes on the political scene would be trouble-free.

We live in a democracy and are currently governed by a coalition. It is possible that there would be changes in Turkey like in any other democracy. We have to rid ourselves from the conviction that early elections would destroy everything. If the economic program is implemented, and the economic agencies do their job honestly and transparently, then political developments would not have any impact on the economy.

It sounds like Derviş' main interest is the reform program. It might be that becoming PM would be his best bet to ensure everyone stays on board the program, but it's not likely. If he did, he would end up spending all his time fighting off the politicians and media - he's not a professional pol and he doesn't have the skills or support structure (e.g. a political party, corrupt buddies, etc.) he would need to maintain his position. So he's better off where he is.

Of course, Derviş' special ministerial position depends on Prime Minister Ecevit's support. The PM wants the reforms to happen, and he knows Derviş has the know-how, the connections, and the determination to make it happen. But the other politicians all know the same thing, so if Ecevit goes Derviş is a lamb for the slaughter. To conservatives he is the agent of the IMF, EU, and other foreign forces which try to tell Turkey how to run the country.

So although Derviş is right that Turkey needs to learn to allow democratic elections to happen without changing the direction of the country, the reality is that politicians seeking election will happily wreck Turkey's chances of economic recovery, and Derviş himself will quickly be sacrificed to the hordes by the populists.

2002-06-19T10:28:00.000+03:00

al-Qaeda's post-Afghanistan strategy

Unqualified Offerings turns us on to an article about what al-Qaeda's strategy appears to be now, according to captured members. This bit from UO caught my attention:

3. Small-scale attacks against American and Jewish targets in "countries where the population is muslim but the government is secular.

I can't find the (unclosed) quote UO, but that sounds like Turkey. Things have been fairly quiet here - there was a vague warning a few weeks ago, just before all those warnings in the US, and a bombing was apparently foiled last fall/winter. Generally speaking, the Turks don't seem as fundamentalist as Muslims in some other countries. Sure, they support Palestine over Israel, but it doesn't seem to be a "to the barricades" kind of support, it strikes me as closer to the way most Americans seem to have the reverse view. It's strong enough to have a few demonstrations, but not enough to risk lives over. The Turkish government, especially the military, is of course tight with the Israelis, but most people seem to just shrug it off.

I don't see a lot of sympathy for al-Qaeda or enthusiasm for Taliban-style regressiveness. No doubt many people contribute to relief funds which funnel money to unsavory causes, and some probably do think violent struggle is swell. I'm sure there are al-Qaeda-trained people knocking around the country, and it stands to reason they'll at least try something or another.

Osama and his pals hate Turkey and would love to see its secular government pulled down, but, inshallah, I just don't see the people here going for it.

2002-06-19T09:02:00.000+03:00

Sharon's Cycle of Peace

Since 1967, occupation and settlement of Palestinian land by Israel has proven to be the most effective deterrant to terrorism, so Ariel Sharon has decided to pull out all stops to decrease the Palestinian desire for conflict by increasing the occupation. His long stated support of Israeli expansion is not a factor, of course - otherwise the PLO house organ New York Times would have mentioned it - this is purely because Sharon is grieved by the deaths of Israeli civilians. Sharon believes that increasing the occupation of Palestinian land will cause terrorist attacks to stop, and so save many lives.

"Israel will respond to acts of terror by capturing P.A. territory," the statement read. "These areas will be held by Israel as long as terror continues. Additional acts of terror will lead to the taking of additional areas."

Presumably this cycle of peace will continue until Israel occupies all of Palestine. If that doesn't teach the buggers a lesson, then settlements will have to be stepped up.

Sharon took office as Prime Minister determined to show that violent response to terrorism was the best way to curtail it. The results speak for themselves. This new policy is sure to persuade the Palestinians that the Israeli government is sincere in wanting to return their land and allow them to have an independent state, if only they'll stop the terrorism. No doubt the Palestinians will react accordingly.

If instead the Israelis end up forced to occupy and settle all of Palestine, I'm sure Sharon will be deeply disappointed.

2002-06-18T15:44:00.000+03:00

RC3

I dig Rafe Colburn's blog - plenty of balanced opion on current events, interspersed with comments on open source programming and other geekery.

Salon Premium has a story today on the allegations of a massacre uncovered by Irish documentarian Jamie Doran. He claims to have evidence that up to 5,000 of the prisoners taken after the surrender of the Taliban at Kunduz were killed in one way or another and dumped in mass graves somewhere in the deserts of Afghanistan. Whether the allegations turn out to be accurate or not, it's pretty clear that some sort of inquiry needs to be made into what happened to those prisoners. Personally, I have no idea what transpired, but I doubt that any of the people who would dismiss the allegations out of hand (or accept them uncritically) do either. [rc3]

2002-06-18T13:15:00.000+03:00

Turkiye!

Turkey made it into the quarter finals along with the US. I hear tickets for today's match against Japan were going for as much as $1,500!

If the US and Turkey both win their next two matches, they'll go head to head in the Big Match on the 30th! That'll be a big one around the Istanblog household, I can tell you!

2002-06-18T13:03:00.000+03:00

Link Tony!

Tony Pierce has been threatening to bring the coolest blog in the world to an end unless he gets 100 links. I'm glad he's discovered that Istanblog links him, so I'm now Tony-linking blog #24. Some might say this smacks of Oral Roberts' claim that Allah was shaking him down for $8 million, but I don't care. Don't go, Tony!

2002-06-18T12:50:00.000+03:00

Memories of Turkey

A reader emails:

Best memory of Istanbul: In the hostel section of the Hotel Gungor (which housed the infamous Pudding Shop) in January 1974, there was a huge sign, that I had to examine closer because guys were smoking hash right in front of it, which said, "If You Are Caught With One Smoke of Hash You Get Seven Years".

I'd heard about the Pudding Shop from friends of my father who'd been here in the early 70's. It was a popular gathering spot for people wanting to go east on the "Hippy Trail". Sadly, Istanbul is about as far east as most backpackers make it overland these days, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan not being quite as groovy for tourists as they once were.

Nowadays the Pudding Shop is an unremarkable lunch spot with laminated menus showing pictures of the food, and German tourists who seem totally unaware of the history of the place. I was expecting Hard Rock Cafe style t-shirts or other cheezy souveniers to take back to my pop, but the owners aren't fully exploiting their brand. Too bad.

2002-06-18T12:41:00.000+03:00

Thanks for the emails

Thanks to those folks who've dropped me emails and linked the blog. And also thanks to Howard Owens who added me to his link list on Global News Watch, a site I'll have to add to my daily habit.

2002-06-18T12:33:00.000+03:00

Look what happens when I neglect my blog ...

I get a coveted link from Instapundit!

ISTANBLOG is, well, what it sounds like: a blog from Turkey . (By an American living there). I don't pay enough attention to Turkey because. . . well, because I'm a guy who does this as a hobby, and there are only so many hours available for blogging and reading. So I'm glad somebody else is.

The famously prolific blogger admits he doesn't have time to cover everything he'd like to - damn, he made more posts yesterday than I've made in the entire month or so I've had this blog!

Thanks Glenn, and welcome Instapunditfans.

2002-06-15T17:59:00.000+03:00

Go Turkey, Go US!

I missed the US World Cup matches - too busy, plus I didn't expect them to luck into the next round. Plus nobody in the US seems to care - all the bloggers are talking about the Lakers. I've enjoyed watching the Turkey matches, although they've been playing a mediocre game. They looked pretty good against China, they showed more spirit than they did against Costa Rica, and more class and sportsmanship than against Brazil. I'll be pulling for them in the next round, but my crystal ball likes Brazil. Turkey and the US both stumbled into the second round, but Brazil has been kicking ass.

2002-06-15T17:53:00.000+03:00

Turkish leadership crisis making western news

I'm back, at least for the moment, and I'll try to make up for my absence with some Turkish-specific stuff that you're not reading in the other blogs. I've mentioned the Turkish leadership crisis, namely that elderly Prime Minister Ecevit's health is not good, and the prospects for what will happen if he steps down aren't any better. Last week this story hit the mainstream western press, mainly because the PM missed an important meeting with EU representatives on Turkey's membership bid.

The situation is basically the same as the last time I mentioned it, which means it's more likely to be a problem. At first his doctors were saying that Mr. Ecevit's problem was just "intestinal", which made it sound like food poisoning, but now "a spinal disorder, Parkinson's disease, and a cracked rib" have all been added to the list. When the same doctors claim his health is perfectly fine (he just needs to rest at home for a few more weeks), it's a little hard to believe them.

The succession is iffy. When I first wrote about it, Mr. Ecevit's coalition partners were sternly rebuking calls for new elections, which were mostly coming from politicians not in the current coalition. Now Devlet Bahceli, one of the coalition party leaders, is making a lot of noise himself. He doesn't want new elections, of course, since polls show he wouldn't even make it back into Parliament, much less into the government. But he's insisting that if Ecevit steps down, he's the man to take his place. Ecevit's party only has 1 more seat in Parliament than Bahceli's, so he has a case.

But the guy's a nut, who claims to have put his involvment with the mob and right wing terrorists behind him. Maybe so, but the noise he's making is still right wing. He's calling for the execution of Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, the violent Kurdish separatist group. Ocalan is safely in jail now, captured a few years back with the help of the Israelis and Greeks, and has gotten the PKK to end their terrorist campaign, which in turn has stopped the Turkish army from burning down villages of PKK "sympathizers". But if Bahceli gets his way, Ocalan will be executed, and my crystal ball sees the likely results of that to be a return to terror for Turkish civilians and US-sponsored brutality against dirt-poor people.

Guys like Bahceli don't much care that oppression doesn't inspire loyalty.

So the possible post-Ecevit outcomes are 1) an ultra-nationalist who finds Turkey's human rights record to be too soft, 2) an Islamic moderate who the military is trying to get thrown in jail for "embarrassing the military" and praising the proto-Taliban a decade ago, 3) a coup, or 4) a miracle. My crystal ball suggests 1, 2, and 3 could well happen in succession, over a relatively short time (a year?)

None of these possibilities bode well for Turkey's chances with the EU. Not that the chances are great anyway, but Ecevit has been pushing Turkey along that road, and the others are sure to shove it over the guard rail.

2002-06-15T17:09:00.000+03:00

Cool!


	Why know what you can look up? And why look up what you can extract from the minds of your enemies? There are those who think and those who act. I am the latter. I am a problem solver. I have a gift for reading people. I take pride in my wit and speed, not my strength or power. My power is of the mind. The ball is under the middle dish... Pay up. What's your superpower?

via Unqualified Offerings

2002-06-08T21:05:00.000+03:00

Blame it on Allah

I hate to see someone as knowledgeable as Ken Layne repeat the naive assertion that the Palestinian situation is about religion. Religion is not the root cause of the conflict, it's the tool used to garner support, especially internationally. Palestinians aren't angry at Israelis because they "don't pray five times a day to their version of Allah" any more than Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland dislike Protestants because they don't go to Mass. They don't like having foreigners come in and build a nation on their land, and they don't like when that nation expands further into their land.

Warblog fatigue does seem to have set in over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Personally, I've run out of stuff to say. The bottom line for me is there are two sets of bad guys running the two sides, and both are happy to sacrifice lives on their own sides to continue their agenda.

It bothers me that most people outside the region tend to pick one side or the other as the bad guy, and then ignore the bad stuff the other side is doing. If you see the destruction of Palestinian homes and construction of Israeli settlements as bad, then Arafat is excused for failing to do anything about terrorism. Or, if you see permitting terrorism against Israeli civilians as an unacceptable way to defend your people, then Sharon is excused for using tanks to pave the way for settlers.

I see it here, of course. The news covers the terrorist attacks, but the coverage is brief and somewhat vague - X people killed in an attack in city Y. Most people don't seem to be too aware of the details, i.e. that it was a wedding pary, and several of the dead were children. But Israeli action tends to get more detailed, close up coverage, as do the Palestinian victims. American coverage seems to be the reverse, lots of detail on suicide attacks and their victims, and more vague accounts of Israeli action - "troops moved back into Jenin today to fight terrorists." By emphasizing the evils of one side, it encourages people to assume the other side is a bunch of hapless fuzzy bunnies.

I guess it's easier to swallow it all if you throw up your hands and say it's all because of those wacky religions.

2002-05-28T18:07:00.000+03:00

The pre 9/11 mistakes that we're ignoring

Plenty of attention is going into investigating the failures of law enforcement and intelligence to put together various bits of information relating to the attacks that were in the system beforehand, and rightly so. The aspect of the whole flap which continues to intrigue me is the way the Bush administration ignored the threat which was made real on September 11, and what worries me is that in some ways they're making the very same mistakes even now.

At the start of the Bush administration, the outgoing Clintonites warned the Bushsters that al-Qaeda was the number one threat against the US, but the new administration decided that building a missile defense system was more important. Spending at least a trillion dollars on a system to shoot down nuclear missiles was necessary because a nuclear strike by "rogue nations" - especially Iraq, South Korea, and Iran - was the biggest direct threat to the US, and eliminating that threat would presumably significantly reduce their ability to harm us.

September 11 blew missile defense to smithereens. Missile defense had critics before then, but now its pointlessness is obvious to everyone, like putting an anti-aircraft battery in your back yard to prevent burglars from using a helicopter to break into your house. Al-qaeda demonstrated that there are far simpler and cheaper ways to attack the US than to build and launch ICBMs.

But another flaw in Bush administration policy was exposed by the 9/11 attacks, but hasn't been changed. Before 9/11 Bush considered "rogue nations" to be the biggest threat to US security, but 9/11 wasn't perpetrated by these, but by an international, stateless terrorism network, the same one which the Clinton administration found much more fearsome than Iraq and North Korea.

But since the US overthrew the Taliban, the George Bush has rebranded the "rogue nations" as the "axis of evil", and tied them in the public mind with 9/11, despite the lack of any evidence that any of them were involved. Al-qaeda's Afghanistan operations have been driven into Pakistan, and the fundamental forces which drove it are still alive and well in places like Saudi Arabia, but the Bush administration appears happy to consider them less of a threat than Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, none of which have ever directly attacked the US outside of their immediate vicinity.

Why is the Bush administration so fixated on these three countries? Granted, these are not warm and cuddly places. But none has directly attacked the US - sure, we've tangled with them in neighboring countries, the Iranians did nasty stuff to Americans in their country during their revolution. But we are facing a group, and a political-religious movement, which has bombed two embassies, attacked a navy ship, killed 3,000 people in New York city and successfully attacked the Pentagon. Their sponsors are still the dominant political and social force in Saudi Arabia, and are allowed to roam in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The Bush administration's fixation on the Axis of Evil Rogue Nations appears to have distracted the FBI and CIA from al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. Will this fixation hurt us again?

Cheney says we shouldn't question what went wrong because we're at war, but is he talking about the war on al-Qaeda, or Iraq and the Axis? When the Bush administration's awareness that al-Qaeda might hijack planes became a public topic, they bombarded the media with apparently every rumor of terrorist attack they had in their files.

They seem to regard anti-terrorism, Islamic ultra-fundamentalism, and the Palestinian conflict as a distraction from the war they really want to fight. Unfortunately, even if they are able to persuade the American media and public that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the most important threat facing this country, that doesn't mean the remnants of al-Qaeda and whatever evolves next out of ultra-extremist Islam will agree, and idly wait for us to finish before continuing their fight.

Also:
Tom Tomorrow is going at this hammer and tongs and American prospect rebuts Cheney's assertion that wartime governments shouldn't be questioned. (via Flit).

As I mentioned before, Joshua Micah Marshall is delving heavily into the issue as well. He's also finally finished that article on how the misguided neoconservatives may be right about polishing off Saddam, although they sound completely ignorant about how to do it.

2002-05-24T11:12:00.000+03:00

Israel == US?

OK, I'll take just one hit off the pipe before I get some paying work done. Joshua Marshall has devoted a lot of space to the Intelligence-Gate scandal, bringing up a lot of good points and some stuff I didn't know, e.g. that the Bush administration had scaled back anti-terrorism from the levels of the late Clinton administration, at least until 9/11. A good point was that, given that so much intelligence related to the attacks was floating around ahead of time but not tied together, was it really necessary to pass the Patriot Act so more intelligence could be gathered? It doesn't appear that due process and other civil rights were what kept us from preventing the 9/11 attacks.

But what caught my attention was his mention of FBI Director Mueller's claim that suicide bombers are inevitable in the US. I've been reading this claim, and recall (but don't have a link) that an Israeli police bigshot was in the US a few weeks ago saying the same thing.

It's not to say this couldn't possibly happen, but, I strongly doubt it would happen at the level it's happening in Palestine. I think hyping this threat is just another way some people are trying to equate Israel's war on Palestine to the American-Afghanistan War.

So both situations involve terrorist attacks by mostly Arab, mostly Muslim people. But Israel has millions of these folks right next door, so recruiting suicide bombers and sending them into Israel is far easier than doing the same to the US. Yes, there are plenty of Muslims in the US, and some probably think suicide attacks against the US is a fine thing. But. Those US-based Muslims aren't having their land settled by people who openly talk about sweeping them into the sea (yes, I know it goes both ways in Palestine), nor are they haveing their homes bulldozed. Even the anti-West Muslims in the US are most likely comfortable enough that they're happy to let other people sacrifice themselves for the Cause. They simply can't supply the steady stream of suicide-ready people that Palestine can. And importing them from Palestine or other places is difficult. Palestinian suicide bombers are heavily "indoctrinated" right up to the attack; harder to do in the US, even if they succeed in getting them into the country.

A major reason for considering them to be tied is because al-Qaeda claims the Palestinian cause as being part of what they're fighting for. But it's all spin. The Palestinians want the Israelis out of their land, with differing definitions of what constitutes "their land". The fundies want old-fashioned Islamic unity and supremacy. Bin Laden doesn't give a fork about the Palestinians, except as propaganda to get people worked up about the Evil West. I doubt the Palestinians are all that fired up about bringing back fundamentalist Islamic values.

If we should learn anything from previous American experiences in the Middle East (*cough* Lebannon), we should learn that local allies don't hesitate to manipulate you to their own advantage. The Minions of Evil want nothing more than to divide the world into a simple, black and white worldview of Islam vs. the West. That's what bin Laden and the Wahibbists have always been after. The Bush administration very shrewdly avoided getting sucked into that trap with the War in Afghanistan, but the Israeli leadership is more than happy to lead us right back in. Let's look sharp and think for ourselves.

2002-05-24T09:35:00.000+03:00

Blogging considered harmful

Sorry I haven't posted this week. A big project has come up which is keeping me away from the computer; life as a freelance dilettante can get hectic at times. Also, blogging, especially keeping up with current stories in the news and other blogs, is very addictive and time consuming. Maybe I should take up smoking crack instead.

2002-05-17T17:19:00.000+03:00

2 + 2 = 666

No doubt we're all deeply surprised to hear that a pair of Frenchmen are coming out with a book exposing the Bush administration's conspiracy to help oil companies by going to war with Afghanistan. It's called Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth, by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique, and WorkingForChange has an article about it. Not having read the book, I'm going to chew on this article a bit.

First a disclaimer: I'm not a Bush fan; although I think the Afghanistan War was unavoidable and well conducted, I also think he and those who invested in his election are shamelessly milking 9/11. But.

Brisard and Dasique were paid little mind by the American news media. Many of their allegations were based upon conjecture, circumstantial evidence, and the words of a dead man named John O'Neill. Their argument seemed plausible enough – the interests of the Bush administration and the energy industry are, in essence, one and the same

I'm with you so far. Saying their interests are "one and the same" is a bit hyperbolic, but the ties between the two are undeniable.

I'm also with them when they talk about John O'Neill, an FBI Deputy Director who investigated the 1993 WTC attack and was killed in the 2001 attacks, having resigned from the FBI two weeks before and started his job as head of security for the WTC.

According to the article, O'Neill was frustrated with the administration's lack of progress in combatting Islamic fundamentalism.

He believed his government was actively hindering his ability to pursue dangerous Islamic terrorists because such investigations were discomforting Mideast regimes like the Taliban that were being courted by American petroleum interests. Brisard and Dasique quote O'Neill as saying, "The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it."

This is plausible to me. Hell, Saudi Arabia still isn't really helping with the investigation of the 9/11 plotters. Whether the Bush administration's quiet acceptance of this is due to oil deals or strategic concerns is debatable, although I think the strategic concerns are very real.

The problem with this article is that it uses more reasonable questions such as these to lend credibility to much more dubious stuff. Apparently the American company Unocol tried to negotiate a pipeline deal with the Taliban. Our French authors, and WorkingForChange writer William Rivers Pitt, believe that the Bush administration threatened the Taliban outright with war if they refused the deal.

Pakistani news agencies reported in the weeks before September 11th that America had threatened war against the Taliban if they did not agree to the pipeline deal. "Accept our carpet of gold," the Bush administration is reported to have said, "or be buried under a carpet of bombs."

John O'Neill was a credible source, but "Pakistani news agencies" simply are not. Their allegation, and the quote backing it, is simply ridiculous. It's a blatant caricature of capitalist American values as seen by Islamic fundamentalists, rendered in poetic language more characteristic of an Islamic scholar than an American diplomat.

The article goes on to declare that the recent controversy over what intelligence was available to the White House before 9/11 "augment" the claims of the authors.

Mr. Pitt mentions a recent law suit by former FBI agent Robert G. Wright, who alleges that "the agency willfully ignored terrorist threats from Hamas". I'd like to find out more about this, it's certainly possible that Mr. Wright has valid criticisms of the FBI, but haven't found anything in the news on it. Considering the context, maybe he's just another crank.

2002-05-17T15:59:00.000+03:00

Bush knew

The news that President Bush was warned that al-Qaeda might try hijackings doesn't seem all that shocking. It appears to have been more speculation than specific intelligence, and of course was only one of many things al-Qaeda had in mind for us; they certainly had plans to bomb more embassies, spread anthrax from crop dusters, acquire a nuclear weapon and smuggle it into the US for detonation, and who knows how many other horrible things.

Investigating what bits of information were in the law enforcement and intelligence systems relating to the 9/11 attacks is a useful exercise, insofar as it can help find ways to improve the way these systems work and improve our national security.

But the media and politicians seem to view this as another ratings-boostings scandal - have they assigned a FooGate name for this one yet? If the White House will react by refusing to turn over information to Congress, it will only increase the atmosphere of scandal. Cheney has already said that, since we are At War, Congress should shut up and march in line.

Another aspect of this that bothers me is that it's fuel for the denialists. I was just asked by a coworker whether President Bush really did know about the attack beforehand - is it in the US press, or is it just another rumor of the "CIA and jews did it" school?

How could I answer that question? I said that Bush didn't "know" about it, he just had a warning, one of many similar warnings he got and gets every week. But "he knew" is a much simpler tag to put on it, and it is especially appealing to people who see the gun barrels of the entire western world pointing at their heads because of something that was done in the name of their religion.

2002-05-16T15:35:00.000+03:00

Turkish Internet/media law

The Turkish parliament has passed a law on media which is getting bashed by, well, the media, as well as the EU. The part that jumps out at me is subjecting the Internet to government censorship laws, especially the requirement to send 2 copies of any Web page to the government before publishing it. The articles don't say whether publishers have to wait for approval to come back before publishing, or if there's a required lead time; so maybe you can FTP the page to the server right after dropping the printouts in the mail.

Either way, it's not encouraging for the Turkish blogging scene.

I'm really curious about how the law is written. Can they apply it to someone in Turkey who maintains a site on a server located somewhere else? (*cough*cough*) Presumably it doesn't apply to posting on foreign discussion boards (do they really want all my Slashdot and Plastic posts?). Is Istanblog a site of its own, or just a part of blogspot, and therefore more like a discussion board?

Turkish ISP's hosting discussion boards (and even chat rooms!) will be accountable for whatever gets posted there. Again, I wonder how this affects someone who sets up a board on a foreign host. Turkish ISP hosting tends to be overpriced, so most grass roots types tend to use cheaper services in the US; I wonder what'll happen to them.

Of course, passing laws is one thing, enforcement is an entirely different creature. Some big companies will probably comply, especially the kind which already have elaborate policies for internal approval of web content, but I'm sure most small fry won't bother. By and large, most probably won't get in trouble for it (of course, I'm talking out of my ass, so anyone in Turkey reading this should flout the law at your own risk!) I'd guess the law will mostly serve as a billy club to use at the whim of the police and politicians.

I should note that, although I've said before I prefer to be anonymous because I worry about these things, by and large Turkey is not an overtly oppressive place for the average person. Nobody ever seems nervous about speaking their mind. It's not like Cuba, and what I hear about Beijing is a hundred times worse than that, at least for foreigners who hang out with locals.

In Turkey the oppressive arm of the law is generally reserved for people who hang around with the Wrong Crowd, or mess with the Wrong People. I'm not up to anything the military establishment would get in a tizzy about, I'm not promoting separatist organizations, Islamic jihad, or any such, so I sleep soundly at night, untroubled by Midnight Run flavored nightmares.

2002-05-16T14:13:00.000+03:00

Formulating the problem

Albert Einstein said "The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution". I've been wrestling with my feelings and opinions about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict lately, and Einstein's advice strikes me as very relevant to the situation. Lots of solutions for the conflict are being suggested and debated these days, but what often gets lost is that they don't all address the same problem. One of several things which brought this home to me were a conversation with a friend who has relatives living in Israel, and Thomas Friedman's recent column Nine Wars Too Many.

The column mostly reiterates what we all know, that while some Israelis and Palestinians want peaceful coexistence with one another, many want the other side's land. Friedman lists various specific parties inside and outside the conflict, and what he perceives as their goals.

The position I take is favoring peaceful coexistence of the two as independent nations. I think most outsiders would agree that's the ideal solution: polls show that most Israelis want it as well. I don't know what polls show for the Palestinians, if there are any such polls; although popular sentiment is probably pretty negative these days, it's not too improbable to suggest that, if mutual security and prosperity were achieved, most Palestinians would be content.

So this should make a decent foundation for building possible solutions on. But it doesn't. The cracks in the foundation are those people on both sides who don't share the goal of mutual security. They are willing to sacrifice security for the cause of complete control of the Israeli/Palestinians lands by their own people.

All suggestions for a peaceful resolution, including my own, rest on the fatal assumption that those who want the whole enchilada can be forced to accept only half of it.

Sharon and Likud want it all, but we hope that foreign pressure, especially from the US, will force them to accept the "reality" that they can't have it. Alternatively, since Israel is a democracy the people, a majority of whom want peace, will check the extremists.

This is a realistic hope, but not watertight. If Sharon achieves relative stability by whipping the Palestinians and keeping them docilely penned up in Bantustans, would the Israeli public vote to give up Palestinian land, roll back settlements, etc? It doesn't seem likely. It seems more likely that the majority in favor of land-for-peace feel that way because they think it's the option most likely to get them peace and security; but if another option proves effective, they'll live with it.

And Sharon and other extremists won't stop working towards getting the whole pie. As long as the Palestinians continue using terrorism, Israeli extremists will have the mandate to continue working towards Greater Israel.

Of course the Palestinian side is very similar. Western hopes for peace rest on the shoulders of Yassar Arafat; the peace plans all assume the Chairman will crack down on terrorism and lead his people to build a solid, functional state. The flaw is that Arafat is not a leader. He is the worst kind of politician, one who only tells people what they want to hear. In order to lead his people to peace, he needs a backbone, but he can't even face a crowd of followers if there's a risk of getting hecked.

Arafat is currently telling Western leaders exactly what they want to hear. Colin Powell says he is "encouraged that Arafat, in outlining reform plans in a speech to the Palestinian parliament, used the same terms the Bush administration has been using to push for restructuring." No shinola Mr. Secretary, it shouldn't be shocking that Arafat knows what side to butter the bread on. Western leaders have been very clearly explaining what they want to hear, and the Chairman is following that script to the letter. But he's not a method actor.

Arafat hopes that he can bow and scrape enough to the US that American political and financial muscle will be put to work in his favor. But how far is he willing to go against the extremists? It doesn't seem likely that he'll go very far: he'll make arrests, but he doesn't seem inclined to shut Hamas down. Maybe he would if he thought he could, but again, he's not a leader, he's not capable of standing up to his people and telling them something they don't want to hear.

Arafat is already on shaky ground with his own people. Following the American script so slavishly, condemning terrorism and talking about reforming the Palestinian Authority, makes him look like a sellout. I linked to a story above about Arafat avoiding facing potentially rowdy crowds, but more recently he even avoided facing Palestinians at Jenin.

With aides holding both his arms, the Palestinian leader stepped gingerly onto the rubble on the edge of the camp, but turned and departed without approaching the makeshift stage or the 3,000 residents awaiting him.

"I'm very angry and very disappointed because Arafat did not visit the camp," said 43-year-old Mohammed Abu Ghalyoun. "He didn't talk to normal people, he didn't want to meet the people who lost their sons.... If he isn't interested in us, we are not interested in him."

What a pussy.

Arafat is trying to straddle the fence, and it's going to screw him. He hopes that saying what Bush and Powell want to hear will make them happy, and that failing to follow through on those words will make his people happy. Instead he's achieving the exact opposite: his people are angry at his bowing and scraping, and the Americans are unconvinced by his failure to make concrete changes.

To bring this rant back to where it started, the problem with pushing for peace is that the problem hasn't been forumulated in a way that the leaders on both sides can commit to. Mutual coexistence isn't acceptable to ultra-nationalists on the Israeli side, and on the Palestinian side, the leadership lacks the backbone to fully commit to it.

The Israeli side seems more soluable, because popular opinion is on the side of peace, so if a credible plan is presented which meets the goal of secure coexistence, Israel will probably take it. The Palestinian side is more problematic. Unlike Israel, there are no real alternatives to Arafat. Calls to ignore Arafat and find another spokesperson for the Palestinians are unrealistic until the Palestinians themselves willingly reject him and choose another leader.

2002-05-16T12:03:00.000+03:00

Israel-related stories in Flit

He's got two criticizing suggestions that a ring of Israeli students illegally selling art in the US were actually a spy ring which knew about 9/11 before it happened. The second post is above the one I've linked. Another is about an Israeli Deep Throat mystery.

2002-05-15T13:49:00.000+03:00

Turkish leadership crisis

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has decided to stay at home for a few more days, apparently still not feeling up to snuff after his visit to the hospital a week and a half ago for an intestinal infection. I've mentioned this story before, but I thought I'd round up what's being said by various players.

Special Economy Minister Kemal Derviş is calling for new elections. He'd like this to happen because he wants to make a move into politics; the former World Bank VP isn't a politician, he was appointed to his job last year to keep the IMF sweet so they wouldn't close the money tap.

Ecevit's coalition partners, the MHP and ANAP are indignant at the call for elections. This indignation is couched as support for Ecevit, but no doubt is influenced by the polls indicating that none of the three coalition partners would get a seat in parliament if elections were held today.

Ecevit himself is also "fed up" with the rampant speculation, and particularly the calls for an election. He's saying the show must go on, and there's nobody else to take the reins if he resigns. The boat is shaky enough, quit rockin' it.

Unnamed sources in the US government are confident that the coalition will continue. This seems predicated on the assumption that Ecevit doesn't resign.

The Istanblogger agrees that as long as Ecevit doesn't resign, things will continue. None of the coalition partners would gain from elections, so they've got a vested interest in the status quo. If he does step down, all bets are off. There will be a scramble for his job, and chances are pretty good that they won't be able to agree on who gets it, which would probably trigger an election.

It's not impossible they could avoid that, though, the coalition partners would all still be better off as a junior partner in government than they would be without even a single seat in parliament, so they might be able to swallow their ambitions. The Security Council, the mixed political/military council which acts as a kind of politburo for Turkish government, might lean on the players to accept a compromise, for the Good of the Republic.

It all hinges on Ecevit. How sick is he? Stay tuned.

2002-05-15T11:44:00.000+03:00

Carter in 2004

It takes cojones to go on live, Cuban TV, with Fidel Castro sitting in the same room, and inform the country about a grass roots democratic reform movement.

For many Cubans, it was the first time they had heard of the project and its discussion drew obvious discomfort in this closed society, where people are unaccustomed to such a public airing of opinions that differ from their government's.

There are plenty of Americans who think people shouldn't criticize the government ("my country right or wrong"), although this often depends on who's in the White House. In a country where the system discourages dissent rather than encourages it, this attitude is even more prevalent.

Carter also responded to questions from audience members who defended Cuba's system.

Hassan Perez, president of the National Student's Union, said he felt "profound indignation" at mention of the Varela Project, and said that its supporters had no support.

So there shouldn't be any harm in holding a referendum to prove the people don't support more freedom, right?

Update: The Economist has a good writeup of this.

2002-05-14T17:56:00.000+03:00

Carter and Fidel debate Democracy

Go Jimmy!

"In the United States, we believe that it is very important to have absolute freedom of expression and freedom of assembly," Carter told the students Monday, citing two liberties that nearly all human rights groups find lacking in Cuba.

Apparently Mr. Carter will get the chance to expound on democracy on national TV.

President Castro's rebuttal is that Democracy originated in ancient Athens, which didn't have universal suffrage.

Noting the vast poverty of most of the world's people, Castro compared Western-style democracies to an Athens in which a minority unjustly dominates the majority and said Cuba was striving for "a society with justice" and equal opportunity. He said his country was seeking "that dream of justice, of true liberty, of true democracy, of true human rights."

I'm not sure where he gets the part about the minority unjustly dominating the majority in the West, I'd like to read a more complete account, even a transcript. And of course there's the odd, if typical, claim of seeking democracy from a guy who doesn't allow competing candidates to appear on ballots, and true human rights who doesn't allow people to criticize the government. Maybe he thinks the People aren't quite ready yet for democracy. Of course it'd be easier to get them ready for democracy if he actually practiced it.

I'd read so many news reports mentioning that Castro has been sporting a slick gray business suit, but the only photo I've seen so far is over at Tony's. He even brushed his hair! I wonder if he's making shorter speeches, too.

2002-05-14T13:56:00.000+03:00

What about Israeli terrorism?

I've seen this article in the Star about Israeli terrorist plots on message boards.

Police have arrested four Jewish settlers from the Israeli-occupied West Bank in connection with the attempt to set the bomb, made up of two gas balloons and two barrels of gasoline.
...
The bomb inside was set to go off at 7:35 the next morning, when the 1,500 students at the school line up in the schoolyard for the start of the school day. Two other men were arrested later.

Of course the reaction of Palestinian sympathizers is, "see, the Israelis do it too." And the reaction of the Israeli sympathizers is "see, the Israeli police stopped them."

Although both sides will ignore the opposite argument, both would benefit from thinking about them. The Palestinians should note that the Israeli police actively prevented Israeli terrorists from blowing up hundreds of Palestinian schoolgirls. I'm not sure how many terrorist plots have been foiled by the Palestinian police, they mostly seem to arrest some people after the fact, after the international community puts pressure on Arafat.

Anti-Israelis might suggest that the Israelis did it to prevent bad PR. Israeli would lose a lot of international sympathy for their own fight on terror if they failed to prevent a horrific attack like this one. My response: that's 100% correct. And it works. The Palestinian leadership should take notes: If respect for human life isn't a compelling motivation for stopping suicide bombers, think of the PR benefits.

To the Israelis, I would suggest that riding the high horse about Palestinian terrorism has limitations. The closer you get to peace, the more likely it is that fringe groups will be unhappy with whatever concessions are to be made, and will try to undermine the peace through terrorism. This is exactly what Hamas is doing to Palestine, and settlers are bound to do the same to Israel.

2002-05-14T13:33:00.000+03:00

Let's bomb Cuba

Joshua Marshall is blogging some information which suggests (surprise surprise) that the Bush administration's attempt to include Cuba in the League of Supervillains is bogus.

Cuba is a great place, with really great people who seem to extract a lot of fun out of a pretty meager life. I look forward to the end of the embargo, and hope the transition to a post-Fidel, and (hopefully) post-Communist Cuba is smooth and peaceful.

I don't think Fidel is great. I'm a fan of democracy, free speech, and other human rights, which make it hard to dig the way Fidel runs the place. The appeal he holds for many is that he has, for fourty years, miraculously kept Cuba from being dominated by the US economically, politically, and even culturally. But it's a cowardly sort of victory, trading the confines of American imperialism for the confines of spiteful contrarianism.

I like Cuba and the Cuban people a lot. Havana is a late 1950's American city which was abandoned and squatted by vibrant, life-loving people. The place hasn't been fixed up since then, and the people that live there don't have very much in the way of material stuff, but they enjoy the hell out of life anyway.

Some people would say that's great, it's proof that Capitalism isn't the end-all be-all, and hope it stays that way. Part of me feels that way - I don't share the desire of many Cuban exiles in Florida to overwhelm Havana with McDonalds and condos, making it into a mirror of the Florida coast.

But it's kind of crappy for people in the West to say how nice it is for those Cubans that they are free from our materialistic society; they don't have the choice. We do have the choice, but very few of us opt to join the wondeful, materialism-free Cuban society.

Mr. Castro has achieved some of the ideals of communism. Most people appear to have the basics of life: food, clothes, roof, decent medical treatment if not great access to medicine. So there's a fairly uniform standard of living. The problem is, it's a uniformly low standard of living, and there's no legal alternative (unless you can pull strings and get a job in tourism).

So you can have decent food, but if you want a special night out, you can't have it. Better clothes, nicer house, more books, CD's, computer games? Sorry. Enjoy your beans and rice. For the rest of your life.

The problem with a uniform standard of living is that it's human nature to want more for yourself and your family.

So although I don't relish the inevitable Floridization of Cuba, I do relish the prospect of normalization. Cuba is a dynamic place, which has been and hopefully will again be a major cultural center with warm and close relations with the US. When things are normalized, assuming war is avoided, there will be an explosion of cultural and social exchange, as well as economic. I don't know what exactly will happen (Disney's Cheworld?), but, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, I believe it will be "something wonderful".

If I Were In Charge™, I'd drop the embargo. The embargo helps Fidel maintain his Revolution against the Imperialists. Nothing will topple him faster than unrestrained capitalism. The Bush administration's continuation of the policies which have failed for fourty years is worthless, and lumping Fidel in with the conspiracy of Iraq, Iran, and Korea is ridiculous.

From the Times:

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Cuban leader Fidel Castro should give his own people the same freedom to travel and speak to dissidents that he has given Carter on his rare visit there, which began Sunday.

I agree. I also think the US should give all American citizens the freedom to visit Cuba that they have given to Carter.

2002-05-13T15:42:00.000+03:00

Paris and Turkey

The latest flap in the Turkish news is the offense taken by a mural on the floor of a Paris railway station. The mural was created by Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) to identify countries which it feels are unfriendly to the free press, for example those which put reporters in prison for political reasons. Turkey was one of the countries highlighted for this, with a picture of the military's Chief of Staff, Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu.

So naturally this has caused an uproar, and naturally those protesting display no understanding of what what RSF is protesting. People seem to hold the government of France responsible for allowing a picture of the Turkish general to be trod by the feet of Parisian commuters. Presumably some feel that the government should have stifled the RSF's comment, so their failure to do so shows antipathy of the French government towards Turkey. This comes from believing that a government should stifle speech that it disagrees with, which is of course what the RSF is objecting to in Turkey. Point completely missed.

To mark Mothers' Day, an association of Turkish Mothers of people who have died for their country protested at the French Consulate here in Istanbul. The head of the association apparently believes the mural was put in place due to French frustration with their historical inability to conquer Turkey.

But don't go away with the impression that this ignorance is universal in Turkey. Turkish News has an ironic column which discusses the issue (among others).

Take the case of the Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF). Whatever would prompt them to think that there are any difficulties with the Turkish press? After all, did we ever have any problem with the freedom of press? Do we have journalists in prisons or journalists beaten by the police? Who the hell remembers Metin Göktepe, a journalist beaten to death by the police while covering a riot in 1996?

2002-05-13T14:28:00.000+03:00

Not under Arafat, nor under another leadership, not today nor tomorrow

Benjamin Netanyahu does his worst Doctor Seuss impression, as his and Ariel Sharon's Likkud party resolves never to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Of course this is not (yet) official Israeli government policy, just that of the political party which currently has the most seats in Parliament.

This puts Ariel Sharon in the odd position of being attacked for being too soft on the Palestinians. Sharon, who has long worked for the expansion of Israel into Palestine, has had to give the impression that a Palestinian state is in the future, since that's what most people internationally and within Israel think is necessary. According to Reuters, 58% of Israelis support land-for-peace.

So now Sharon, like Chairman Arafat and President Bush, has too worry that seeking a peaceful resolution, or at least trying to appear to be seeking one, will cheese off the extremists.

What will happen if Mr. Netanyahu deposes Sharon? Will the unity of Israeli politicians hold, or will the coalition collapse?

2002-05-10T14:54:00.000+03:00

Blogger Kaus mentioned in the Economist

The Economist's pay only article on Senator John Edwards includes a brief reference to Mickey Kaus:

all too often, as Mickey Kaus, an on-line pundit, points out, the enemy is not “them” but “us”.

2002-05-10T13:40:00.000+03:00

The Turkish Cheese Ship and the European Union

Semih İdiz of the Turkish News has summarized the Turkey/EU situation pretty accurately. There is a widespread conviction that the EU will never admit Turkey as a member because it is 99% Muslim. While this no doubt creates opposition, Idiz rightly points out that at least as much of the problem comes from Turkey itself.

Even if every Mosque in Turkey was turned into a church overnight, the EU would be leery of having a member country where the politicians are accountable to the military rather than vice-versa, where religious expression is suppressed, where violent oppression of ethnic minorities is considered acceptable, and where brutal torture is a standard practice of the unaccountable police.

The Turkish Parliament has made a number of changes to the consitution to accomodate the EU's admission requirements, but held back on the most crucial ones, to do with religious and press freedoms and human rights. But passing a series of laws in order to check off a list of "reforms" supplied by the EU is a superficial act.

I mentioned the other day how the conversion of the occupied Islamic Ottoman Empire to the secular Turkish Republic, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, succeeded because it was an internal effort. The rest of the Ottoman Empire was divided up between England, France, and other allies, which tried to impose Western democratic systems onto them. These included Iraq and Saudi Arabia, among others. Turkey may not be perfect, but it is far more progressive than any of the former European colonies in the Middle East, with the point-proving exception of Turkey's ally Israel.

Political change must come from the community itself; a paternalistic foreign power can't impose a democratic society from the outside. Unfortunately, I don't think even most progressive-minded Turks realize this. Pro-EU people I meet often express the hope that if Turkey joins the EU, the EU will force it to become a better country, ridding it of corruption, stabilizing the economy, etc. Similar hopes are held for IMF plans and the like. Turkish people don't have the faith in themselves, and certainly not their leaders, that they need to build the nation they want.

Some pro-EU members of the government are calling for a mad dash for membership; this is partly a reaction to the perception that the EU is becoming increasingly xenophobic (Le Pen, Fortuyn, etc.), and so the doors may snap shut. It's also due to envy of eastern European countries which are poised to join, and the fear that Greek Cyprus may be admitted.

But it will be to Turkey's advantage to wait. If Turkey rushes to join, they will be rejected: Islamophobia aside, the country hasn't met the requirements for joining, and won't no matter how many laws they pass in Parliament.

The bottom line is that Turkey won't become a strong, prosperous country by joining the EU; instead, it will be able to join the EU once it becomes a strong, prosperous country. It needs to figure out how to become that country on its own.

2002-05-10T12:08:00.000+03:00

Michael Kinsley on Democracy vs. WOT

Slate's Michael Kinsley reacts to Thomas Friedman's column on the perception in Indonesia that the US is giving struggling democracies the cold shoulder in the favor of terrorist stomping dictators. Like me, he found it compelling, but he goes on to consider whether the administration is really as uncompromising as their rhetoric.

In short, circumstances matter. They may not matter morally, but they matter in terms of what you do about it. This fairly obvious point—which the Bush administration clearly believes, though it cannot say so—undermines the very concept of "terrorism," which is based on the premise that circumstances do not matter. The axiom is that terrorist tactics are uniquely evil and uniquely threatening to civilization and demand an uncompromising response.

I'm not sure the Bush administration uniformly believes this, and is avoiding saying so. It seems more like some people in the administration do believe it, and think letting Sharon stomp the Arafat and the Palestinians is the right thing to do since Arafat is "harboring terrorists". But others, in particular Colin Powell, are aware that if the US really wants to be a force for stability in the Middle East, it needs to show a more even hand with Palestine and Israel.

Link found via flit.

2002-05-10T11:33:00.000+03:00

The absurdity of partisanship

I've mentioned my dislike of political partisanship before. Lying In Ponds tracks the partisanship of newspaper pundits, and also mentions a few of my favorite blogs. I like the overall mission, and although I'm not really that interested in newspaper pundits, looking at their bias has merit since they do help to shape the political landscape. Found via Virginia Postrel.

Fox News was briefly available on cable here, and I would occasionally watch 5 minute snippets - my tolerance level was too low for much more than that. One of those snippets was a discussion of the NYC mayoral primaries. I was disgusted that one of the commentators was criticizing a losing Democrat for not supporting the party's nominee.

This pissed me off; democratic elections are not suppsed to serve political parties, they are supposed to serve the community. You should support the candidate who you believe will best support your community, their party should be irrelevant.

The American party system has created the idea that elections are nothing more than a tribal war between two parties. If you voted for Nader or Buchanon, you betrayed your party. This mindset serves the interests of both parties, of course, because it ensures their duopoly over our political system, ensuring a steady flow of money to help secure that monopoly. This is why they wouldn't let Ralph Nader into the debates.

I'm a fan of campaign finance reform, even if it is flawed and only shifts the way in which money distorts the democratic process. The last major bill put limits on individual campaign contributions, which caused a shift in power to the parties, since they weren't limited and so had a bigger impact on an individual candidate's campaign. The most recent reforms may break this.

The reform can be criticized in that groups will still be able to raise money and use them to promote candidates. The thing I like is that, if political parties are no longer the dominant source of financial support for a campaign, their influence over individual office holders should be weakened. So our elected representatives may have more incentive to vote for their constituents' interests, rather than their party's.

2002-05-09T16:47:00.000+03:00

Safire strikes again

When a writer reaches William Safire's level of stature, logic isn't required to be published in the New York Times. In his latest piece of drivel, he declares that there is a CIA conspiracy to discredit the story that Mohamed Atta, alleged leader of the September 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

According to Mr. Safire, the CIA is trying to discredit the story because they are "worried about exposure of the agency's inability to conduct covert operations". He doesn't explain this very well; maybe he means their inability to turn up proof of the meeting is embarrassing them, but that seems like circular reasoning on the part of our esteemed opionist. Especially since proving the meeting took place wouldn't require so much covert operations as, well, investigation.

I've read somewhere - I wish I could remember where so I could link it - that the FBI turned up evidence that showed Atta was in the US at the time of the supposed meeting. It was in a story about Atta meeting with his al-Qaeda contact in Spain.

Even if Atta did meet with an Iraqi agent, the appalling part of Mr. Safire's piece is this:

If the report proves accurate, a connection would exist between Al Qaeda's murder of 3,000 Americans and Iraq's Saddam. That would clearly be a casus belli, calling for our immediate military response, separate from the need to stop a demonstrated mass killer from acquiring nuclear and germ weapons.

So in William Safire's mind, all that is needed to go to war with another country is to find that "a connection exists" between that country's government and al-Qaeda. We're not talking about proving Saddam supported the 9/11 attacks in any way, or even knew anything about them, but that one of his guys met with Atta. What they talked about is irrelevant, having met with Atta is tantamount to having blown up the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon.

Maybe Atta asked for help, but didn't say what it was for. Or maybe it was for help with a different scheme, such as spreading Anthrax from a cropduster, something Atta's boys looked into. Maybe Saddam's boy said yes, or maybe he said no, or maybe he said I'd love to help, but I can't get my hands on the money/Anthrax/whatever you're asking for.

It doesn't matter to Safire, if someone working for the Iraqis met with Atta, that's license to go to war.

Look, we don't like the Iraqis, they don't like us. If we need an excuse to unleash the daisy-cutters, we need one with at least a shred of logic behind it. If we don't need an excuse with logic, than why do we need any excuse, let's just fire away.

2002-05-09T16:09:00.000+03:00

Arafat arrests Hamas members

The PA has apparently arrested 16 members of Hamas, the group which claimed responsibility for the most recent suicide bombing in Israel. No word on whether the IDF is going to call off its imminent strike into Gaza, but since the AP says none of those arrested are big players in Hamas, they'll probably still go in. Sharon is unlikely to ever acknowledge that something Arafat does doesn't deserve an ass-kicking.

I still think Arafat needs to shut down Hamas. It's easy to say this arrest is a step in the right direction, but we don't know enough about the internal politics to be sure: for all we know, the 16 were hand-picked by Hamas as sacrificial lambs. Hopefully we'll learn more about whether they had anything to do with the attack.

2002-05-09T15:26:00.000+03:00

Pakistan and the War On Terror

Longtime Istanblog regular Leon T. Hadar has a new piece published at the Cato Institute, Pakistan in America’s War against Terrorism: Strategic Ally or Unreliable Client?. Mr. Hadar gives a very detailed analysis of the history of America's relationship with Pakistan, and suggests that General Musharraf's support of the War On Terror shouldn't seduce us into thinking they are a reliable ally.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the United States' support of Pakistan allowed it to participate in building the "jihad-international network" of which the Taliban and al-Qaeda were part, and which is still a factor in mainstream Pakistani politics. Pakistan dealt with Taliban Afghanistan as a client state and encouraged the training of anti-Indian militants in Afghani camps.

"In the 1980s, Pakistan got a blank check from the U.S. to combat the Russians, and spent much of the check in building up the Taliban," argues journalist Christopher Hitchens. "Now it is getting another check and brand-new interest-free mortgage in order to pretend that the Taliban is its enemy. It doesn’t get any better than this."

General Musharraf was a major player in the "military-mosque nexus", as Mr. Hadar calls it, and it seems unlikely that he has completely severed his ties with fundamentalist leaders. Although Pakistan is sometimes compared with Turkey, whose secular government is beholden to its powerful military, Hadar's paper points out a significant difference: while Turkey's military establishment is vehemently anti-Islamist, Pakistan's military is strongly bound to Islamist factions.

My nightmare scenarios for WWIII in the Middle East generally center around the overthrow of the House of Saud and their replacement by the powerful Wahhabist fundamentalists. I imagined that Pakistan might follow in its footsteps, placing nuclear weapons into the hand of an Islamist alliance. Now I wonder whether a coup would even be necessary. Musharraf flipped pro-Western when it was clear that it was his only choice. If it became clear that returning to the jihad was his only way of maintaining his regime, he probably would do so if he could get away with it.

So, my revised WWIII scenario is: Saudi coup and Talibanization, Pakistani defection from the American alliance, probably in concert with Iraq, later followed by Iran. America and NATO combined with India would outgun them, but in spite of how easy it was to liberate Kuwait and enable the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban, this wouldn't be a walk in the park.

2002-05-09T14:00:00.000+03:00

Defenders of Pim Fortuyn

I was sorry to hear that Pim Fortuyn was assassinated, not because I agree with his anti-immigration policies, but because, well, he was a human being, and didn't deserve to die. And the silencing of a leading voice in the debate on immigration weakens the entire debate.

I didn't follow Mr. Fortuyn very closely, but he has been getting a lot of attention, and defense, since his assassination. He doesn't seem to have been in the rabid, hate-mongering faction of anti-immigrationists, and many are now pointing this out. Typical of these is Mickey Kaus.

Mr. Fortuyn's position was apparently that allowing too many immigrants to come into the Netherlands from a different cultural background will alter Dutch culture, in particular that Muslim immigrants will erode the Dutch tolerance for gays, not to mention feminism and such.

Dave Kopel wrote an interesting piece on this before the assassination:

In other words, the gay Dutch sociology professor offered complaints about Islam which are quite similar to complaints that some gay American sociology professors (and other American gays) offer about Christianity: anti-gay, sexist, morally imperialist, and premised on the belief that one religion is superior to all others. Now, when American gay activists make such remarks, the AP doesn't work itself into a lather and claim that the remarks reveal "demons" in the American character, because a lot of Americans agree with the criticism of religion.

Mr. Kopel is clearly uncomfortable with the cultural relativism that says that what's evil in the religion which threatens our own society isn't so bad when it comes from misunderstood foreigners. This is the mentality which allows liberals to praise John Walker Lindh for fighting for his beliefs, when his beliefs - that a government which institutionalizes misogny and oppression is the ideal - are in direct opposition to liberal ideals.

The thing that makes Mr. Fortuyn's arguments hard to swallow is that they were used to justify the blanket exclusion of a particular cultural group. As Mr. Kopel's piece points out, the traits which made Fortuyn fear Muslims are traits of Christianity. Of course the Dutch politician was more concerned with Muslims than, say, Southern Baptists, is no doubt due to the greater number of Muslims immigrating to Holland than rednecks.

While Mr. Fortuyn's motivations were understandable and defensible, it is his chosen solution that is objectionable. It's difficult to ensure that immigrants which ensure they share or will adopt core cultural values. Excluding immigration based on country of origin could have some success, but is a clumsy approach which ignores the core problem. Rather than addressing the issue of integration, it avoids it.

If filtering immigrants based on their likelihood of integration is desired, a better solution would apply criteria equally to all immigrants, regardless of their origin. Another suggestion would be finding ways to integrate immigrants into the national culture once they're there - this would have the bonus of dealing with the significant immigrant population already in Holland.

2002-05-08T13:50:00.000+03:00

Early elections in Turkey?

Turkey's Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit was in the hospital over the weekend due to intestinal problems, so speculation is rife that he won't finish out his term. The guy is 80 years old, and is showing his age, so it could happen that he won't serve all the way to 2003.

So why should War fans care? If a new election is called, the party doing the best in polls at the moment is the Justice and Development Party (AKP), who are Islamists.

If Ecevit does step down elections aren't a certainty. His party is one of three which runs the country in a coalition government, and the leaders of the other two are itching to grab his chair, although they are publicly poo-pooing such talk at the moment. The three parties must agree on a replacement to maintain their coalition. If they can't, maybe a different coalition of parties can be formed which will have a majority of the seats in Parliament. But a new coalition would still have squabbles over who would get the top job. If no majority coalition can be made, they'll have to call a new election.

An election would totally change the face of the Turkish parliament. According to polls, not one of the three parties in the current coalition would even get enough votes to qualify for seats. The economy has taken some very bad hits during their tenure, and the parties have spent a fair amount of time pointing out one anothers' corruption, so most people have had more than enough of them.

The Islamist AKP party is polling very well, something like 24% the last I checked. It could be hard for a new Parliament to form a governing coalition without including them.

The Islamists got into a coalition several years ago, in a previous incarnation (the secularist government likes to declare their parties illegal every few years, forcing them to reform under new names), although they didn't get the Prime Minister position. After a few months the military got antsy, and pushed "behind the scenes" for the coalition to be dissolved, and new elections were called.

No doubt the same thing will happen again if the AKP gets into government, but this leaves the question of how a stable government will be formed when the voting public has gotten sick of the available secular parties.

2002-05-08T13:21:00.000+03:00

Democracy and the War on Terror

There is always a tension for democratic nations engaged in war, an inherent tradeoff between human rights and democratic expression against achieving military goals. The War on Terror has even more of this tension than others, because the definition of the enemy is based more on their tactics than their ideology or goals. Any group which uses violence against civilians to achieve its goals, no matter what those goals are, automatically falls into the Evil camp.

Thomas L. Friedman is in Indonesia, and is reporting on the worries of people there about the US favoring authoritarian allies over democratic ones. One source says:

Indonesia, instead of being seen as a weak democracy that needs support, gets looked at as a weak country that protects terrorists, and Malaysia is seen as superior because it arrests more terrorists than we do.

If you take a look at our allies, Pakistan is a good guy because they are cracking down on Islamist extremists, and let us chase al-Qaeda inside their borders. Of course, Pakistan is ruled by a dictator who has just delayed democratic elections. The Europeans are wobbly because they ask too many questions about human rights and such. Saudi Arabia is a troublesome ally not because they lack even a shred of democracy, but because they aren't turning over evidence against the 9/11 perpetrators.

The tensions between successful tactics and human rights are worse in this war because our enemies are more like criminal organizations than armies. Civil rights are an impediment to law enforcement, so countries which don't respect those rights can be much more effective in fighting crime.

So if we want to be effective in fighting terrorists, we need allies who disregard human rights in favor of helping our cause, and don't have much time for those who allow civil rights to impede the process. It's not really so clear cut, Germany, Spain, and other countries have been instrumental in uncovering the trail of al-Qaeda. But they've also been hesitant to turn over suspects to the US, fearing that civil rights are being cirucmvented by American authorites (cf. Guantanamo).

In developing countries, where democracy and human rights are shaky concepts and IMF money is desperately needed, we should be careful. We need to continually rethink and reevaluate what it is we're fighting against, and what we're fighting for.

2002-05-08T12:22:00.000+03:00

The Turkish Model

John W. Brewer's email to Unqualified Offerings, mentioned below in the post about Istanbul/Constantinople, included a bit I'd like to expound on.

I am skeptical of the uncritical admiration of Ataturkism among many bloggers, since it incorporated many bad elements of bad Western thought (particularly a very French notion that modernity means a dirigiste "scientific" approach to the economy and that modernity means secularism expressed in the form of overt hostility to and suppression of traditional religious institutions), but the fact may remain that however imperfect the Ataturkist model is for moving an Islamic people toward a reasonable economy and political order there does not yet appear to be a less imperfect alternative that has been tried and worked.

For those not in the know, Ataturk founded the modern Turkish Republic on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, and made some truly astonishing changes to Turkish society. He remodelled the alphabet, education system, economy, political system, and the role of religion in the state. This was after he saved Turkey from being further carved up between the WWI allies than it already was. To the Turks he is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt all rolled into one man.

For all the good he did for this country, there have been some unfortunate after-effects. Part of these come from the times - when Ataturk was figuring out how to build a nation, the ideas in vogue in Europe, which he looked to as a model, and also in the US, were nationalism and centrally managed economies. Think Stalin, Mussolini, and FDR, and remember that Ataturk died before WWII, so in his time the first two, and Hitler, were at the time widely regarded as admirable for their achievements in modernizing their nations. Nationalism had not yet led to the atrocious acts of genocide which discredited it as an ideology.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk died before World War II, and Turkey wisely sat out the war. Not being in the war, Turkey didn't get the full blast of nationalism and post-war rejection of ethnic politics that Western Europe did. This is a gap between Turkey and the EU which neither side really recognizes, but has a lot to do with the difficulty in addressing the possibility of Turkey joining the EU.

The cult of personality built up around Ataturk and his achievement has done a lot to freeze Turkey's development in the 1930's. "Kemalism" is a political ideology in Turkey which views the state of the nation at the time of his death as the ideal to be adhered to. Ataturk himself was in favor of progress and modernization, and readily looked to the West for ideas. Kemalists, ironically, are the opposite, conservatives fighting against change.

The centralized economy was in large part dismantled in the late 1980's, although the bureaucracy is still huge and politically entrenched. Ethnic nationalism is still a core value of the nation, causing the fear that acknowledging that Kurds are neither ethnically nor culturally Turkish is to encourage separatism, and making racism pretty common.

Is Turkey a model for other nations? It's certainly a model to look at, if not to imitate. Ataturk achieved dramatic change, turning an Islamist nation into a secular republic. But it's a nation which is in many ways mired in the ideologies of the time he changed it: progress has been slow and painful.

It's also crucial to note that Turkey was not secularized by Western intervention. In fact, Turkey was occupied by the British and others, and it was only by throwing the foreigners out that Ataturk was able to remold the country. The changes were not imposed from without, but from within.

If the US overthrows Saddam Hussein, it can try to impose a democratic, Westernized government on it. But models such as Turkey or Germany need to be appied very very carefully: circumstances are always different, assuming that a formula that worked in once set of circumstances will work in another is almost certainly doomed to fail. Ataturk's revolution worked in large part because he was a hero to his people for driving out the imperialist foreigners. It's not clear how imperialist foreigners can duplicate his work, even just over the border.

2002-05-08T11:50:00.000+03:00

Istanbul was Constantinople

Jim Henley posted some musings on the "They Might Be Giants" version of "Istanbul not Constantinople", and UO reader John W. Brewer has responded with a chunk of history. It's a pretty good summary, his basic point was that this city was called Constantinople by the Ottomans, only being renamed after the Republic was established by Ataturk. I would add that the city was called Istanbul on "the street", that is, everday Turks called it that from way back.

I hadn't known that the Ottomans officially called the city Constantinople until recently. I always attributed use of the name in recent times as implying a sentiment that the Turks really don't belong here, having conquered the city.

Of course, to imply that the Turks should turn the city back over to the Greeks, or the Italians, or whoever, is to suggest that New York should be given back to the Dutch who built it, before being returned to the Indians. Even if the legendary sale of Manhatten Island for $24 worth of beads is true, the English acquired it from the Dutch by war. And if you think about it, the United States likewise acquired it from the English by war. And all of these events happend centuries after Fatih Mehmet rode into Constantinople, almost 50 years before Columbus discovered Hispanola.

So it really is nobody's business but the Turks. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to reading the New Amsterdam Times.

2002-05-08T11:38:00.000+03:00

It isn't going to stop

We all knew it would happen, for 3 weeks there haven't been any terrorist attacks in Israel. Presumably the Palestinian militant types had plenty to do fighting Israelis on their own turf, so now that the IDF is wrapping things up they've got the breathing space to go back to their old tricks.

My first reaction is frustration at the realization that the attacks simply aren't going to stop. Even if a peace deal is signed, the Israeli settlements all rolled back, and an independent Palestinian state created and recognized internationally, the attacks will continue.

Hamas, the philanthropic organization which has claimed responsibility for this attack, doesn't want peace with Israel, they want Israel gone. But it goes beyond ideology, for those in charge of Hamas, violence is their only schtick. If Palestine becomes a normal, peaceful modern nation, these guys have no role in society, other than mafia chiefs. They have no place in a country run by bankers and lawyers, so they have no real interest in seeing their homeland become one. (I'm very very far from being a fan of bankers and lawyers, but I prefer them to gangsters).

Of course Sharon, who is no more interested in seeing a Palestinian state alongside Israel than Hamas, is taking this opportunity to declare that the war is back on. No peace now! On the one hand you can see his point - Arafat is unlikely to do anything more than "condemn" the terrorists (and probably not in Arabic), so if the Israelis want to do something about the terrorists, it's hard to see anything they can do other than roll the tanks back in.

But Sharon is himself disengenous. It's true Arafat won't go after Hamas, even though they have publicly admitted to being responsible for the attack. But it's also true that even if he were so inclined, the IDF has destroyed his ability to do anything against Hamas anyway, having decimated his police force.

Arafat should use the political capital he has earned in the past few weeks against Hamas. He should declare them to be working against the best interests of the Palestinian people, and gather together loyalists to punish the Hamas leaders. This would be a challenging task, since many, if not most Palestinians would decide he was being a stooge for the Israelis. Even a leader with courage and ability, two things Arafat doesn't have, would face the serious possibility of failing. But he could do it in concert with peaceful demonstrations against the Israeli forces still in Palestine, to prove that he was still fighting the Israelis. Combined with international pressure on Israel, that could surely be brought to bear if he were to take this path, it could be very successful. Arafat should do this because it's the only way he can win. He won't, because the only way he knows to fight is with violence. Since he's badly outgunned, and out-maneuvered, he will lose.

Two other points: many people, especially in blogville, will most likely talk about how this attack comes after the Israelis have withdrawn. They haven't withdrawn, their forces are still encircling the major Palestinian towns. They've been expecting this to happen, and they have maintained their siege so they can quickly go back in and do some more ass-kicking.

The other point: the IDF has done a hell of a lot of damage to "terrorist infrastructure" in the past few weeks, the justification being that it would stop the terrorist attacks. It doesn't look like it has worked. They may have bulldozed bomb factories, but I can't imagine they have eliminated eery bit of explosive material from Palestine. And they most certainly haven't reduced the number of Palestinians pissed off enough at Israel to go blow up some teenagers.

Maybe smashing some more houses and killing a few more resistors will end the terrorism. Doesn't seem likely.

2002-05-07T15:06:00.000+03:00

Correction on the cheering of WTC attacks

Below I posted about a meeting of the AKP cheering video of the WTC attacks, and Osama bin Laden. Well, I screwed up. I finally found an account of the story in English, and it turns out it wasn't the AKP, but the SP. Big difference.

No, really, it is a big difference. The AKP is a very popular party with a real chance of getting a big role in national government, while the SP is a fringe group. Both parties split off from the Islamist Welfare Party when it was banned last year, but while the AKP publically embraced democracy, reform, and progress, those who couldn't bear parting with conservative ideals formed the SP (Virtue Party).

So it is a relief to me that I was mistaken in thinking the popular AKP had so blatantly thrown off their mask and revealed themselves to be frothing monsters. Of course many Turks would say the AKP, being an Islamist party, is inherently evil and plotting to overthrow the Republic. The military establishment which has de facto veto power over anything that happens in the Turkish political scene is composed of people who feel this way, which ensures the AKP, even if they are wonderful folks, are unlikely to ever get a real shot at proving their intentions either way.

SP leaders have said the meeting of youths was not about supporting terrorism, that statements were made to the meeting denouncing terrorism, and that many attendees jeered the video rather than cheering it. It's hard to judge from the news coverage I've seen: Turkish news organizations cut their material for maximum impact, so it's hard to say that they didn't conjoin the applause and shots of an enthusiastic audience with the footage of terrorism.

But. Why were they showing large screen projections of the WTC attack and Osama bin Laden in the first place? It's clear that somebody in a position to plan the program for this youth conference thought it would be a swell thing to show, and the protests of party leaders don't really make a strong case that it was to show what a bad thing it was for Islam.

Again, my apologies on inaccurate reporting on the AKP. I hope my original story doesn't get spread around without context: I don't want to propagate the impression that Turkey is on the verge of fundamentalist revolution.

2002-05-07T14:26:00.000+03:00

Sharon on rebuilding the PA

Ariel Sharon is saying he doesn't want to deal with Yassar Arafat, and proposing that the Palestinian Authority be restructured. My reaction to the first story was that Sharon is looking to use the excuse of not wanting to deal with Arafat as a way to stave off the peace process.

This view was fueled by this quote from an "Israeli official":

"Everyone knows we're not going to start drawing lines on a border for permanent status and dividing Jerusalem," an Israeli official said today. "That's just a nonstarter today."

Drawing borders, which implies stopping settlement across them, and probably even dismantling them, is a "nonstarter" for Israeli hawks, because they have no reason to give up territory. The worst that can happen is more terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, which will continue to boost the hawks domestically and internationally.

But the second article paints a more attractive picture, restructing the PA to be more, well, like a proper government. This is packaged to appeal to the West - how could anyone argue with rebuilding the PA using current nation-building buzzwords like "transparent" and "accountable"? But it's hard to imagine that Sharon, who vehemently opposed the Oslo accords, is now going to happily help build a strong, independent Palestinian state, not to mention stop and even undo Israeli expansion onto Israeli land.

A couple of sources have suggested the peace conference will happen here in Turkey, probably Ankara.

2002-05-07T13:44:00.000+03:00

Who is Leon Hadar?

Unfortunately, I don't have a blog (although I'm considering setting up one). But you can get access to some of my writings on The Official Cato Institute Homepage, with which I'm affiliated as a research fellow in foreign policy studies and which published my book, "Quagmire: America in the Middle East" (my new policy paper on U.S--Pakistan relationship will be posted there this week on the Cato web site). And I'm also the Washington correspondent for Singapore Business Times Online (my commentary contrasting the approaches towards China and Saudi Arabia of that of Bush I with that of Bush II was posted on the paper's web site on Tuesday).

2002-05-07T12:04:00.000+03:00

Remember the Canadian friendly fire incident?

Canadian military guy Bruce R. at Flit hasn't forgotten it, although his blog the only place I'm still reading about it. He's convinced it was a matter of recklessness on the part of the American pilot. It's certainly possible, although I'm not as certain as Mr. R is - he's managing to interpret every new bit of information as confirming his thesis. Of course it's entirely possible he's right, American pilots (and sub captains) are not universally wise and careful. I don't know when/how/if tapes of the pilot's communications, and information about his debriefing, will be made public, but I should hope they will be, if only so Bruce can rest peacefully, either vindicated or satisfied.

2002-05-06T17:57:00.000+03:00

Is Turkey soft on Chechen terror?

Russia says it is. Turkey and Russia have never been really tight pals, maybe because Russia has always hankered after Istanbul. Turkey is a member of NATO largely because the Western countries wanted to make sure the Bosphorous Strait didn't fall into Soviet hands. So you can understand why the Turks might not be all that bothered if some of their citizens fight against the Russias in Chechnia.

Russia expressed similar anger in 1996 when Chechen sympathisers hijacked the Russian passenger ship Avrasya as it was leaving the Turkish Black Sea post of Samsun.

The gunmen were later charged in Turkey under common crime laws and not under the tough laws against terrorism used against Kurdish separatist terrorists. The gunmen were subsequently released under a conditional amnesty law and went on to raid the five star Swiss Hotel in Istanbul in April 2001.

This story comes from Turkish News, which seems well written and has a decent content management system.

2002-05-06T17:09:00.000+03:00

Whoo-hoo, My First Redesign! ™

If people are going to read this thing, I ought to take a little time to make it look purty. Out goes the bland default template from Blogger, in comes slick CSS, and the obligatory blogrolling on the left.

Next: get archiving to work, since my rambling is making the page unwieldy.

Update: Archiving was a piece of piss. Blogger rocks.

2002-05-06T12:44:00.000+03:00

Leon Hadar emails

Leon Hadar responds by email to my comments on his ideas about the Jordanian solution in Unqualified Offerings. Does Mr. Hadar have his own blog? If so, I want the URL, if not, he should.

Re: your comments on the "Jordanian option." There is no doubt that a Jordanian move to control the West Bank (and Gaza, which could provide Jordan with a Mediterranean port), will create many, many risks. But, again, I'm proposing it as an interim solution (after five years or so, the residents of those area will decide whether they want full independence or a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation). And I assume that the Palestinians would prefer to see Jordan returning to the area (they had occupied it between 1948 and 1967) over continuing Israeli rule; that the Jordanians have
a very strong and effective security and military forces; that during those five years, there would be a lot of foreign investment in Jordan, which will the well-educated Palestinians on both sides of the Jordan to prosper and
integrate into the global economy. Finally, as noted, following the expected ousting of Saddam, Jordan would end up being "sandwiched" between two friendly, pro-western states (Israel and Iraq).

Of course, American backing is going to be crucial for occupation of Palestine by anybody, and so far our government doesn't seem inclined to push for something so out of line with what Ariel Sharon wants, which is unimpeded accesses for the IDF.

2002-05-06T12:31:00.000+03:00

Electrolite Blog
Patrick Nielson Hayden has put a link to Istanblog on his blog, Electrolyte under "blogs I read". Thanks Patrick!

He describes himself as a liberal, but his views don't seem to fall into the close-minded "Open Minded" Progressive camp, since he seems to like progress and be open minded. Plus he seems to read a lot of the same stuff I do (SF, Patrick O'Brian).

He's been blogging a lot about Le Pen and media corporations vs. media technology, among other stuff. And don't miss the quotes on the right-hand side!

2002-05-06T11:56:00.000+03:00

Just in time for the Summer tourist season
So another Chechen asshole with a gun has made a scene in an Istanbul hotel. (Actually, he was a Turk who fought in Chechnya). I used to walk in front of the Marmara Hotel almost every day. They did the same thing at the Swissotel last spring, a month after hijacking a Russian plane from Istanbul. Reports are that all he wanted was to make a statement to the media, and he surrendered readily when the cops showed up. I'm not sure why they keep doing it: it doesn't seem to raise much awareness or sympathy, the public reaction is not generally sympathetic.

I recall the public displeasure over the hijacking last fall: the Saudis killed two passengers in addition to the hijackers, and declared their rescue a success.

Thanks to homegrown terrorism, metal detectors are a part of everday life in Istanbul. Going to the mall? Be sure to take out your phone and keys as you pass through the metal detector. The Marmara Hotel has a metal detector, too, why didn't they catch this guy coming in? I guess they just got sloppy. I bet they, and other big hotels in the area, are going to be a bit more paranoid in the next few months.

Irrelevant note: I always saw the same dog lying next to the entrance to the Marmara hotel. It's a typical Istanbul dog, I don't know what breed they are (if any), but they all look like a barrel with stubby legs, pointy snout, and tail sticking out, and they rarely move from their favorite spot. Watching on the news I saw the same dog, actually standing up, amiably watching the uzi-toting cops, and I had to laugh.

2002-05-06T11:27:00.000+03:00

Was Cheney Set Up?
An interesting little snippet from Joshua Marshall on possible machinations inside the State Department. I wish he'd gone into a little more on what the motivations might have been. Mr. Marshall comes up with interesting tidbits from inside the beltway: I may live in the Middle East, but when I meet with diplomatic officials they rarely share inside gossip, although they've been quite helpful in replacing my passport.

2002-05-06T10:47:00.000+03:00

Turkish Islamists for Hate

Update: I was wrong, it wasn't the AKP.

I haven't found the story in the TDN, but yesterday I saw a news report showing an Ankara conference of the AKP, the new Islamist party. Supposedly this party has shed its extremist roots, its leader has disowned his nearly decades-old comments praising the Taliban, and is in favor of progressive, democratic involvement in the government. They are currently the highest-polling party in Turkey, not strong enough to get an outright majority in Parliament if an election were called, but strong enough that a coalition would probably have to include them.

The conference revealed that the party hasn't exactly shed its admiration for hatred and death. They showed the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on a big screen, followed by Osama bin Laden. The people were cheering and applauding. I felt sick.

My friends tell me not to worry about it, there are stupid people out there, but most people don't agree with them. From what I've seen, this is true. If the core message of the party, repeated at every rally, press conference, etc. was that terrorism rocks, they would be a fringe faction. This is the case with the Saadat party, which like AKP, was founded from the remnants of the outlawed Virtue Party last year. The Saadat party was composed of those Islamist politicians who wanted a more conservative public agenda.

My friends also assure me that the AKP leaders will no doubt apologize for the disgusting display this week, in order to avoid losing public support and attracting the hammer of the political establishment, which loathes the Islamists and looks for any excuse to throw them in jail and bar them from politics.

But that's exactly what worried me. The AKP presents a very slick front to the country. Their new logo is all over Istanbul, huge banners which, although composed of the same white crescent and stars on red background found on the flag of the Turkish Republic, give an impression of modernity, of dynamic progressivism. Their record in city government in cities like Istanbul and Ankara is good, they have apparently governed more cleanly and honestly than the corruption-riddled mainstream political parties. The only evidence of conservatism they have betrayed is not selling alcoholic drinks in city-owned restaraunts.

But the Ankara conference shows that, whatever the face the party puts on for the public, at heart they admire the darkness and evil of terrorism and intolerance. Say what you will about the dark and evil things the US government has done, cheering the deaths of thousands of people is not one of them.

I don't agree with the methods the Turkish security establishment uses: I believe that repressing free speech, eliminating accountability, and denying human rights make a nation weak, not strong. The Islamist politicians have had their parties outlawed numerous times, their leaders jailed and banned from politics. The fact that they're still here, and stronger than ever, proves the worthlessness of this strategy.

But the display in Ankara this weekend underlines that the limited, broken democracy that exists in Turkey can't be taken for granted. I read that only 3% of the population think that the Shariat is a good idea, but a significantly larger percentage would vote for an Islamist party which claims to support democracy as well as good, moral government. American politicians win elections appealing to very similar sentiments. And once in power, if they thought they could get away with it, would the Islamists really maintain a democratic government? Would they refrain from imposing regressive moral codes by law? Would people violently object if change was made slowly and incrementally? When the regression went far enough that the majority of people had enough, would they still be able to vote the government out, or would they have only violent uprising as a recourse?

As it stands, if the AKP gets into power, the military won't stand for it. One of their predecessor parties became the junior party in a coalition in the late 90's, and was shortly after tossed out and banned from politics. They're stronger now politically.

How the military intervention will happen isn't certain. They may wait for an excuse to pitch the Islamists out. They will most likely use behind the scenes pressure, as they did last time, rather than an overt coup. The voting public will probably not get its nose bent too far by an intervention: they understand why the military feels the way it does, and they trust the military. It helps that the generals have always kept out of the day to day governance, even when they had a coup they turn the reigns over to civilians as soon as possible. This has been the key to maintaining their credibility: the civilian politicians are the ones who govern, so they're the ones who take the blame for screwing things up: the military only gets involved to right the cart when it turns over, so they're always the heros.

But the military big brother weakens the nation. It prevents Turkey from becoming truly democratic, and it prevents the politicians from being truly accountable: if the politicians do anything too harmful to the nation, the military puts a stop to it. The military doesn't put a stop to corruption and atrociously bad governance, so it must be OK. They know daddy's limits, anything that doesn't make him say "No!" is OK.

So the country needs to find a democratic way to deal with the threat of anti-democratic political parties. I wish I could think of a solution, but the fact is that democracies are always vulnerable, authoritarians can always find or create circumstances to persuade people to give them just a little more power. Currently the military serves as the check against this problem in Turkey. But this dependence holds Turkey back from being a freer, more prosperous nation.

Update: I was wrong, it wasn't the AKP.

2002-05-06T10:18:00.000+03:00

Whither the Quartet
I raved about Colin Powell's "Quartet" on Friday, and their plans for resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. But as I noted at the end, it all hinges on the cooperation of Arafat, and either the cooperation of Sharon or the muscular support of the US. As Reuters reports, nobody has even mentioned the plan to Arafat, and Sharon is not excited about going to a peace conference with Arafat. So it's probably a non-starter. I will now slink back into dark pessimism.

2002-05-03T14:58:00.000+03:00

Turkish news in English
One of my biggest frustrations is the lack of quality news about Turkish current events. My Turkish is minimal, so the main Turkish papers are out: and at any rate, 80% of the media here is owned by 2 or 3 whomping big companies, so the range of opion is somewhat limited.

The Turkish Daily News is an English language daily owned by one of these groups, but its quality is not great. The content is fair, somewhat myopic, but its biases are obvious enough to sidestep while reading. The painfully obvious lack of native English speakers on staff is, well, painful, but not crippling. It's fairly easy to parse what the writers mean to say. My biggest gripe is the abysmal web site: aside from being ugly, its navigation is terrible. The URLs of stories change after the day they're first posted, and I've had problems finding them again later. This makes it hard to blog the TDN - I blogged a few stories last week, but most of the links now point to current stories rather than the ones I was talking about.

I vastly prefer stories written by Western journalists about Turkey. The Economist has good stuff now and again, but not enough to fill my need.

Swiss journalist Nicole Pope cowrote an excellent book about Modern Turkey, and apparently had a news site called Turkey Update at one point. But the latest news item is dated June 11, 2001, with an announcement that the site will "return in September". Granted a lot went on last September, but it's been a while - I wonder Ms. Pope is up to.

Yahoo has a page with a list of Turkey-related stories from the wires.

Moreover has a similar summary, but the stories seem to be from TDN, and they seem to have the same problem with moving links that I do.

The Turkish embassy in Washington has a news page, but it's even crustier than Turkey Update.

I'm doing some more Googling, here are some things which look worthy of a deeper browse:

"MEIonline.com is the electronic version of Middle East International magazine, a respected source for news, analysis, and commentary on the Middle East since 1971."

Özgürlük (Freedom) provides "Uncensored News About the Democratic Struggle in Turkey".

2002-05-03T12:12:00.000+03:00

Colin Powell and "The Quartet" Press Conference
I justed happened to catch this press conference last night. Most of the coverage I've seen so far has headlined it as an announcement that there will be yet another peace conference this summer, but it seems to me that what really happened was that the US, EU, Russia and UN have agreed to take responsibility for rebuilding the Palestinian Authority.

The foreign ministers of these groups (including Kofi Annan for the UN) met in Washington, and is calling itself the "Quartet". Colin Powell was host to the meeting, and did most of the talking for the group. They have drafted up a three-part strategy for settling things down in Palestine.

The first part is security; "security from terror and violence for Israelis and Palestinians. We'll be encouraging Chairman Arafat to rebuild his security apparatus. We'll ask for maximum efforts from the Palestinian Authority to restore calm." It sounds like the Quartet will oversee this, making sure the PA does what it needs to, but they didn't make any noises suggesting peacekeeping forces would be involved. He did mention George Tenet would be involved though.

The second part of our strategy is to address the urgent humanitarian needs and make sure that we get about the task of rebuilding strong, accountable, democratic and market-oriented institutions for Palestinians as the basis for a vibrant Palestinian state. And I'm encouraged by what I've heard from my colleagues here today about their willingness to join in this effort of economic reconstruction and humanitarian relief.

This sounds like money, and hopefully administrative assistance to ensure it doesn't get sucked up by the corrupt "leaders" who have been running the PA in the past.

Note this: "We welcome the commitment of the international community at Oslo last week, on April 25th, to provide over $1 billion in assistance. The United States has over $300 million dedicated to aid the Palestinian people."

Sidenote: I wonder how much Saudi Arabia is kicking in? Any chance that Saddam Hussein will rebudget the money for suicide bombers' families towards the construction of a stable, strong Palestinian state? That was supposed to be funny, but just makes me sad. James Lileks had a rabid rant on this topic yesterday. He completely ignores anything bad the Israelis might have done, as usual, but the stats he gives about Arab contributions to Palestine are sad.

Mr. Powell continues, "And third, we committed ourselves to the promotion of serious and accelerated negotiations toward a settlement." This is the meeting to be held early this summer.

So the strategy that was outlined is really the only sane way out of the mess, but I don't know what kind of cooperation they will get from Arafat and the PA. It sounds like the Quartet has committed themselves to overseeing the process, but they didn't mentioned whether Arafat has signed on. Indeed, Powell repeatedly mentioned that he "hopes" Arafat will wise up and do the right thing.

No longer contained in the Muqata'a, I trust that [Chairman Arafat] will now move in a new direction, a new direction that will allow his leadership position to be used to denounce terrorism, denounce violence, and to say to the Palestinian people and to the organizations within the Palestinian movement that this is the time to find a peaceful way forward.

So far Arafat hasn't done this. He's emerged his captivity hopping mad, raging against the Israelis "terrorists" and "Nazis". And he's been doing this in English. Normally he uses English to say the things the West wants to hear, reserving his harsher stuff for Arabic. Maybe he'll cool off, no doubt he's built up a head of steam bottled up in his little building.

Hopefully Powell and the Quartet have got leverage over Arafat to ensure his cooperation. If he doesn't cooperate, he's got nothing but ruins and pissed off fanatics, which might be enough for him. If he does cooperate, he'll get a rebuilt state, albeit one which has to crack down on the extremists, and he'll end up with a legacy as the father of his nation. The Palestinian people will be the big winners, of course.

I also wonder about Israeli cooperation. Ariel Sharon has dedicated his career to settling the Palestinian lands. He opposed the Oslo Accords which created the PA, and has spent the past few months tearing it down after naming it a terrorist organization. It's hard to imagine that he'll embrace rebuilding it, especially with the significant muscle of the Quartet backing it up, even if it did eliminate terror 100%. But if the PA demonstrably commits itself to the Quartet Plan, he won't have ground to stand on. His own people, most of whom don't share their Prime Minister's vision of a greater Israel, would love the Quartet Plan to come to fruition.

Fingers crossed. I'm cautiously optimistic, fearful that Arafat will botch it up, and that Sharon will be poking him with a sharp stick to make sure he does.

2002-05-03T11:45:00.000+03:00

Anti-Semitic Red Cross?
I have been intrigued by the quotes of the International Red Cross president Cornelio Sommaruga comparing the idea of using the Star of David as the symbol for an Israeli chapter to using the Nazi cross. This has been widely portrayed as blatant anti-Semitism, and used to discredit his appointment by Kofi Annan to the Jenin investigation.

Flit's Bruce R., who often comes up with well-balanced counterpoints to accepted common wisdom of the warblog world, provides a wider context of the issue, and Mr. Sommaruga's statement. It appears that the objection isn't that the evil Zionists are the next thing to Hitler, but rather that symbols used by Red Cross chapters shouldn't be nationalist symbols, i.e. identified with a particular nation. My ungut feeling is that the Star of David is the symbol of an international religion as well as that of a nation, and so ought to have parity with the cross and the crescent (both of which are used on many national flags), but given that we're talking about a chapter specifically for Israel, and that I really don't know anything about how the Red Cross works, I won't be going to the barricades on this one.

I still think they oughta let them in to look at Jenin.

2002-05-03T11:08:00.000+03:00

Welcome to Unqualified Offerings Readers
And thanks to Jim Henley for the mention. This is my first evidence that the audience for this blog is larger than just myself. He must have gotten a click-through from a real live reader, because I'm not very diligent about testing my links. If people are really going to read this thing I should probably install a traffic tracker.

A note on my anonymity: I haven't put my name on here mainly because I like to critique (constructively, I hope) the government here, which can be a bit dodgy. I doubt I really have much to worry about on that score, being a US citizen has lots of benefits, as does having a miniscule readership. But I'm antsy anyway, as my fiancee's family doesn't have such protections, and there are many small ways for annoyed bureaucrats to inconvenience a foreign resident who can never possibly have every bureaucratic i and t dotted and crossed.

Oh, and I'm not sure who Mary McGrory is, I guess I need to do some research;)

2002-05-02T15:24:00.000+03:00

Safire on Privacy
Safire may be rabid on Arabs, but his pro-consumer privacy writings are redeeming. This week he talks about a practice whereby stores record shoppers (video and audio) for research purposes. He suggests that this information goes into a "dossier on you, available for a fee to advertisers, telemarketers or political opposition researchers."

I'm not sure how accurate his assumption is that the data is tagged to you personally. Although it's possible to tie video footage to those customers who use credit cards or customer loyalty cards, it's not simple, and I'm not sure that's what the marketers are really after. It's more likely that they're looking to sample the shopping behavior of customers in general, which means they wouldn't care who you are, much less sell the data tagged to your identity. But it's not impossible, and is very likely to happen in the future. Certainly the items that get dragged over the checkout scanner are tied to any identifying cards you hand the cashier, and quite likely sold on.

Safire lets President Bush have it for selling out his campaign promise to support "opt-in", whereby consumers must actually give permission for their medical information (for example) to be given out by hospitals and insurance companies to whomever they wish. Mr. Safire is shocked, shocked, that the President caved in to big buck lobbyists who feel opt-in is too "cumbersome".

Safire also lists presidential contenders who are anti-privacy, including Kerry and McCain, and calls for privacy activists to develop an index to track where politicans stand on privacy.

As long as our political system favors big business over the free market and individual, this kind of crap will only get worse.

2002-05-02T13:13:00.000+03:00

Arafat's Out
Arafat's loose, big deal. He's not a hell of a lot of help to his people. He's not a leader, he's an opportunist who follows the mob. Having 6 baddies turned over for the Brits and Yanks to watch doesn't help much either, it's a token gesture which does nothing to suggest that what's left of the PA will do anything to curb terrorism. Whether or not US support for axing the Jenin investigation was a quid-pro-quo, it's not a good thing, it just gives more ammo for Islamic extremist propaganda, while affirming Israel's exemption from international law.

So how about that Bush/Abdullah deal? The President will lean on Sharon, while the Prince leans on Arafat. I'm pessimistic (what else is new), since both leaders are held back from getting too tough by domestic support for their respective bad boy. In order to work, both leaders have to make a visibly sincere and effective effort - if either one holds back or doesn't get noticeable results, it won't work.

Plus, Sharon has shown no inclination to listen to Bush, nor has Arafat shown any inclination or ability to lead his people away from terror. A peaceful, independent Palestine will never come about with these two in charge.

Josh Marshall doesn't like Prince Abdullah's gain in international stature, he believes President Bush is Abdullah's bitch. I'm not sure I agree 100%. Given that Bush is politically unable (and temperamentally unable) to take a truly neutral role in the conflict, he needs someone with stature to counter-balance himself. And as much as I dislike most of Bush's foreign policy team (Powell aside), they are a very shrewd bunch, I don't think the President is dancing at the end of the Prince's strings.

Jim Henley has an email from Leon T. Hader of the Cato Institute, who makes a case for Jordanian intervention in the West Bank. Again, my knowledge of the history and political situation of Jordan vis Palestine is vague, so I look forward to reading rebuttals in the next few days. But the main point which made me think the Jordanians were not likely for the job was that its massive Palestinian population could destabilize Jordan.

Mr. Hader's argument suggests that intervening in the West Bank to facilitate the creation of a stable and independent state there would actually prevent that kind of destabilization. If the current war continues, it's likely to drive more Palestinians into Jordan, increasing the domestic problems there. Stabilizing the West Bank could make the King Abdallah a hero to the Palestinians.

The crucial things for an intervention from outside to work would be these:

The peacekeepers need the military and political muscle and the will to defend the Palestinians from Israeli incursion.

They need to be sincerely committed to protecting Israeli security, by enforcing the rule of law against terrorists.

They must actively work towards building the infrastructure of a peaceful, modern state, including solid legal, judicial, and educational systems, and democratic institutions.

The first point requires American backing, because the US is the ultimate political muscle in today's world.

The second is the tough part, without it US backing will never come because Israel will fight it tooth and nail (they will anyway, but if #2 is demonstrable, the US can make it stick). It's tough because the Palestinians won't like it, there are too many "leaders" who will spin strong law enforcement as making the peacekeepers the tools of Israel, out to wipe out the Palestinians. Arabs will have the best chance of being able to withstand this, if they have the will to do so.

The third part is in many ways the toughest of all, just because it's never easy to do this kind of thing right, but it's very easy to do it wrong (cf. colonialism). There's a reason President Bush cowers like a little girl when he hears the words "nation building", it's a damn sight harder to build a nation than to knock one down.

The Jordanians, backed up by American and Saudi political will, could have a good shot at the first two points. The third point would be hard for them, King Abdallah has enough of a challenge in modernizing his own country. Others would have to be involved. The UN hasn't acquitted itself very well in the area, by all accounts the UN-run Jenin refugee camp was a hotbed of terrorist activity (bomb factories and the like) before the Israelis plowed it under. Anything involving political will is by definition not a job for the UN. The Brits, who are normally much better at this kind of thing than Yanks, have already had their shot at running Palestine, and probably haven't left a warm afterimage.

Anyway, I'm moderately optimistic that the Jordanian option has possibilities, although I'm skeptical whether it could actually happen.

2002-04-29T14:33:00.000+03:00

I like William Safire's linguistic columns, but his political stuff is crap. Today's column is not as bad as usual, but it's still typically braindead. Mr. Safire uses an exercise called Walk Back the Cat to examine a rumor published before last week's meeting between President Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. The rumor was that the Prince would threaten withholding oil and expelling American military if President Bush didn't take a harder line on Ariel Sharon, but the Prince in fact said he had no intention of doing these things.

Mr. Safire concludes that the rumor, which is alleged by a reputable journalist to come from a source "close" to the Prince, signals a rupture within the Saudi government. Our columnist wonders:

Could it be that a struggle for power in Riyadh is being revealed? Last week's false "expectation" suggests that some royal sponsors of payoffs to terrorists worry most about losing control to bin Laden and rabble-rousers, while others near the throne worry most about losing U.S. military protection and markets if the kingdom pushes the U.S. too hard.

As a result of the Saudi disinformation campaign, we can no longer be so certain which faction is in charge in Riyadh.

Even assuming the quote came from within the government, why does Safire assume that dissention within a government means civil war? He suggests that we can't be certain which faction is in charge: does he think a faction represented by an anonymous source is as credible as the one represented by the Crown Prince? Maybe a coup will happen at some point, but an anonymous leak hardly indicates it's already underway. Does Mr. Safire wonder whether the American government is going to collapse, given that anonymous leaks are commonplace, and dissention within the government (see Colin Powell vs. Iraqi hawks) is well known?

I've sunk to some weird kind of low if I'm posting refutations against William Safire columns. Next I'll be refuting the claims made in spam mails.

2002-04-29T12:37:00.000+03:00

Who should keep the peace in Palestine?
It's interesting that most of the proposed solutions for the region involve somebody other than the Palestinians to administer their terroritory, or at least enforce security. Jordan, Turkey, the US, the US in cooperation with Russia and the EU, etc. Postrel is a bit naive in suggesting the Israelis do it (not to say it isn't the most likely outcome), but it's safe to say that the Palestinians are, at this point, the last people able to run themselves. This is due in large part to the recent efforts of the Israeli army, which have dismantled the PA. But it's also due to the poor job Arafat and his cronies have done of it, his lack of positive leadership, and the fact that there doesn't seem to be any credible, positive Palestinian leadership in sight.

So who should have the job? The Israeli government don't want anybody else involved, of course, but that's because they aren't interested in Palestine being put back on its feet. Considering that they're refusing to let a handful of people from the UN come and poke in the wreckage of Jenin, it's hard to imagine how difficult it would be to get peacekeepers into Palestine.

The US won't do it. Bush doesn't even want to involve Americans in helping Afghanistan, and he won't do anything against Sharon other than talk.

The UN can't do it. The US would veto it in the Security Council, flat out. See above.

Turkey wouldn't do it. They might take part in a UN effort as they are in Afghanistan, but they won't go against the wishes of the US, thanks to their addiction to IMF loans. Folks in the region wouldn't be very happy about it anyway, since there's no love lost between the Arabs and their former rulers turned secular cronies of the West. Plus Turkey is buddies with the Israeli government and military, so they wouldn't really be seen as impartial enough.

Jordan I don't know enough about. Being right next door and having a huge number of Palestinian semi-citizens makes them vulnerable.

The EU. My outside favorite. They haven't got the muscle for it: politically they're not unified enough, and militarily they haven't got the resources. Peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo already stretches them too thin. But they're in roughly the right place, and their public has sympathy for the Palestinians but wouldn't be likely to tolerate terrorists running around free.

Who else? It's hard to imagine China or Russia getting into it.

My crystal ball says Sharon will get what he wants, Israel will end up much larger, Palestinians will have a fate similar to native Americans in the US.

2002-04-29T12:25:00.000+03:00

The Wall
Lots of ferment in the blogosphere over Steven Postrel's critique of the wall strategy. I like Jim Henley's rebuttal, and don't really have anything to add.

Then he says the Palestinians "will be able to terrorize Israel," which is not exactly the same thing as saying that they will do this. But he seems sure that they will. That is, he is certain that nothing will, in Brink Lindsey's formulation "induce the Palestinians to get off the warpath."

Again, I think this claim has more faith than reason or evidence behind it. It requires that a lot of myths be true - that Israel "offered the Palestinians almost everything they said they wanted," that only the Palestinians flouted provisions in Oslo, that the occupation and settlements not be a big deal, that only a powerless fringe of Israeli society was ever reluctant to surrender "Judea and Samaria" in return for peace, that there has not been an important faction in Israeli politics working hard to derail Oslo since it was signed; in short, that there be nothing but bottomless Palestinian hatred behind the collapse of Oslo and the present war.

Here's a snippet of Mr. Postrel's alternative proposal to the wall, which is occupation and administration by Israel.

After a few years of this policy, civic opposition to the Israeli occupation will spontaneously develop along nonviolent lines. This opposition will garner great sympathy from the international community and from within the left-to-moderate-blocs in Israel. At that point, the Israeli government will be able to negotiate a land-for-peace deal with leaders whose interest will be in peace, with a people who have something to lose by choosing war.

The success of Mr. Postrel's plan rests on many assumptions, including the "spontaneous" development of nonviolent opposition. What makes him think opposition would be nonviolent? The other is that the Israeli ultra-nationalist movement would have no role in the administration of Palestine. These are the people who have been building Israeli settlements in Palestine illegally, with the complicity of their government. If their government decides to directly adminster the Palestinian terroritory, what do you think would happen to Palestinian land? Postrel believes the Israelis would be "protecting [Palestinian] property rights, removing the more obnoxious settlements and allowing the Palestinians to spread out, constructing needed infrastructure, etc."

Postrel's positions reeks of wearing blinders on one side of his head: he sees evil on the Palestinian side, but not on the Israeli side.

2002-04-26T17:56:00.000+03:00

Hooray for our so-called democracy. Totally disgusting, this is just another way that the two parties rig the electoral system to maintain their control over the government. Remember when the Soviet Union's claims to democracy were ridiculous because their elections only had one candidate on the ballot? Ours, for practical purposes, have two. Woohoo.

2002-04-26T17:41:00.000+03:00

Reversing Oslo
It seems likely that the Israeli war on Palestine will take a dent out of the terrorist movement, but it seems clear that the campaign is equally intended to cripple the Palestinian Authority. The Economist details some of the activities of the Israeli forces in the past few weeks:

In Ramallah, the temporary capital of the future Palestinian state, the army appeared to target the sinews of such a state. In a pattern so routine it seemed to observers to be policy, soldiers invaded Palestinian Authority (PA) ministries, denuded land registries of maps, raided courts, broke into banks and stole money, and trashed non-governmental offices servicing health, human rights and commerce.

One example: on April 4th, 150 soldiers went into the Ministry of Education. They took the hard drive from every computer and blasted open a safe, robbing it of around $10,000. The discs contain information on 650,000 teachers and students in 155 West Bank schools.

Note that the Economist is hardly a frothing anti-Semitic publication, but typically has a very clear-eyed view. It's easy to get distracted from the pragmatic issues in a conflict that involves encouraging children to admire suicide bombers. Ariel Sharon is taking advantage of this climate, a climate he did much to foster, in order to roll back the Oslo accords which created the Palestinian Authority, and which laid the groundwork for an independant Palestinian state. Righteous wrath against terrorism provides him a convenient cover for this goal.

Sharon is an ultra-nationalist who has always opposed Oslo, and has actively supported the illegal Israeli colonization of Arab lands for decades. He has said publicly he wished he had killed Yassar Arafat when he had the chance. He hated Oslo, he doesn't like Arafat, and wants to destroy the PA because they are necessary steps for creating a Palestinian state, and creating such a state will prevent the creation of Greater Israel. This isn't conspiracy theory, this is Sharon's stated beliefs, although they're masked now by the War On Terror.

I've seen the text of a pay-only report from Stratfor site, which I haven't looked at in depth, which claims that the Israeli anti-terror war has focused much more on the PA than on Hamas. This is curious, given that Hamas has long advocated the complete destruction of Israel, even as Arafat and the Palestinian mainstream has been at least open to coexistence. It suggests that both Sharon and Hamas share the common goal of eliminating Arafat and the PA, because neither wants compromise.

Blaming Arafat for terrorist attacks is more about politics than military reality. Arafat has significant political and military power, but he does not control the operations of radical Islamic groups. His security services also do not appear strong enough to completely suppress them. The Israeli government has dismissed the arrests of 100 suspected militants by the Palestinian security officers since the bombings, saying few were high-level operatives.

Also Israel's tactics of blockading cities and restricting Palestinian movement actually decrease Arafat's control over his own loyalists as local Palestinian leaders find themselves cut off from Arafat's central command.

So Sharon is pumping up the hatred among the Palestinians, blaming the resulting terrorism 100% on Arafat, and removing his ability to counter it. Not that I believe Arafat has clean hands, he has not made any attempt to lead his people in a constructive direction. I would bet money he has approved of terrorist activities, or at least anti-Israeli activities. My personal, pure-speculation theory is that Sharon has hard evidence of this which he has been showing to US leaders like Bush and Powell. It seems like whenever Bush goes into meetings with Sharon huffing that he's going to get him under control, he comes out having had his head turned against Arafat. So my pet theory is Sharon is whipping out recordings of Arafat ordering some nasty deal or other, or maybe just saying nasty things.

Regardless, Arafat is being played like a patsy by the Israelis. He's like the tightly wound kid who the bullies know will explode if they poke him with a stick - Sharon has been poking and tweaking him and the Palestinian people, and using their reactions as cover to steal his lunch money, and their state.

2002-04-26T15:59:00.000+03:00

Friedman
Thomas L. Friedman encourages President Bush to push the Saudi, Israeli, and Palestinian leaders to "face up to what each wants to ignore":

Abdullah wants to ignore yesterday, Sharon wants to ignore tomorrow, and Arafat wants to ignore today.

2002-04-26T14:52:00.000+03:00

Supporting evil
The Washington Post ran an excellent opinion piece in which David Bromwich questions whether in some parts of the world, life is more complicated than assumed by the Bush Doctrine. "It neglects the possibility that some may fail to resist because they are afraid, or because they are confused by the presence of more than one evil." While right on, the piece lightly steps over the question of those who root for their neighborhood evil over the evil from outside, not so much out of fear of the local bullies, but from a feeling that, bullies that they may be, the outside evil is a lot scarier. The devil you know, as they say. This situation is a bit more ambiguous than Mr. Bromwich probably wanted to examine, since many people would say the Bush Doctrine works just fine in that case.

This is developing into one of my favorite themes, the strategic myopia of repression. You've got some agitators, terrorists, or whatever breaking your balls, so you stomp the hell out of their neighborhood. This in turn ensures that the neighbors of the agitators will see you as the worse threat, and so side with the agitators, which gives you a reason to whomp them all harder, and we have a cycle that isn't going to end prettily. This works for the repression of religious political parties in Turkey as well as uprooting terrorism in the West Bank, and can work for fighting evil in the Middle East (e.g. bombing Iraq).

As Americans, we often feel that people living in unfree countries should welcome our intervention. We're the Good Guys, we're here to help! This naive belief comes from unconsciously assuming that everyone else in the world grows up with the same rosy view of our country and its foreign policy that we get growing up inside the USA, an assumption reinforced by movies potraying foreigners (the ones who don't hate us for being Good) as all loving America, pining for the opportunity to flee the horrors of foreignerdom to clean toilets in the Land of the Free. Not that many people don't admire America and the democratic values it represents, but they don't all hate themselves, either.

The fact is, US foreign policy places the national interests of the US above the interests of foreign people. That's simply the nature of foreign policy. The battle for freedom and democracy is how we dress it up to feel good about it; hopefully that ideal does modify our behavior somewhat in positive ways. Afghanistan is an example of this: liberating the Afghanis from an oppressive regime was a side effect of pursuing our national interests, but our cultivation of the image of defender of Freedom requires us to make at least a desultory effort at encouraging the creation of a democratic regime in the country.

The problem comes when we start believing our PR and, worse, thinking that other people believe it completely also. American strategic planners had expected Saddam Hussein to be toppled by his own people long ago, because they underestimate the loyalty of people to their own local bully when attacked by an outsider. We expected them to see America as the Good Guys bombing the evil tyrant, but instead they saw us as the Bad Guys bombing their neighborhoods.

This is why we can't simply barge into the Middle East and start knocking over local Bad Guys willy nilly, ignoring the opinions of the local folks. Saddam Hussein may be an indisputably evil man, Iran's government may be unduly influenced by whackos, and the House of Saud may help foster terrorism. But there are a hell of a lot of people out here who don't currently think the US is especially evil. Plenty of people might think we're bit on the big and mean side, but only in an abstract way. But if we start crashing around in the country next door, it won't matter that Mr. Bush is talking to Congress about how we're the Good Guys and we're fighting Evil, to the locals we'll be the foreigners who are bombing the hell out of their neighborhood. The War will get much larger and nastier, and it's hard to imagine the world will be a better place for it.

I saw the Bromwich article via Jim Henley, who found Bromwich's conclusion as compelling as I did:

The fate of many nations depends on our ability to declare no more enemies than we have and to create no more enemies than we must.

I think I'll swipe that.

2002-04-26T11:48:00.000+03:00

I read the Economist
The Onion, as usual, hits it dead on with the second part of this point-counterpoint.

2002-04-25T14:48:00.000+03:00

Turkey's Next Government
Although the next elections aren't due until 2004 (I think), the current 3-way coalition government looks shaky, and the opposition parties keep claiming that new elections are needed soon. Well obviously those guys need elections to get back in the game, but Prime Minister's Ecevit is looking his age, and his partners are jockeying for the throne. If the current coalition breaks up, it may force a new election, and none of the three parties in the coalition are polling well enough to get back into parliament at all, much less with enough clout to retain their part in the government.

The Islamists are the most popular party at the moment, but of course the military establishment is unlikely to allow them free reign in government. Just a few years ago they (or more accurately, one of their predecessor parties) got into a 2-party coalition, but the generals noisly cleared their throats a little while later and the government was dissolved. Former PM Tansu Ciller is hot to get her old job back. However, Ciller is the same woman who allied with the Islamists for that same short-lived coalition, and she doesn't have much popular credibility. She was once very promising, but her political capital blew away in the wind, which still blows her in different directions from week to week. There are a few other parties kicking around, but even if they aren't a part of the coalition, they're part of the same corrupt establishment which is not smelling very nice to the voters these days.

The wildcard is Kemal Dervis, the former World Bank VP who is now Special Minister for the Economy. He was hailed as a savior when he returned home to accept the position last year, to ensure that the economic reform process stayed on track, at least well enough to keep the loan money flowing from the IMF. He doesn't get quite the press he used to though, and I haven't seen how well he's polling. His main weakness from where I sit is political: he doesn't have a real power base, other than fickle popular hopes, and doesn't have experience in the cutthroat Turkish political field. The political establishment hates him, because he's trying to dismantle their gravy train. But his apparent refusal to climb aboard their train means he lacks muscle. And having spent many years living in the US and working for the World Bank makes him vulnerable to patriotic demagogery - he is routinely accused of being a tool of the Western imperialists.

My guess is, if the coalition does break up and elections are called, the Islamists will do well enough that any government will have to include them in order to get a majority of parliament. The military may let them have their way for a little while at least, as they did last time around. Dervis will try to throw his hat into the ring, but I don't know how - it'll be difficult to take over an existing party, and forming a new party would be even harder. Maybe he'll get Ecevit's DSP party if the PM steps down. An Ecevit/DSP coalition with Erdogan/AKP? I can't tell, my crystal ball has just locked up, it's time to reboot.

2002-04-25T14:34:00.000+03:00

Secularism vs.Religion
Today's big issue in the Turkish news is the continuing campaign of the military establishment to keep Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a leading Islamist politician, out of politics, and maybe even put him back into jail. The military's Chief of Staff (the head of the military, and the security council which oversees the elected government) is pushing a case against him for a speech he made ten years ago. The thing he doesn't like about the speech, which was apparently rebroadcast on TV last week, were comments praising the Aghani islamists who would later become the Taliban, and criticizing the military for sending poorly trained conscripts to fight the Kurds in southeast Turkey. Praising Islamists is interpreted by the Turkish legal and judicial systems as advocating the overthrow of the secular government, and "embarassing the military" or police is also a crime. Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul, spent 4 months in jail in 1999 for reading a poem which allegedly "incited hatred based on religious differences".

This is a key example of the problem Turkey has reconciling the secularism vs religion issue with democracy and freedom of expression. On the one hand, as a believer in liberty and democracy raised in the USA, I oppose the repression of political expression, not to mention religious expression. On the other hand, Turkey does have a number of influential figures who would possibly use the democratic process and freedoms to replace those very processes and freedoms with an intolerant religious state. There is no simple solution.

The threat of the religious parties in Turkey may or may not be overrated. Erdogan is very popular these days, and he is saying all the right things, condemning the 9/11 attacks, and publicly changing his mind about the secular nature of the government (not bad after all) and Turkey's NATO membership (A-OK with him). The city of Istanbul is governed by Islamists, and although they don't serve liquor in city-owned restaraunts, they continue to organize dynamic jazz and film festivals. But while the local breed of Islamists may be pretty tame compared with what other countries have, there's no telling what they'd be like if speaking warm and fuzzy didn't keep them out of prison and in parliament.

So I can't say the military has no reason to fear islamists - after all, powerful secularist states backed by the US have been chucked out by religious extremists in the recent past (Iran). But I still believe the principals of democracy are more powerful than the muzzle and the fist. Persecuting the islamists earns them credibility and sympathy. Restricting freedom to criticize the establishment only hurts the country - the best tool for improvement is criticism. More specifically, the current popularity of the Erdogan and the Islamists owes a lot to its persecution, although indirectly.

The current political establishment is very unpopular with the voters of Turkey, thanks to their mismanagement of the economy and endemic corruption. Not storm the streets unpopular, but most certainly throw the bums out unpopular - polls show none of the three parties making up the current coalition would get the votes they need to stay in parliament, much less retain control of the government. The Islamist party is quite popular though, because they are the clean government alternative to the current bunch of crooks.

The clean image of the islamists has a lot to do with their marginalization from the establishment. Since they aren't allowed to play with the popular kids, they aren't tainted with the popular kids' corruption. On top of this, they've done a good job governing several cities, including Istanbul. Most of the modern-minded Turkish people live in the cities, so demonstrating their ability to govern well without breaking the Quran over peoples' heads softens resistance among those most likely to be apprehensive about voting Islamist. A third powerful factor is that the current Islamist party got a fresh start last summer, when the establishment dissolved the old party. Rather than reforming as a single party, the old Islamists split into two groups, with the less repentant extremists forming their own club. This meant Erdogan's Justice and Development Party is composed of warm and fuzzy, mainstream-appealing Islamists, having shed the frothing fanatics. If you're an Economist subscriber, you can read this nice piece from last fall.

Again, I don't have a solution. I don't think squashing the Islamists using un-democratic means is good for the country in the long run, so far that policy has not only failed to eliminate them, it has instead forced them to evolve and improve themselves to the point where they are now the strongest political party in the country. The Republic would be better served if the corrupt mainstream parties were forced to improve themselves the same way. Maybe getting their asses kicked in the next election will force them to evolve a bit too, but I wouldn't count on it.