Saturday, April 04, 2009
Obama Address to Turkish Parliament Likely to Undermine Turkish Military, Embolden Islamists
Islamists in Iran and across the Middle East are waiting and watching to see how America's first Muslim-born President (according to Islamic religious law, which traces religious identity through the father), Barack Hussein Oabama, will (a) respond to North Korea's illegal, long-range rocket launch, and (b) attempt to win hearts and minds in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country that straddles Europe and Asia.
AP reports:"Obama, don't come! We don't want you!" protesters shouted Saturday in Ankara, the Turkish capital. Several thousand people called for the disbandment of NATO, whose leaders, including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were meeting in Strasbourg, France. Protesters held a similar rally in Istanbul.
Click here to read the whole article.
On Monday afternoon, Obama's motorcade will take him to Ankara's Grand National Assembly, a complex with a manicured garden designed by an Austrian architect in 1938, the year of Ataturk's death.
In 2003, Turkey's lawmakers voted not to let President George W. Bush use Turkish soil to open an invasion front against Saddam Hussein, fraying the alliance.
A speech to parliament by Obama will restore good will, and reinforce the Western view that Turkey can serve as an example that Islam and democracy can flourish together, despite internal divisions and concerns about reform.
More broadly, the presidential trip will lift Turkey's growing profile as a regional mediator, capable of reaching out to the Middle East and Central Asia as easily as it talks to the West about energy, security and the economy.
"The new U.S. administration wants to correct its perception in the Islamic world, and Obama is starting with the easiest one, Turkey," said Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Ankara. "But whatever the United States says now, it will take time to work."
Late Monday, Obama leaves Ankara for Istanbul, a capital of past empires, where he will attend a reception of the Alliance of Civilizations, a forum sponsored by Turkey and Spain to promote understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds.
In keeping with that notion, Tuesday's program includes visits to the domed Haghia Sofia, which once was a Byzantine church, and the fabled Blue Mosque in tribute to great faiths whose interlocking history has known peace and bloodshed in Istanbul.
Any tension over hard issues such as Turkey's denial of an Armenian genocide in the Ottoman era is likely to stay private during Obama's journey, and some activists question how hard U.S. officials will push for more democratic reform.
Emma Sinclair-Webb of New York-based Human Rights Watch said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a visit to Turkey in early March, mostly reflected on Turkish progress between 2003 and 2005, but not the slow pace of change since then.
Sinclair-Webb said numerous laws restrict free speech and many people, especially Kurds in southeastern Turkey who seek more rights, spend long periods in pre-trial detention. "This all goes unseen," she said.
Unlike Bush and President Bill Clinton in the past, Obama will not visit Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. Turkey harbors historical mistrust toward the patriarchate, whose officials have appealed for more religious freedom from their compound on the Golden Horn inlet in Istanbul.
China Confidential's correspondent in Istanbul reports: The so-called Alliance of Civilizations is an oxymoron and a cover for European appeasement of Islamism. In principle, there can be an alliance between the West and the Arab world, or the West and non-Arab Iran (a reality until America's catastrophic Carter administration betrayed Iran's Shah in a craven attempt to curry favor with his Islamist foes). But an alliance with organized Islam, an inherently intolerant and war-like faith that has been taken over by its most extreme elements, is impossible. Obama is wrong to even consider attending the Alliance reception (unless he is eager for another opportunity bow before a Muslim tyrant--scroll for the photos and videos of the President's sickening submission to the King of Saudi Arabia, a country with no human rights.
China Confidential analysts expect that Obama's address to the Turkish parliament will allude to alleged American arrogance toward Muslim nations, undermine the Turkish military--signaling U.S. opposition to any possible future intervention by the army to save the country's secular system from being irreparably weakened by Turkey's Islamist-leaning and -rooted government--and serve as a prelude for a major foreign policy speech that the President plans to give in another, soon-to-be-announced Muslim capital. Transcending Turkey, Obama's Big Speech to the Muslim World will constitute a full-blown apology for past U.S. meddling and interference in Muslim nations.
China Confidential Washington sources say Obama has been urged by former President Jimmy Carter and his former National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to apologize for the U.S. role in overthrowing the Shah's mentally-ill, pro-Soviet rival, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953, and installing the pro-American, modernizing monarch as an autocratic leader (one of the CIA's greatest Cold War achievements).
In short, the Obama administration's appeasement drive is in high gear.
No wonder Israel is increasingly anxious.All Eyes on North Korea
The world's worst dictatorship, a nuclear-armed, Hitlerian hell on earth, will soon launch a ballistic missile capable of flying over Japan and reaching Hawaii and Alaska.
North Korea's missile test is illegal, a violation of a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution that followed the rogue nation's detonation of a nuclear device.
The launch is also intentionally provocative. Pyongyang is testing more than a Taepodong-2. The mass murderers in military uniforms and business (and leisure) suits are testing the United States and the so-called international community.
North Korea expects the West to fail this test. We sadly agree. The democracies are on the defensive; and China and Russia are likely to block moves to bring about new U.N. sanctions. (A Chinese-manipulated military coup is the best long-term solution for the North Korean problem.)
Meanwhile, Iran is watching. As China Confidential first reported, a delegation of Iranian intelligence and military officers, scientists and technicians have traveled to North Korea to observe the launch; more important, Iran's political leadership is following every development. The Stalinist/Kimist state's Islamist ally regards the event as a test of the new U.S. administration's courage and political will.
China Confidential predicts that just as diplomacy failed to stop North Korea from developing atomic arms and ICBMs, diplomacy will fail to stop Iran from developing these weapons of mass destruction.
Sunday, 5 April 2009
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