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Wars and Empire

S >> Sam Vaknin >> Wars and Empire




Turkey has been allocated $1.1 billion by the EU as pre-accession aid.
Unruly behavior on its part may endanger this carrot as well. To
complicate matters further, America may drop its staunch political and
pecuniary support for the Baku-Ceyhan Main Export oil Pipeline (MEP).

Nor is the domestic situation less ominous.

The new, hitherto popular, prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vowed
on Sunday to "carefully and diligently" implement the IMF's agonizing
austerity program which calls for spending cuts of $2 billion by the
end of the month, the privatization of the tobacco and alcohol
monopolies and tax reform. The 2003 budget envisages a primary surplus
of 6.5 percent of gross national product. It aims to raise revenues by
$5 billion and cut expenditure by $3 billion.

Such prescriptions ill-fit with promises to help the poor and fiscally
boost growth. But a mid-April loan tranche of $1.6 billion - of the
$3.5 billion left to be disbursed - is dependent on strict adherence.
Nor is a new agreement with the IMF in the offing without considerable
U.S. pressure or its implicit guarantee, both now unlikely.

The threat of dispatching troops to northern Iraq is Turkey's last,
desperate, card in a depleted deck. To avoid this cataclysmic scenario,
the United States may yet, teeth gnashing, revive the moribund economic
aid package it has seethingly withdrawn. The alternative is an
Argentina-style default with a shock wave cruising through a volatile
and ignitable Middle East - or a military dictatorship in Ankara.

Turkey's Jewish Friend

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

Also Read

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Turkey's Troubled Water

Israel's Hi, Tech - Bye, Tech

Syria's Sunshine Policy

Israel's Economic Intifada

Saddam's Thousand Nights

The Iraqi and the Madman

God's Diplomacy and Human Conflicts

The Economies of the Middle East

It is ironic that relations between Turkey and Israel have never been
better. The former is ruled by yet another Islamic government - though
constrained by secular-minded generals. The latter is increasingly
nationalistic-Messianic and theocratic - though its newly elected Prime
Minister, a former army general, Ariel Sharon, has just put together a
largely secular coalition government.

Each year, more than 300,000 Israelis spend their vacation - and more
than a quarter of a billion dollars - in scenic and affordable Turkish
resorts. A drought-stricken Israel revived a decade-old plan to buy
from Turkey up to 400 million cubic meters a year, instead of
expensively desalinating sea water.

Israeli land use, hydrological and agricultural experts roam the
Texas-sized country. The parties - with a combined gross domestic
product of $300 billion - have inked close to thirty agreements and
protocols since 1991. Everything, from double taxation to joint
development and manufacturing of missiles, has been covered.

Buoyed by a free trade agreement in force since 1997, bilateral trade
exceeded $1.5 billion last year, excluding clandestine sales of arms
and weapons technologies. According to the Turkish Ambassador to the
United States, "Turkish exports to Israel consist mainly of
manufactured goods, foodstuffs and grain, while Israel's main export
items to Turkey are chemical products, plastics, computers and
irrigation and telecommunications systems technologies."

A sizable portion of Turkey's $3-5 billion in annual spending on the
modernization of its armed forces is rumored to end in Israeli pockets.
This is part of a 25-year plan launched in 1997 and estimated to be
worth a total of $150 billion. Israeli contractors are refurbishing
ageing Turkish fighter planes and other weapons systems at a total cost
exceeding $2 billion hitherto.

Last May, the Israeli Military Industries and Elbit secured a $688
million contract to upgrade 170 M-60A1 tanks. There are at least
another 800 pieces in the pipeline. Small arms, unmanned aerial
vehicles and rockets originating in Israel make only part of a long
shopping list. Israeli pilots regularly train in Turkey. Joint military
exercises and intelligence sharing are frequent. The Israeli backdoor
allows friendly American administrations to circumvent a rarely
Turkophile Congress.

The American-Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and, more generally,
the almighty Jewish lobby in Washington, often support Turkish causes
on the Hill. Three years ago, for example, Jews helped quash a
resolution commemorating the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkish
forces during the first world war.

This exercise in hypocrisy did not endear the Jewish community or
Israel to either Armenians or to European Union cardholding Greeks who
have long permitted Palestinian terrorists to operate from the Greek
part of Cyprus with impunity. The friend of my enemy is my enemy and
Israel is clearly Turkey's Jewish friend.

But Israeli hopes that Turkey will reciprocate by serving as a conduit
to Arab regimes in the Middle East proved to be ill-founded. Only one
tenth of Turkish trade is with its neighbors near and far. Turkey's
leverage is further limited by its chronic economic distress and its
offensive designs to monopolize waterways shared by adjacent countries.

Though Moslem, like the Iranians, Turkey is not an Arab nation. It
counts Syria, Iraq and Iran as potential enemies and competitors for
scarce water resources - as does Israel. The recent rebuff by its
parliament of America's request to station troops on Turkish soil
notwithstanding, the country is defiantly pro-American against a
backdrop of anti-Western virulence.

Turkey aspires to join the European Union because it regards itself as
an island of civilization in an ocean of backwardness and destitution.
This counter-regional orientation is another thing it has in common
with the Jewish state. In an effort to differentiate themselves, both
polities were early adopters of economic trends such as deregulation,
equities, venture capital, entrepreneurship, privatization and hi-tech.

Turkey was the first Moslem state to recognize an ominously isolated
Israel in 1949. Both Israel and Turkey are democracies though they are
implicated in systemic human rights violations on a massive scale. The
political class of both is incestuously enmeshed with the military.

The two countries face terrorism on a daily basis and feel threatened
by the rise of militant Islam, by the spread of weapons of mass
destruction - though Israel is hitherto the only regional nuclear power
- and by global networks like al-Qaida.

In his travelogue, "Eastward to Tartary", published in 2001, Robert
Kaplan notes:

"Turkey's more friendly position toward Israel was the result of
several factors. (Turkey) became tired of diplomatic initiatives that
failed to induce the Arabs to end their support of the Kurdish Workers'
party, which was responsible for the insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
The Turks felt, too, that the Jews could help them with their Greek
problem (via the Jewish lobby) ... (The Turks realized) they might
never gain full admittance to the European Union. Thus, they required
another alliance."

This confluence of interests and predicaments does not render Israel
the darling of the Turkish street, though. Turks, addicted to
conspiracy theories, fully believe that the second Iraq war is being
instigated by the Israelis. They also decry the way Israel manhandles
the Palestinian uprising. Flag-burning demonstrations are common
occurrences in Ankara and Istanbul. Suleyman Demirel, Turkey's former
president, nearly paid with his life for the entente cordiale when a
deranged pharmacist tried to assassinate him in 1996.

Turkey's power behind the throne and future prime minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, called Israel's Ariel Sharon a terrorist. The previous
prime minister called Israel's behavior in the occupied territories
"genocide" - hastening to reverse himself when faced with the possible
consequences of his Freudian slip.

Indeed, the looming conflict in Iraq may well be the watershed of the
Turkish-Israeli love fest. Turkey is growing increasingly religious and
more pro-Arab by the year. The further the United States - Israel's
sponsor and unwavering ally - pushes into the region, the less aligned
are its interests with Turkey's.

Consider the Kurdish question. Turkey is committed to preventing, if
need be by force of arms, the emergence of independent Kurdish polity
in Iraq. It would also wish to secure oil-rich northern Iraq as a
Turkish protectorate. But the Kurds - America's long-standing and
long-suffering collaborators - are the United States' "Northern
Alliance" in Iraq. It cannot abandon them for both military and moral
considerations.

But even in the absence of such blatant conflicts of interests,
Turkey's shift is inevitable, a matter of geography as destiny.

Turkey continues to ignore the Arab world at its peril. Regional
conflicts fail to respect international borders - as the country is
discovering, faced with the damaging Iraqi spillover. Until 1998,
Syria, another restive neighbor, actively aided and abetted the
rebellious Kurds. It may yet resume its meddling if Israel, its bitter
enemy, is neutered through a peace accord. The dispute over precious
water sources is embedded in Turkish-Syrian topography and is,
therefore, permanent.

It may have been in recognition of these facts that Abdullah Gul,
Turkey's prime minister, embarked on a tour of Arab capitals in
January. Simultaneously, the Turkish Trade Minister, Korsad Touzman,
led a delegation of 150 businessmen in a two day visit to Baghdad to
discuss trade issues. Turkey claims to have sustained damages in excess
of $30 billion in the 1991 Gulf War - a measure of its regional
integration.

Turkey has also recently begun considering the sale of water in the
framework of the "Manavgat Project for Peace" to Egypt, Jordan and even
Libya. Turkey's foreign minister, Bashar Yakis, is a Turkish diplomat
who knows Arabic and had served in Damascus, Riyadh and Cairo.

Turkey's Occidental orientation has proven to be counterproductive. As
the European Union grows more fractured and indecisive and the United
States more overweening and unilaterally belligerent, Turkey will have
to give up its fantasies - bred by the country's post-Ottoman founding
father, Kemal Ataturk - of becoming an inalienable part of Western
civilization.

Both Turkey and Israel will, in due time, be forced to accept - however
reluctantly - that they are barely mid-sized, mostly Asiatic, regional
powers and that their future - geopolitical and military, if not
economic - lies in the Middle East, not in the Midwest. Turkey could
then serve as a goodwill mediator between erstwhile enemies and Israel
as a regional engine of growth.

Until they do, both countries are major founts of regional instability,
often deliberately and gleefully so.

Israeli engineering firms, for instance, are heavily involved in the
design and implementation of the regionally controversial Southeast
Anatolian Project (GAP), intended to block Turkish water from reaching
Syria and Iraq. Additionally, protestations to the contrary aside, the
thrust of Israel's burgeoning military cooperation with Turkey is,
plausibly, anti-Arab.

Turkish security officials confirmed to the English-language daily,
Turkish Daily News, in March last year, that Turkey worked with Israel
to counter the Hezbollah in Lebanon. As early as 1998, Turkey
threatened war with Syria - and mobilized troops to back up its
warnings - explicitly relying on the always-present Israeli "second
front". The Egyptian government's mouthpiece, the daily al-Ahram,
called this emerging de-facto alliance "the true axis of evil".

Israel's massive army, its nuclear weapons, its policies in the West
Bank and Gaza, its influence on right-wing American decision-makers and
legislators - provoke the very same threats they are intended to
forestall, including terrorism, the coalescence of hostile axes and
alliances and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction by regional
thugs.

Turkey's disdain for everything Arab, its diversion of the Tigris, Asi
and Euphrates rivers, its arms race, its suppression of the Kurds and
its military-tainted democracy have led it, more than once, to the
verge of open warfare. Such a conflict may not be containable. In 1995,
Syria granted Greece the right to use its air bases and air space, thus
explicitly dragging NATO and the European Union into the fray.

It is, therefore, the interest of the West to disabuse Turkey of its
grandiosity and to convince Israel to choose peace. As September 11 and
its aftermath have painfully demonstrated, no conflict in the Middle
East is merely regional.

Israel - The Next Target

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

Also Read

Israel's Hi, Tech - Bye, Tech

Israel's Economic Intifada

God's Diplomacy and Human Conflicts

The Economies of the Middle East

Turkey's Jewish Friend

Its leader seems more comfortable in battle fatigues than in civil
suits. He has been long pursuing a policy of bloody oppression and
annexation. The regime is often castigated due to rampant human rights
violations. The country possesses weapons of mass destruction, though
it repeatedly denies the allegations. It refuses to honor numerous
Security Council resolutions. President Bush senior once subjected it
to sanctions. The United States has already trained its sights on this
next target: Israel.

The chieftains of the New World Order have made it abundantly clear
that Iraq's capitulation will be closely followed by the official
release of a much-leaked "road map" for peace in the Middle East
propounded by the "Quartet" - the USA, UK, United Nations and Russia.

A series of disclosures in the Israeli media made it equally evident
that prime minister Ariel Sharon's crew beg to differ from substantial
portions of the foursome's vision.

To demonstrate to skeptic and embittered Muslims everywhere that its
motives in waging war on Iraq were more altruistic than ulterior, the
Administration will impose an even-handed peace on a reluctant Israel.
Should it resist, the Jewish state will find itself subjected to the
kind of treatment hitherto reserved for the founding members of the
axis of evil - economic sanctions to the fore.

Can it withstand such treatment?

Institutional Investor has just downgraded Israel's 2002 country credit
rating to 45th place - seven rungs lower than in early 2000. It is
ranked behind Kuwait, Cyprus, Qatar, and Oman. Moody's, Fitch and
Standard and Poor's (S&P) has refrained from a further rating action,
following a series of demotions in the past two years.

The country's economy - especially its dynamic construction, tourism
and agricultural segments - has been weakened by three years of civil
strife both within the green line and throughout the occupied
territories. This has been reflected in the shekel's and the stock
exchange's precipitous declines, by one fifth each. Profits in the
banking sector slumped by more than three quarters due to augmented
loan loss provisions.

A global recession and the bursting of the hi-tech bubble have not
helped. Gross domestic product growth in 2000 was a spectacular 7
percent. In the next two years, however, the economy has contracted.
The calling up of reservists to active duty, the dwindling of
immigration - from 78,400 in 1999 down to 31,491 three years later -
and the disappearance of the Palestinian shopper depressed consumption,
services and retail sales.

Uriel Lynn, chairman of the Israeli Chamber of Commerce, told BBC News
Online, that the country has lost about $2.5 billion "in terms of
business product". Defense spending spiked at 10 percent of the budget,
double the American ratio and triple the military outlays of the
typical EU member.

Social solidarity is fraying. The Histadrut (General Federation of
Labor in Israel) - run by members of the shriveled opposition Labor
party - declared a labor dispute on Sunday, heralding a general strike.
This in response to reforms promulgated by the Ministry of Finance, now
headed by a hardliner, the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The private sector accounts for 70 percent of GDP in Israel and is
already stretched to the limit. Instead, the hard-pressed ministry
wants to sack thousands in the bloated public services and cut the
salaries and pension rights of the remaining civil servants by 8
percent. Government consumption amounts to one third of GDP and public
debt exceeds it.

In a reversal of decades of tradition, collective wage agreements will
be abolished. The finance ministry is trying to reduce the spiraling
budget deficit - now pegged at more than 6 percent of GDP - by $2
billion to c. 3.5-4.5 percent of GDP, depending on one's propensity for
optimism.

Netanyahu also pledged to trim down the top marginal tax rate from a
whopping 60 to 49 percent and to aggressively privatize state holdings
in companies such as El Al, Bezeq Telecommunications, Oil Refineries
and Israel Electric Company. He told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz that
the fate of an American package comprising $1 billion in extra military
aid and $9 billion in loan guarantees depends on such "proper
economics".

Trying to balance fiscal profligacy, David Klein, the governor of the
Bank of Israel, kept real interest rates high, cutting them by a mere
0.2 percent yesterday to 8.7 percent. Inflation last year, at 5.7
percent, was way above the 1998-2002 average of 3.7 percent.

Partly due to this contractionary bias, more than 50,000 small
businesses closed their doors in 2002. According to the CNN, another
60,000 will follow suit by yearend. The number of tourists plunged by a
staggering three fifths. Foreign investment crumbled from $11 billion
in 2000 to $4 billion last year.

Unemployment is stubbornly stuck above 10 percent - and double this
figure in the Arab street. The State of the Economy Index, published by
the central bank, fell for the 30th consecutive month in February. Of
1.6 million employees in the business sector, 61,000 were fired since
January 2001.

It is the third year of recession: the economy contracted by 1 percent
last year and by 0.9 percent in 2001. Nor is it over yet. Business Data
Israel (BDI), a forecasting consultancy, reckons that the damage to
Israel's economy of a short war in Iraq would amount to $1 billion, or
1 percent of GDP.

One fifth of the population survives under the poverty line. Strains
between well to do newcomers, mainly from the former Soviet republics,
and impoverished veterans are growing - as do tensions between
destitute immigrants and their adopted homeland. Many emigrate from
Israel back to the Commonwealth of Independent States, to Germany,
Australia and New Zealand.

American aid - some $2.7 billion a year - largely goes to repay past
debts. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has announced in January
the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative. Local groups will be
encouraged to invest in the private sectors of their countries. But the
Partnership is geared to tackle the needy Arab polities rather than the
far-advanced and sated Israel.

Consider next door Palestine, now severed from its main market employer
next door.

A World Bank report released in early March stated that half the 3.5
million denizens of the Palestinian Authority live under an impossibly
depleted $2 a day poverty line. One in two employees in the private
sector lost their jobs and GDP declined by two fifths in the first two
years of the intifada.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned last
September that the economy of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was
drained of up to $2.4bn due to closures, mass unemployment, and damages
to infrastructure. "The profound changes that have taken place in the
functioning of the economy ... are unlikely to be easily reversed even
if stability is attained," the report concluded gloomily.

Israel withholds more than $400 million in back taxes it had collected
on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Business Week predicts that
donor aid - more than $1 billion annually at current levels - will dry
up in the wake of the Iraq conflict with resources diverted to
reconstruct a nascent and oil-rich democracy on the Euphrates.

Hence Blair's sense of urgency. Come victory in Iraq, Israel will face
a united "land-for-peace" front, encompassing ostensible adversaries
such as France and the United States. Unity on the Palestinian question
will salve the wounds self-inflicted on the Euro-Atlantic coalition on
the road to Baghdad.

Few place bets on Israel's ability to resist such concerted action, led
by the sole superpower. The Economist Intelligence Unit foresee the
imminent collapse of Sharon's narrow right-wing government - this
despite a modest economic revival.

The current account deficit, prognosticates the EIU, should fall to 1.7
percent of a GDP growing, in real terms, by 3.1 percent in 2004
(compared to a rosy scenario of 0.3 percent this year). This may be
unrealistic. Exports have sharply plunged to less than $28 billion in
2002, two fifths of it to the USA and a similar proportion to the
European Union.

Still, with a GDP per head of about $16,000 (or $20,000 in purchasing
power parity terms), Israel is one of the richest countries in the
world - particularly if its thriving informal economy is considered and
if the global hi-tech sector recovers which is widely tipped to happen.
According to Jane's Defense Weekly, Israel is the third largest
exporter of armaments, materiel and military services, ahead of Russia.

The country's foreign exchange reserves per capita, at $3500, are
higher than Japan's. Its external debt - c. $27 billion - is puny and
almost entirely guaranteed by the United States. Only one tenth of it
is held by ordinary foreign investors. Israel can withstand years of
economic sanctions unaffected - as it has done well into the 1970s. The
Jewish state also enjoys the support of a virulently nationalistic
diaspora, willing to dip into bulging pocketbook in times of need.

Another scenario, however unlikely, would see the European Union siding
with Israel against a bullying United States and its sidekick, the
United Kingdom. Last week, Italy's outspoken prime minister, Silvio
Berlusconi, normally a staunch supporter of president George Bush,
floated the idea of further enlarging the EU to incorporate Russia,
Turkey and Israel.

But visionaries like Stef Wertheimer, an Israeli industrial tycoon,
talk wistfully of a regional "mini" Marshall Plan. It calls for massive
infusions of aid and credit, overseen by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, into the eastern Mediterranean - Jordan,
Turkey, the Palestinian Authority and Israel's minorities - at least
until GDP per capita throughout the region surges fivefold, to $6,000
per year.

Such misguided development nostrums are alluring. They cater to the
Western misconception that terrorism is born of poverty and ignorance.
Removing these alleged causes of violence, goes the refrain, will end
all aggression. Throwing money at problems is an inveterate American
and European reflex. Prosperity and democracy are keys to stability and
moderation, they preach.

But the unpalatable truth is that Israel is the haughty outpost of
Western civilization in an area distinctly un-Western and anti-Western.
Terrorism is about clashing values and opposing worldviews, not about
the allocation of scarce jobs and the benefits of technology parks.

People like Osama bin-Laden are rich and well-educated. Muslim
fundamentalists - in between atrocities - provide health, welfare
benefits and schooling to millions of the poor and the deprived. They
don't seem to think, like Wertheimer and his patronizing ilk, that
higher standards of living negate their mission to oppose American
culture, ethos and hegemony by all means, fair or foul.

Oil for Food Revisited

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

Also Read

Saddam's Thousand Nights

Is It All About Oil?

The Iraqi and the Madman

God's Diplomacy and Human Conflicts

The Economies of the Middle East

It is payback time. The United States has every intention of sidelining
France, Germany and Russia in the lucrative reconstruction of a
war-ravaged Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John
Negroponte, said, last Wednesday, that Washington is bent on
"streamlining" the 8 years old U.N. oil-for-food program, now on hold
since last Monday.

Money from Iraqi oil sales currently flows to an escrow account,
co-managed by the Security Council's Office of the Iraq Program (OIP)
and the Iraqi government. More than $42 billion worth of contracts for
humanitarian supplies and equipment have been signed since December
1996.

The U.N. states that "supplies and equipment worth almost $26 billion
have been delivered to Iraq, while another $11.2 billion worth of
humanitarian supplies and equipment are in the production and delivery
pipeline." Of these, reports the Washington Post, $8.9 billion in
humanitarian goods, including $2.4 billion worth of food, are "ready to
be imported into Iraq". The program's budget is c. $10 billion a year.

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