Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Russia Urges Turkey to Solve Kurdish Issue by Political Means, Avoid Force | Sputnik

30.12.2015 - MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Turkish authorities should solve its disagreements with the Kurds by political means and avoid the use of force, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

"We are concerned by the escalation of violence in southeastern Turkey, caused by Turkish authorities' ongoing military operation in Kurdish provinces. Human rights groups report numerous civilian victims, including women and children," the ministry said in a statement.

"The solution to the Kurdish issue lies in the political arena. The use of force in internal conflicts only leads to new victims and an escalation of tensions with unpredictable consequences," the statement reads.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

From TMT to ISIS: Turkey conducts politics with the same old field manuals

by Lambros George Kaoullas

Introduction

Whether by shelling Kurdish fighters in Syria or downing a Russian fighter jet, Turkey undeniably seems more willing to protect and sustain ISIS rather than confront it. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because Turkey has been conducting politics with the same old field manuals for decades. Proxy warfare to destabilise a region and further strategic ends has not been the brainchild of AKP’s government, but has rather been a staple in Turkish military thinking for decades, starting with the Armenian, Pontian Greek and Assyrian Genocides.

So while the nebulous ISIS became a household name, very few heard of TMT (Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı), a paramilitary formation that operated as a Turkish proxy in Cyprus between 1957 and 1964. TMT unified under its banner several other political and paramilitary organisations operating since 1955. Its objective was to create the necessary destabilising conditions that would facilitate a Turkish military invasion in order to artificially partition the island into two ethnically clean zones. To do that, it employed provocations, assassinations, fomentation of inter-communal strife, and large-scale demographic engineering.

I will juxtapose today’s events with examples from Cyprus sixty years ago, focusing on ISIS and the Turkmen militias, which are the ones closest to Turkey.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Turkish PM accuses pro-Kurdish party head of treason over Russia comments | Reuters



Note: Ahmet Davutoglu can dish it out in Cyprus but he obviously cannot take it.

CONSTANTINOPLE (Reuters), Thu Dec 24, 2015  - Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused the head of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party of treason on Thursday for using a trip to Moscow to condemn Ankara's shooting down of a Russian warplane over Syria.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Anyone Using The Phrase ‘Islam Is A Religion Of Peace’ Needs To Read This | Independent Journal Opinion

Mark Durie*, Melbourne, Australia, December 2015 - Days after the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, President Obama’s address to the nation concerning the threat of ISIS missed the mark. In fact, President Obama seemed at times to be more concerned with Americans ostracizing Muslim communities through “suspicion and hate,” than he was with protecting innocent American civilians from murder in the name of radical Islam.

It is high time for western political leaders to stop responding to terrorism by naming Islam as ‘the religion of peace’. It is time to have a hard conversation about Islam.

"[EU] membership makes them invulnerable"



Thursday, 25 February 2010, 11:05
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 ANKARA 000302
SIPDIS
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE
EO 12958 DECL: 02/21/2020
TAGS PREL, PARM, MNUC, MASS, IR, TU
SUBJECT: U/S BURNS' FEBRUARY 18 MEETINGS WITH U/S SINIRLIOGLU
REF: ANKARA 263
Classified By: AMB James F. Jeffrey, for reasons 1.4 (b,d)

Turkish Foreign Affairs Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirliolgu:
"[EU] membership makes [Cypriots] invulnerable"

Source

Monday, December 14, 2015

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Turkey's Kurds & Cyprus' tCypriots

As either unitary state or federation solutions are discussed as replacements to Cyprus' 1960 and Turkey's 1923 unworkable constitutions, should we abide by "if a right is a right too many for Turkey's Kurdish community (circa 23% of population) then that right is a right too many for Cyprus' tCypriot community too (circa 15%), and vice versa." Is the adoption of this fair logic the catalyst to securing just solutions for both UN countries.