By Alexander Murinson*

With the conclusion of the Cold War, the trilateral axis (Israel-Turkey-Azerbaijan) in the expanded Middle East emerged. The issue of energy security as a component of this relationship has remained largely unexplored. First, this article elucidates the transformation of the concept of security in the post-Cold War period. It then places the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian region in the context of the energy security needs of energy-poor Turkey and Israel. The importance of transportation routes from the Caspian for the Jewish state are highlighted, and the potential of Caspian petrochemicals for cooperation in energy field between Israel, Turkey Israel are explored.

(more…)

~by E.D. Kain, NeoConstant

According to The Long War Journal’s Jane Novak, the US Embassy in Yemen was attacked today by a militant group carrying machine guns, RPG’s, and setting off a series of explosions. The terrorist force was repelled after killing 16 people, and attempting to breach the US compound. After a fierce gun battle, the militants were repelled. No US citizens were killed, though many Yemeni security officers were killed or wounded in the fight.

A group calling itself Yemeni Islamic Jihad took credit for today’s attack. The group last month claimed responsbility for a July suicide car bombing at a police station in Hadramout killed one policeman and injured 18. The police station had been previously bombed with no injuries. Yemeni Islamic Jihad also threatened a future attack in the capital.

This is not the first attack or attempted attack on a US embassy or consulate this year. In July, the US consulate in Ankara, Turkey was attacked leaving several dead. Luckily both attacks proved to be failures, unlike some of the major suicide bombings we’ve seen in India and Afghanistan recently.

(more…)

By Uzi Dayan and Jonathan Spyer

The current indirect talks between Israel and Syria are highly unlikely to result in a peace agreement. The talks, far from playing any positive role for Israel, are mistaken both in terms of our values and in terms of our practical interest. They are being conducted by an irresponsible government with no public mandate, and are already causing real harm. We should be working to isolate the Syrian regime, not rehabilitating it.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin, republished with permission from the August 2008 issue of Mideast Monitor*

Last month, Turkish prosecutors issued a 2,455-page indictment detailing an alleged plot to overthrow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan by an elaborate network of retired military officers, journalists, academics, businessmen, and other secular opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Although the precise facts of the case are not yet clear, the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy appears to be a largely fictionalized construct, with an ongoing investigation geared mainly to warding off constitutional challenges to the ruling party, not coups.

(more…)

By Jonathan Spyer

A fourth round of indirect talks between Syrian and Israeli representatives was concluded in Istanbul this week and as the Turkish mediators kept themselves in shape conveying messages between the hotel rooms of the two countries’ delegations, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was keen to stress the urgency of the hour.

The time was approaching, the prime minister said, when gestures would no longer be enough. Rather, it would soon be time for the Syrians to make their choice between the “Iranian grip” and their partnership in the “axis of evil,” and rejoining the “family of nations” in pursuit of peace and “economic development.”

(more…)

by E. Haldun Solmazturk*

Policymakers and future historians may get whiplash from divergent analyses of where Turkey is headed. Some Turkish writers—The Turkish Daily News‘ Mustafa Akyol and Zaman’s Ali Aslan, for example — argue that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have succeeded at melding Islam to modern democracy. Other writers — The Turkish Daily News’ Yusuf Kanlı or the Washington Institute’s Soner Cagaptay — are far more suspicious.

—The Editors

At the heart of the political debate in Turkey lies the tension between Islam and secularism. Is the former democratic and the latter, at least in Turkey, autocratic? Ömer Taşpinar, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institute, recently argued this case in Foreign Affairs (”The Old Turks’ Revolt,” November/December 2007). His thesis is trendy in certain circles, but it is dishonest. He bases his argument on false assumptions, cherry-picks data, and ignores context. What results is not so much scholarship as propaganda.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

Sometime this summer, Turkey’s Constitutional Court will decide whether Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) violated the “principles of a democratic and secular republic” that undergird the Turkish constitution and should be barred from politics. Across the Turkish political spectrum, most officials expect the Court to rule against the AKP, thus dissolving the party and banning Erdoğan and his closest aides for at least five years.

Although the prime minister, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, and influential AKP advisers have tried to depict this as the unjust outgrowth of a dispute over headscarves in public universities—and perhaps even a “judicial coup”—the case is legitimate.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

ISTANBUL — Yesterday Turkey’s constitutional court overturned a new law that would have allowed women in the secular republic — established in 1923 by the Westernizing Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — to wear Muslim headscarves in universities.

It now appears all but certain that this summer the court will go even further when it decides a larger case against the country’s Islamic-rooted Justice and Development (AK) Party. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AK stand accused of violating “the principles of a democratic and secular republic.” Penalties could range from a suspension of the party’s public financing to its disbandment and the suspension of its leadership from politics. Such a development should be welcome in the United States.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

Accounts from Turkey suggest that the government is attempting a bold re-interpretation of Islam.

Its unusually named ministry of religion, the “Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Religious Charitable Foundation,” has undertaken a three-year “Hadith Project” systematically to review 162,000 hadith reports and winnow them down to some 10,000, with the goal of separating original Islam from the accretions of fourteen centuries.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

The legal case against the AKP is an affirmation of democracy rather than an assault upon it. Democracy rests upon the rule of law and constitutionalism. Neither plurality support nor a majority in parliament should place any politician or party above the law.

The AKP deserves credit for the economic growth that has occurred under its stewardship and for supporting Turkey’s accession into the European Union. There is no doubt that the AKP has revolutionized Turkish politics. In the 2002 election, it trounced the more established parties by out-campaigning them. The AKP has earned its reputation for serving its constituents.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

Few U.S. policymakers have heard of Fethullah Gülen, perhaps Turkey’s most prominent theologian and political thinker. Self-exiled for more than a decade, Gülen lives a reclusive life outside Philadelphia, Pa. Within months, however, he may be as much a household a name in the United States as is Ayatollah Khomeini, a man who was as obscure to most Americans up until his triumphant return to Iran almost 30 years ago.

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

Why has the NY Times published an article today (“Veiled Democracy”), written by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, in which Feldman explains that if Turkey allows Muslim women to wear the Islamic headscarf in universities, that Turkey will be that much closer to a liberal democracy?

Pinch me. I must be dreaming.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

In a sense, no country has tried harder to get out of the Middle East than Turkey–by way of achieving membership in the European Union–yet Turkey does have an important role to play in the region. At the same time, though, this situation is complicated by divergences over Turkey’s identity, interests, and internal politics.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

On a strictly emotional level, U.S. support for Iraqi Kurdistan makes sense.¹ In the wake of World War I, the Kurds missed their opportunity for statehood when other peoples gained their independence. Today, they remain the largest ethnic group without a country. They have suffered greatly at the hands of others. But while Iraqi Kurdistan has come far, the unreliability of its leadership makes any long-term U.S.-Kurdish alliance unwise. Rather than become a beacon for democracy, the current Iraqi Kurdish leadership appears intent on replicating more autocratic models. Rather than become a regional Nelson Mandela, Iraqi Kurdish president Masud Barzani now charts a course to become a new Yasser Arafat. Despite lofty rhetoric about its suitability as an ally, Iraqi Kurdistan’s actions suggest that it is far from trustworthy.

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

It’s been nearly two months since the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) sparked an international crisis with a major attack inside Turkey, and more than six weeks since President Bush promised Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Washington would aid Turkey’s fight against terrorism. Heady talk of intelligence sharing and cooperation followed and, indeed, may have been a factor in this weekend’s Turkish air strikes on PKK targets in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yet at the same time the Bush administration — more precisely its increasingly assertive State Department — has embraced an ill-advised diplomatic strategy toward the PKK that will likely backfire on our long-standing NATO ally, and could serve to undermine what is left of President Bush’s “global war on terrorism.”

(more…)