(RFE/RL) — Ukrainian prosecutors have begun legal proceedings against the German techno band Scooter, and it faces significant legal consequences for performing at a festival in Crimea on August 4, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany said.

Ukrainian envoy Andriy Melnyk said on Facebook and in an interview with the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain that the band’s decision to enter Crimea, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014, was “not only a scandal, but also a crime with serious legal consequences.”

The band appeared at the ZBFest rock festival in Balaklava.

“This isn’t some minor infraction, but a serious crime that will be punished,” Melnyk told the newspaper chain.

Ukrainian prosecutors said the band’s members were warned against going to Crimea and could face up to eight years in prison.

“Such illegal actions committed by foreign citizens and world celebrities, who can…influence the opinion of their fans, impede Ukraine’s efforts towards restoring its territorial integrity,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Scooter front man H.P. Baxxte said last month the band was going to Crimea to perform music for its fans there, not to engage in politics.

No comment was immediately available from the band on the prosecutor’s charges.

Graffiti resembling that of British street artist Banksy has appeared on Israel’s concrete security barrier in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, mocking Donald Trump’s apparent love of walls.

In one work, the US president is depicted hugging and kissing an Israeli watchtower built into the wall, his left arm reaching around the tower suggestively, with little pink hearts fluttering from his mouth.

In the other mural, Trump is shown wearing a Jewish skullcap and placing his hand on a wall – a scene taken from his May visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

In a speech bubble, Trump is shown telling the concrete wall “I’m going to build you a brother” – a reference to his plans to build a wall between the US and Mexico, possibly inspired by Israel’s controversial barrier.

It has not yet been confirmed whether the murals are the work of Banksy, but they do share a likeness to his signature style.

The new pictures popped up just yards away from where the elusive artist opened ‘The Walled Off Hotel’ earlier this year. It sarcastically billed itself as having the “worst view in the world.”

The hotel was decorated with Banksy’s trademark political murals, including one in ‘Banksy’s Room,’ which shows a masked Palestinian and a helmeted Israeli soldier in a pillow fight.

Banksy has previously created art on the West Bank barrier, including a dove in a flak jacket and a little girl frisking an Israeli soldier.

Last year, he is believed to have sneaked into Gaza to draw four street murals, including one on a metal door that depicted the Greek goddess Niobe cowering against the rubble of a destroyed house. The painting, called ‘Bomb Damage,’ was drawn on the last remaining part of a two-story house that was destroyed in the 2014 war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Israel started building the barrier a decade ago, at the height of an armed Palestinian uprising. It said the wall is needed to keep suicide bombers and gunmen from entering Israel.

Palestinians say the barrier, which slices off about 10 percent of the West Bank, amounts to a land grab that stifles people’s movement.
Trump said early on in his term that he would try to broker a deal between Israel and Palestine, but has so far failed to offer a way forward.

Why do political figures appear to be able to get away with mild truth bending and sometimes even outrageous lies?

A new study, from researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and published online in Social Psychological and Personality Science, suggests people have more leniency for politicians’ lies when they bolster a shared belief that a specific political stance is morally right.

“It appears to be because those lies are perceived by supporters as an acceptable and perhaps necessary means to achieve a higher moral end,” said Allison Mueller, UIC doctoral candidate in psychology and lead author of the study. “A troubling and timely implication of these findings is that political figures may be able to act in corrupt ways without damaging their images, at least in the eyes of their supporters.”

Mueller and Linda Skitka, UIC professor of psychology, examined responses to a 2014 survey where participants read a political monologue about federal funding for Planned Parenthood that they believed was previously aired over public radio.

Respondents were randomly assigned one of two feedback conditions where upon completion they were informed that the monologue they had just read was either true or false.

They were then asked to report the extent to which they believed that the speaker was justified in delivering the monologue. Then, they reported their attitude positions for federal funding of women’s reproductive services and their moral conviction for the issue.

Although honesty was positively valued by all respondents, the researchers found that lying that served a shared moralized goal was more accepted and advocacy in support of the opposing view, or nonpreferred end, was more condemned, regardless of whether the statement was true or false.

Skitka said the findings expand knowledge of the moral mandate in two ways.

“Moral conviction for a cause, not the fairness of procedures, may shape people’s perceptions of any target who engages in norm-violating behaviors that uphold moralized causes, such as federally funded family planning in this situation,” she said. “The findings also suggest that, although people are not comfortable excusing others for heinous crimes that serve a moralized end, they appear comparatively tolerant of norm violations like lying.”

Interviewed Wednesday at RT, foreign nonintervention advocate and former presidential candidate Ron Paul said that “we’re hearing the same type of war propaganda” in regard to North Korea as Paul recalls hearing as a United States House of Representatives member in regard to Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Who benefits from the lies? Paul points to “the people who make a lot of money off of war, not only the people who sell weapons but also the people who gather up the oil and the natural resources.”

In addition to war propaganda, Paul says he is concerned about a “false flag” incident precipitating war between the US and North Korea. “What I worry about is a false flag,” Paul says in the interview. “We have our ships over there, and we have these military exercises, and all they have to do is have one American ship shot at and sunk or something, and then it would be all-out war — and never ask [the] question, ‘Who did what?’” Paul explains.

While Paul says he hopes the likelihood of a US military conflict with North Korea is at less than 25 percent, he warns that a war would be a disaster, mentioning, for example, the great destruction that would be expected to occur in Seoul, South Korea’s capital and most populous city, that is relatively close to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea.

Before turning to the topic of North Korea, Paul addressed in the interview the Russia sanctions bill President Donald Trump signed into law on Wednesday. Trump gave in to pressure from the deep state, neoconservatives, and the media when he signed into law the sanctions bill that expands and strengthens Russia sanctions, Paul opines.

Paul also cautions that Trump, who has spoken in favor of improving relations with Russia, is wrong if he thinks his approving the sanctions bill will placate individuals in the deep state who “are determined, almost obsessed, with making sure there is no friendship between the United States and Russia, between [Russia President Vladimir] Putin and Trump.” “If you give in,” concludes Paul, the deep state will “just add on to the pressure.”

Watch Paul’s complete interview here:

In the interview Paul mentions advice he had volunteered to Trump in regard to the sanctions legislation. To see some of Paul’s thoughts on the matter from before Congress passed and Trump signed the sanctions bill, which also deals with sanctions on Iran and North Korea in addition to Russia, read Paul’s July 24 editorial “Trump Should Veto Congress’ Foolish New Sanctions Bill.”

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Fatjona Mejdini

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Shkoder-Pult in northern Albania said he will not allow any more church wedding ceremonies on Sundays because he wants believers to attend Mass instead.

The archbishop of Shkoder-Pult, Angelo Massafra, announced on Thursday that from January 1, he will not allow people to get married on Sundays, causing surprise and some dismay among Catholics in Albania.

Artur Jaku, a priest in Shkodra, told Albanian Public Television, RTSH that the most important reason was that on Sundays, Catholics should go to Mass.

“A traditional Sunday for us Catholics is to attend Mass, and with weddings celebrations on the same day, the couple and all their family and friends could not attend,” Jaku said.

Another reason was the fact that every Sunday in summer months in the main Catholic cathedral, 15 to 20 couples take their wedding vows.

“It’s really a large number to be given the care they deserve during the ceremony,” Jaku said.

He also suggested that the Sunday weddings in church are a custom that Catholic Albanians only embraced at the beginning of the 1990s.

“Celebrating a marriage in church on Sundays is a new thing; Albanians in the past used to do it on Mondays. Now they have a chance to return to the old tradition,” he said.

However some Albanians expressed bemusement on social networks about the decision.

One social media user said the decision was odd, arguing that a wedding is a sacred occasion.

“There should not be a more cheerful moment for the church… It has to be always ready to serve people and not to impose limitations,” he wrote on Facebook.

Another called the decision a mistake.

“Sunday is a beautiful day to celebrate love in church, it shouldn’t be changed,” social media user wrote.

Others mentioned the fact that the Vatican never has stopped people marrying in church on Sundays and expressed concerns that the change could make couples decide not to hold their weddings in church.

However, not everybody was against the decision.

Klevis Paloka, a Catholic, told BIRN that it was correct because Sunday Mass is the most important event for a believer.

“The wedding can be organised on another day. In the Bible it does not say that it has to be on Sunday, but it says that that is a day to be dedicated only to God,” Paloka said.

The Shkodra area is considered the most important centre for Albanian Catholics, and they make up around of 47 per cent of the local population, while Muslims make up 45 per cent.

The Shkoder-Pult archbishop is one of two in Albania, alongside the archbishop of Tirana-Durres, while in the rest of the county, the Catholic Church is organised into dioceses.

Neutrinos and antineutrinos, sometimes called ghost particles because difficult to detect, can transform from one type to another. The international T2K Collaboration announces a first indication that the dominance of matter over antimatter may originate from the fact that neutrinos and antineutrinos behave differently during those oscillations. This is an important milestone towards the understanding of our Universe. A team of particle physicists from the University of Bern provided important contributions to the experiment.

The Universe is primarily made of matter and the apparent lack of antimatter is one of the most intriguing questions of today’s science. The T2K collaboration, with participation of the group of the University of Bern, announced today in a colloquium held at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan, that it found indication that the symmetry between matter and antimatter (so called “CP-Symmetry”) is violated for neutrinos with 95% probability.

Different Transformation of Neutrinos and Antineutrinos

Neutrinos are elementary particles which travel through matter almost without interaction. They appear in three different types: electron- muon- and tau-neutrinos and their respective antiparticle (antineutrinos). In 2013 T2K discovered a new type of transformation among neutrinos, showing that muon-neutrinos transform (oscillate) into electron-neutrinos while travelling in space and time. The outcome of the latest T2K study rejects with 95% probability the hypothesis that the analogous transformation from muon-antineutrinos to electron-antineutrinos takes place with identical chance. This is a first indication that the symmetry between matter and antimatter is violated in neutrino oscillations and therefore neutrinos also play a role in the creation of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.

“This result is among the most important findings in neutrino physics over the last years”, said Prof. Antonio Ereditato, director of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics of the University of Bern and leader of the Bern T2K group, “and it is opening the way to even more exciting achievements, pointing to the existence of a tiny but measurable effect”. Ereditato added: “Nature seems to indicate that neutrinos can be responsible for the observed supremacy of matter over antimatter in the Universe. What we measured justifies our current efforts in preparing the next scientific enterprise, DUNE, the ultimate neutrino detector in USA, which should allow reaching a definitive discovery”.

A remarkable contribution from the Bern group

In the T2K experiment a muon-neutrino beam is produced at the Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai on the east coast of Japan and is detected 295 kilometres away by the gigantic Super-Kamiokande underground detector (“T2K” stands for “Tokai to Kamiokande”). The neutrino beam needs to be fully characterized immediately after production, that means before neutrinos start to oscillate. For this purpose, the ND280 detector was built and installed close to the neutrino departing point.

Researchers from the University of Bern, together with colleagues from Geneva and ETH Zurich, and other international institutions, contributed to the design, realization and operation of ND280. The group of Bern, in particular, took care of the large magnet surrounding the detector and built and operated the so-called muon monitor, a device needed to measure the intensity and the energy spectrum of the muon particles produced together with neutrinos. The Bern group is currently very active in determining the probability of interaction of neutrinos with the ND280 apparatus: an important ingredient to reach high-precision measurements such as the one reported here.

By Ben Flanagan

Just 27 percent of Americans consider Qatar a friend or ally to the US, while many associate Doha with accusations of terror financing, an Arab News/YouGov poll has found.

The survey of 2,263 US citizens, conducted in July, also found that 31 percent of Americans consider Qatar to be unfriendly toward or an enemy of their country, while 43 percent either do not know or are unsure about how to classify the relationship with Doha.

The Arab News/YouGov poll on how the US views the Qatar crisis was carried out to mark the 60 days since the start of the diplomatic rift between Doha and its Arab neighbors Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain.

It found that 71 percent of Americans are aware, to various extents, of the diplomatic row. It also found that those who are aware have a good understanding of the reasons behind the crisis, with 67 percent correctly identifying that Qatar had been accused of supporting terror groups and meddling with the internal affairs of regional countries.

“Two months into the crisis, and given the US government’s keenness to mediate, it was important to gauge the sentiment of the American people with regard to this issue,” said Faisal J. Abbas, editor in chief of Arab News.

Stephan Shakespeare, CEO of YouGov — the globally renowned online polling company — noted that the American public “is not usually characterized by its high interest in foreign affairs, rather the opposite. However, this latest poll shows the current tensions between Qatar and its neighbors is gaining some significant attention.”

The poll also sought to measure public opinion regarding the US military base in Qatar. The Al-Udeid air base currently hosts more than 11,000 American soldiers. However, 49 percent of Americans say they are unsure if it is best for the base to remain there, while 20 percent thought that it should be moved somewhere else. Only 31 percent said the base should remain in Qatar.

The study also revealed several findings regarding the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera news network. At one point during the crisis the Anti-Terror Quartet (ATQ) — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt — called for a shutdown of the network over its editorial guidelines, which allegedly permitted terror-related content.

According to the Arab News/YouGov poll, more than six in 10 Americans are aware of Al Jazeera — but many of those have negative perceptions of it. Half believe that Al Jazeera has a negative influence on the US image abroad. A majority of those with an opinion on the matter also believe the network gives a platform to terror groups linked to Osama bin Laden — with 44 percent agreeing with that statement, and only 18 percent saying the opposite. The rest of the US respondents — 38 percent — were unsure.

When asked about their general perceptions of Qatar, the poll found that 50 percent did not have enough information.

Of those who did, the greatest proportion of US citizens — 34 percent — associate Qatar with accusations of terror financing, compared to just 16 percent who cited the Gulf state’s controversial hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

• For full report and related articles please visit : YouGov Qatar Poll

The cost runs into hundreds of billions of dollars — but has it been money down the drain for Doha?

Qatar has over the past years spent big on so-called “soft power” moves, from the launch of Al Jazeera English in 2006, to the controversial bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, to its investment in the Paris St-Germain football club, which just sealed the record-breaking $263 million transfer deal for Brazil forward Neymar.

Yet the recent survey carried out by Arab News and YouGov, published today, suggests such bids for international favor are proving deeply unsuccessful.

It is telling that Qatar and Al Jazeera — despite the latter having a presence in America for more than two decades — continue to be dogged by serious image problems in the US.

According to the YouGov/Arab News survey, nearly half of Americans polled are unsure about whether Qatar is a friend or foe, while 31 percent consider it “unfriendly” or an “enemy.”

A further barometer of Qatar’s image problem comes in the findings about what US citizens associate with Qatar.

Half of respondents said they do not know enough about the Gulf state to pass judgement. Yet the next highest response rate — at some 34 percent — reflects those whom associate Qatar with the accusations of terror financing made against it. Only 16 percent of Americans associate Qatar with the 2022 FIFA World Cup, one of the biggest sporting events in the world.

The poll highlights a very important point that the battle for American hearts and minds is still an open playing field.

And this is significant given that America maintains a major military presence at the Al-Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar. Half of Americans polled said they do not know enough to decide whether the US should keep the base open in the face of growing concerns, with a fifth saying it should be relocated elsewhere.

The poll also shows that most Americans, at 63 percent, recognize Al-Jazeera as a news source, but they do not believe that the network reflects professional journalism standards, which means many Americans do not trust Al Jazeera’s reporting.

Half believe Al Jazeera promotes a negative images of the US, while 44 percent remember that it served as a platform in promoting terrorist groups linked to Osama bin Laden.

There is no doubt over the reliability of the findings of the poll, which was conducted from July 19-21 by YouGov, one of the world’s leading market research companies.

Nor is there any doubt over one of the key takeaway points: That Qatar’s soft-power plays have been nothing but own goals.

By Gregory Gleason

Uzbek monetary authorities recently announced an intention to make the country’s national currency, the som, freely exchangeable. If Uzbek leaders succeed in realizing this goal, it will mark a transformational moment in the country’s post-Soviet economic development.

Preliminary plans to make the Uzbek currency convertible were first aired amid the election of President Shavkat Mirzyoyev last December. The president formalized the idea with a decree this past February that called on the government to promote “economic liberalization aimed at further strengthening macroeconomic stability and the maintenance of high economic growth.”

Given Uzbekistan’s past record on reform, it is understandable that the analyst community greeted overhaul intentions with a healthy dose of skepticism. Uzbek political leaders have a long history of announcing plans for economic reform, including price liberalization, privatization and the shift to a convertible currency. Yet over the past two decades, reforms have tended not to move past the drafting stages. Seemingly, after every announcement of the government’s commitment to economic reform, “complications” arose that slowed and, ultimately, derailed modernization efforts.

Uzbekistan inherited from the Soviet Union a highly centralized, “command” economy, along with a combination of volatile social and political problems. The government, which was led by the late Islam Karimov from independence in 1991 until last September, chose a cautious approach to all reform, stressing instead political stability and continuity.

There are signs that Mirziyoyev’s reform plans are distinctly different from those announced by his predecessor. The February presidential decree, for example, marked a significant departure from Karimov-era practices by explicitly identifying important reform objectives, including price liberalization and the elimination of the country’s multi-tiered exchange mechanisms.

In addition, recent commitments made by the Uzbek government to the International Monetary Fund have gone far beyond what observers expected. For years, Uzbek authorities stonewalled reform recommendations made by international monetary institutions. Now, Tashkent is making it clear that it is listening.

A recent IMF announcement on consultations, for example, refers to an Uzbek commitment to undertake comprehensive economic reform, including “unifying exchange rates and allowing a market-based allocation of foreign exchange resources.” The Uzbek government underscored these commitments by taking difficult steps, including raising the rate the government uses to loan to banks to the level of 14 percent in an effort to contain inflation. Uzbekistan has also mounted a diplomatic offensive with European Union officials to emphasize the seriousness of Tashkent’s reform intentions.

Creating a convertible currency would seem to be the key to success for any reform effort. In the 1990s, amid the economic chaos that accompanied the Soviet collapse, authorities maintained tight control over the som, ostensibly to prevent capital flight. Now, the ongoing lack of convertibility is choking economic activity and hindering foreign investment.

Under the existing system, Uzbek financial authorities control the som, establishing an official exchange rate as well as a privileged governmental exchange rate for particular state enterprises and their clients. But because the official rates do not reflect real scarcities, a third exchange rate, the “curb rate” also operates, reflecting the difference between what things cost and what they are worth.

Access to the official government rate enables certain privileged parties to reap great profits from business transactions, causing major market distortions. The black market “curb rate” also fosters economic distortions, encouraging criminal behavior. Financial authorities spend a good deal of time trying to manage the consequences of a distorted economy, including criminality, rather than simply managing financial policies. At the same time, inflation, capital flight, and very low levels of foreign direct investment remain persistent problems.

Transitioning to a market-based economy with a fully tradable currency would probably proceed in several stages. The first step would likely be an effort to unify exchange rates and reorganize state enterprises and state banks. A second major step would be to open channels for investment and liberalizing the ability of investors to transfer profits abroad. This step would require a secondary currency exchange market driven by market fundamentals, rather than government fiscal objectives.

These steps are achievable, but will not be easy to make in the years ahead. They may be complicated by the rising influence of political-economic institutions, such as the Eurasian Economic Union. Another potential roadblock is increasing competition among rival, standard currencies, such as the yuan, which the Chinese government aspires to establish as a global reference currency.

*Gregory Gleason is a Professor of Central Asia Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies

By Dean Klovens*

Amid ISIS-inspired killings in Paris, London, Manchester, Brussels, and San Bernadino, California, jihadi murderers have become number one reason law enforcement and intelligence organizations are certainly tested these days. While constant vigilance to random terror takes precedent as authorities try to counter future incidents, the world much to our chagrin, more likely than not, will witness new assaults on a number of continents.

While guns and suicide bombers seem to be prerequisites for strikes against structures and people, one should now keep in mind that technology can be included in the repertoire of weapons. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs pose a serious security threat as the “up and coming tool” as extremists develop and plan future incidents. It portends to be problematic and something security and law enforcement officials need to include, if they haven’t already, in any “what if” scenario in offsetting Islamic extremism.

The Emerging Threat and Its Uses

The issue here is not the drones our military and intelligence services use to target the enemy (the Predator MB-1-Q comes to mind), but the UAV that can be purchased over the counter through any big box store (Best Buy, Walmart). The types of drones that are of particular concern are small, commercially available quadcopter products purchased in quantities for a few hundred dollars each that can be weaponized and controlled by computer by the technologically savvy terrorist.

Aerial terrorism through computer controlled drones could be the new wave of weapons facing American, European, and other security and law enforcement services who now have the daunting task to prevent future strikes. To that point, in January 2015, the New York Times reported that the Virginia-based National Counterterror Center had developed a working group on drones that grew from four members to 65, telling us the concerns security officials have are quite real. The UAV’s impact as a newer weapon for terrorism cannot be ignored. No one can deny the hard fact that danger exists particularly as these mechanisms proliferate and replace humans as the next source of terrorist activity and where a person can commit destruction with the click of a key pad or smart phone, which eliminates the need to sacrifice a lone wolf killer or killers.

A case in point which amplifies this scenario was the 2011 arrest of Rezwan Ferdaus. Ferdaus, a very well-educated physicist who graduated from Boston’s Northeastern University, was caught in a FBI undercover operation and accused of planning to build small explosive-laden drones to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. He had been arrested by law enforcement at his rented storage facility upon taking delivery of C-4 explosives and AK-47 automatic weapons. In general, besides automatic weapons as a source, any attacker could also use a drone to spray weaponized chemical or biological agent in crowded stadiums or metropolitan areas.

As Moscow’s Center for arms Control Energy and Environmental Studies expert, Eugene Miasnikov, pointed out in a 2004 article, “that while billions have been spent on ballistic missile defense, little attention has been given to the more imminent threat posed by unmanned air vehicles in the hands of terrorists or rogue states”. He includes why the UAV is attractive to terrorists by providing insight into the following:

• Possibility to attack targets that are difficult to reach by land (cars loaded with explosives or suicide terrorists)
• Possibility of carrying out a wide-scale (area) attack, aimed at inflicting a maximum death rate on a population (particularly, through the use of chemical or biological weapons in cities)
• Covertness of attack preparation and flexibility in choice of a UAV launch site
• Possibility of achieving a long range and acceptable accuracy with relatively inexpensive and increasingly available technology
• Poor effectiveness of existing air defenses against targets such as low-flying UAVs
• Relative cost effectiveness of UAVs compared with ballistic missiles and manned airplanes
• Possibility of achieving a strong psychological effect by scaring people and putting pressure on politicians

The concern is that it’s a matter of time before a terrorist retrofits a drone with weapons. Government and their various intelligence and defense agencies should ask what the chances a UAV or several UAVs can penetrate its defenses as we should not be blind to the fact that there certainly could be another Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former mastermind and principal architect of 9-11, out there who is able to figure and configure and weaponise drones for an effective strike. Mohammed graduated from an American university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering whose plotting against the United States using commercial aircraft had not been anticipated.

The Free Market vs Security

Keeping a watch on UAVs as a threat will be a challenge not only from the prevention and regulatory standpoint but from a commercial point of view as US regulators will be up against the business community who see smaller drones as making their operations more efficient and more profitable; and, as drone technology becomes more popular, innovators will develop other practical applications for commercial integration. With over 327 drones to date licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly over U.S. soil, companies such as Amazon and Google Inc. will take advantage of drone technology for tasks ranging from package delivery to providing high-speed Internet in increasing their bottom lines.

While UAV’s pose a significant threat, the fast-growing global drone industry has not waited for government policy to be hammered out. Companies are pouring too much investment and effort into opening up this other wave to build up market share for their benefits in the all-new hardware and computing world.

Some contrarians argue, even if one (terrorist) were able to acquire lightweight explosives or chemical agents to attach to a drone, the physical size of commercially available drones creates limitations on the attacker’s ability to inflict harm. State legislatures across the country are debating if and how UAV technology should be regulated, taking into account the benefits of their use, privacy concerns and their potential economic impact. So far, 26 states have enacted laws addressing UAV issues and an additional six states have adopted resolutions.

Again a Balance

Regulators and national security planners will continuously worry that these low-cost drones, widely available for purchase, pose a consistent threat to commercial aviation, vital infrastructure, humans, and the economy.

It is also important to consider control tools preventing the surging proliferation of drones admired by hobbyists and aficionados. The threats seem real but to some the drone possesses no more a threat than a human does so from a security standpoint and control measure view, there again needs to be the proverbial balance between national security and the free-market and global market developments. While there will be this divide between drone enthusiasts, big business, and the government regulators, there is mounting evidence that both domestic and international terror networks desire to utilize drones. As UAVs proliferate, our government should anticipate a rise in the number of threats and prepare to respond in kind.

About the author:
*Dean Klovens has extensive experience in research & writing for business and public policy projects in areas of strategic intelligence to benefit leadership’s decision making. He earned his Master’s in Public Administration and Policy at DePaul University with a BA in Political Science at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By Behlül Özkan*

The dichotomy between Kemalism and Islamism is one of the dominant paradigms in studies of Turkish politics. According to this paradigm, the Kemalists achieved a monopoly over the Turkish political establishment with the founding of the Republic in 1923, at which point they undertook far-reaching reforms with the aim of thoroughly modernizing Turkey politically, economically, culturally, and socially. These reforms, especially during the first decade of the Republic, resulted in lasting changes to many areas of Turkish life, such as the adoption of the Latin alphabet, Western dress, a civil code, and a modern educational system. The fiercest resistance to the reforms came from the traditionalists in Turkish society, namely the Islamists, who – along with the religious communities known in Turkish as cemaats – lost much of their former standing in politics between 1923 and the end of the 1940s. Accordingly, the aforementioned dichotomy between Kemalism and Islamism is, to some degree, a useful lens through which to understand this era. There is, however, a danger in viewing it as the main dynamic in Turkish politics and in assuming that it has been in full force throughout the whole 90-year history of the Republic of Turkey. ¹

Starting in the early 1990s, Islamists began to win greater and greater percentages of the vote during a political ascendancy whose causes remain the subject of much scholarly debate. The paradigm most commonly employed to explain it is as follows: Islamists represent a strand of politics originating in the periphery and demanding democratic reform; they are ranged in opposition to an authoritarian, secularist Kemalist bureaucracy (and its political representative, the CHP, founded by Atatürk in 1923), which has controlled the levers of power in Turkey, being particularly strong in the military and judiciary. According to this narrative, the once-invincible Kemalists steadily lost power to the Islamists during a process that started in the 1990s and culminated in the latter’s 2002 electoral victory. ² Furthermore, the struggle for power continued after 2002, with the Kemalists resorting to yet more coup attempts in order to effect a purge of the Islamists. In 2007, the Constitutional Court stepped in to block the election of the AKP’s presidential candidate, Abdullah Gül. This was followed by a closure case against the party, which was decided in the AKP’s favor by a margin of one vote. Starting in 2008, the AKP retaliated against the military and judiciary bureaucracy as well as opposition politicians and journalists through a series of indictments that it later admitted had been concocted. By means of such show-trials, it effected a purge of anti-AKP elements (in the state, media, and especially the military) which was unprecedented in the history of the Republic. ³ It bears mentioning that the AKP’s coming to power in 2002, and its victory in the subsequent power struggle against its opponents, particularly in the military and judiciary, occurred with the support not only of Turkish Islamists, but also some Turkish liberals and, to an extent, leftists, as well as the EU and the US. The AKP was billed as a proponent of a well-integrated and global market economy;  it was also expected to bring about a democratic transformation. In his 2005 article, Vali Nasr described the AKP’s political ascendancy as “the rise of Muslim democracy”; even as late as 2009, Henri Barkey and Morton Abramowitz, two US scholars and diplomats with an expert knowledge of Turkey, wrote an article for the prominent international relations journal Foreign Affairs entitled “Turkey’s Transformers” – referencing, of course, the ruling AKP. In the article, Barkey and Abramowitz argue that the West should support the AKP in its quest towards “becoming a tolerant liberal democracy.” ⁴

The present article rejects the paradigm that reads Turkish politics in terms of a Kemalist-Islamist dichotomy and – as a result – characterizes Islamism as a political actor representing the periphery in opposition to the center and civil society in opposition to the state. At present, in 2017, after 15 years of being governed by an AKP majority, Turkey is under a State of Emergency regime, in which rule of law and freedom of the press have been suspended, opposition politicians have been arrested, and the preconditions for free and fair elections no longer exist. The AKP has failed to realize the mission to democratize Turkey that has taken up for well over a decade; on the contrary, as of 2017, democracy in Turkey has regressed to a state worse than in 2002. This article likewise rejects the claim that Turkey has had a secularist, authoritarian, Kemalist establishment for more than 90 years. With the beginning of the Cold War in 1945, domestic and foreign policy in Turkey were shaped by an opposition to communism and to the Soviet Union. When Turkey joined NATO in 1952, anti-communism, which became the backbone of its state ideology, was fortified by nationalist and conservative values; the Islamists, for their part, were happy to seize this opportunity to forge an alliance with the establishment. In short, contrary to popular belief, Islamism in Turkey during the Cold War era was never a movement representing a periphery oppressed and victimized by the political center. Rather, it had the full blessing of the center, which had seen it as an antidote to the post-1960s ascendancy of the Left. Consequently, the Turkish establishment was unperturbed by the fact that the Islamists began to form parties and take part in coalition governments from the 1970s onward or, during the same decade, to run critical ministries like the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice.

By the 1990s, the alliance between Islamism and the state had dissolved. By that point, Islamism, which the state had supported during the Cold War as an antidote to the Left, had become far more powerful than expected. Moreover, as the Left’s influence diminished following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its social base increasingly swelled the ranks of the Islamists, who emerged as a political force with designs on total power. ⁵ In short, with the end of the Cold War, Islamism – having outgrown the rather limited role assigned to it by the state – filled a gap created by an increasingly anemic Left; at the same time, it replaced center-right parties which were perceived as corrupt and responsible for Turkey’s economic woes. Thus, far from being a political outsider, Islamism was the representative of a burgeoning far-right political movement within the establishment which adopted the authoritarian, repressive, anti-pluralist, majoritarian character of the Cold War-era Turkish state, holding that in its struggle for power, the ends always justified the means. Not surprisingly, predictions from the 1990s and onwards regarding the imminent democratization of Turkey by a far-right political movement, namely Islamists, turned out to be entirely mistaken.

ISLAMISM IN COLD WAR–ERA TURKEY AS AN ANTIDOTE TO THE LEFT

In Turkey’s November 2015 elections, AKP deputy İsmail Kahraman, currently in his late 70s, was elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Aside from a brief period between 1996 and 1997 when he served as minister of culture for Erbakan’s Welfare Party, Kahraman was not a well-known politician. In August 2016, Kahraman delivered a seemingly inexplicable outburst concerning Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara: “Che was a killer who personally carried out executions and was slain at age 39…he was a guerilla. A bandit’s image shouldn’t appear on the collar or on the shirt of a Turkish high school student.” What could have caused Kahraman to flare up in outrage against the worldwide cult figure of Che, more than a quarter-century after the end of the Cold War? It is worth noting that Kahraman got his first taste of politics as a member of the Millî Türk Talebe Birliği (Turkish National Students Union, MTTB) – a focal point of anti-communist youth activity in Turkey – in his 20s, and in 1967 he became its president. In other words, Kahraman has been active in anti-leftist politics in Turkey for more than half a century; thus his political career sheds a good deal of light on Islamism’s record in Turkey over that same time period.

During the 1960s, the Turkish Left truly became a mass movement, in parallel with the rising tide of leftism worldwide. In the 1965 elections, for instance, the Workers Party of Turkey became the first socialist party to enter Parliament; even the CHP described its own political stance as “left of center.” Islamism, too, became increasingly visible – in politics, the media, publishing, youth organizations, religious events, and elsewhere – during this period. At the same time, Islamism in Turkey underwent a significant transformation, moving further away from the Ottoman tradition and becoming closer to Islamist movements in the Middle East.

The rise of Arab nationalism in the 1950s under the leadership of Nasser was perceived by the US as a threat to its interests in the Middle East. For example, Report No. 5820 by the US National Security Council explicitly stated, “The West and the radical pan-Arab nationalist movement have become arrayed against each other. The West has supported conservative regimes opposed to radical nationalism, while the Soviets have established themselves as its friends and defenders.” ⁶ Two years previously, US President Eisenhower had written in his diary that in order to counter the influence of Egyptian leader Nasser, “my own choice of such a rival is King Saud.” In Eisenhower’s words, “[Saudi] Arabia is a country that contains the holy places of the Moslem world, and the Saudi Arabians are considered to be the most deeply religious of all the Arab groups. Consequently, the King could be built up, possibly, as a spiritual leader.” ⁷ The Saudis themselves were well aware that, in light of the Cold War balance of power, it would be much to their advantage to become the leader of Islamist movements as a counterweight to growing Arab nationalism and socialism in the Middle East. The establishment of the Rabitat al-Alami al-Islami (Muslim World League) under Saudi leadership in Mecca during the 1962 Hajj pilgrimage season greatly facilitated coordination among Islamist groups. ⁸ Indeed, in his 1987 book Rabıta, Turkish journalist Uğur Mumcu described, in exhaustive detail, how Islamism had spread in Turkey (with the help of Saudi capital and the support of the MWL) and how linkages between Islamic capital and politics had been created through the religious orders known as cemaats.⁹ Yet a full 20 years before the publication of Mumcu’s book, left-wing bureaucrats within the state had already leaked whatever intelligence they possessed about these matters to the press. Such bureaucrats saw the rise of the Islamists – fostered by the anti-communist climate in Cold-War era Turkey – as a threat to the country’s secular republic.

Indeed, an in-depth article on Islamist activities in Turkey with the headline “Who are the ones behind the reactionary movement in Turkey?”, based on reports by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, was published in the March 19, 1968 issue of the socialist journal Ant.¹⁰ Notably, the article featured an organizational chart with the title “The Muslim Brotherhood,” and it is striking, when one considers the events of the past half century, how nearly all of the article’s predictions concerning Islamism have been fulfilled. The article stresses that two foreign powers lie behind the rise of Islamism in Turkey: “Reactionary elements in Turkey are acting in concert with the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the Middle East…Anglo-American imperialism views the recent strengthening and coming to power of nationalism and socialism in the Arab states of the Middle East as endangering its own oil revenues. Accordingly, it has seen fit to politicize Islam and, through the CIA, has begun supporting the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The Muslim Brotherhood movement in the Middle East has the patronage of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.” ¹¹ Accusing the USA and the CIA of supporting Islamist activities, which were threatening Turkey’s secular republic, this intelligence report is clear evidence that there was a faction within the Turkish state during the 1960s that was critical of Turkey’s NATO alliance. Its presence within the state was a reflection of the increasingly leftist, anti-American social and political climate in Turkey during that period. According to the article, two individuals ran the activities of the Saudi-founded MWL in Turkey: Ahmet Gürkan and Salih Özcan.

Gürkan and Özcan were present at the foundational meeting of the MWL in 1962 and played an important role in the rise of Islamism in Turkey. Gürkan, a Justice Party MP from Konya, was the deputy who introduced a motion in Parliament in 1950 to change existing legislation in order to have the prayer call read in Arabic. Gürkan also served as president of the Turkish-Saudi Arabian Friendship Association. ¹² Özcan was likewise a politician who played many vital roles in the Islamist movement. A native of the Southeastern Turkish city of Urfa, Özcan was from an Arab ethnic background and was fluent in Arabic; he enjoyed considerable clout in the Nur Movement, which is a religious movement founded by Said Nursi (1878-1960) and centered on his writings called as Risale-i Nur (Epistle of Light), becoming known as “the foreign minister of Bediüzzaman” (Bediüzzaman was an honorary title of Said Nursi, the founder of the Nur Movement). When President Cevdet Sunay visited Saudi Arabia in 1968, Özcan was able, through his connections, to arrange a meeting between Sunay and MWL President Suroor Sabban. ¹³ Özcan was also the one who introduced pro-Saudi propaganda to Turkey by founding the publishing house Hilal Yayınları (with Saudi support) in the late 1950s. From the 1960s onwards, Hilal Yayınları translated the works of Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul Ala Maududi, and other Islamist thinkers, playing a key role in bolstering their influence over Turkish Islamism. In 1977, Özcan was elected a deputy for the Islamist Millî Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party, MSP). After the 1980 coup, he was responsible for setting up a meeting between Mohammed bin Faisal (the son of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia), six generals in the Turkish Armed Forces, and Prime Minister Bülent Ulusu, in order to persuade the Turkish military to allow Saudi capital into the country. In return for his efforts, Özcan was made the first founding partner of Faisal Finans Kurumu, an Islamic bank established in Turkey in 1984 by Saudi capital. ¹⁴

As early as 1968, the article published in Ant was already referring to both Turgut Özal (who would rise through the ranks to become prime minister and president in the 1980s) and his brother Korkut Özal (who would serve as a minister for the MSP in the 1970s) as “the Muslim Brotherhood’s man in key areas of the state sector.” ¹⁵ At the time, Turgut Özal ran Turkey’s State Planning Organization while Korkut Özal was in charge of Turkish Petroleum. As soon as Turgut Özal became prime minister in 1983, one of his first actions was to sign a decree dated December 16, 1983, which allowed Saudi capital access to Turkey under the name of “interest-free banking.” This influx of Saudi capital ushered in by Özal acquired two main footholds in Turkey: Al Baraka Türk, under the leadership of Korkut Özal; and Faisal Finans, established under the leadership of the Saudis’ right-hand man Salih Özcan.

The intelligence report in Ant described Necmettin Erbakan – then the president of the Türkiye Odalar ve Borsalar Birliği (Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey) – as a key name in the “Muslim Brotherhood.” First entering Parliament as an independent deputy from Konya in 1969, Erbakan went on to found the Islamist Milli Nizam Partisi (National Order Party). By the 1990s, he had transformed Islamism in Turkey into a profiteering ring with a network of cemaats that had effectively become holding companies. Remarkably, the intelligence report in Ant – evidently based on highly reliable information – described Erbakan as a “candidate for prime minister” in 1968, predicting his rise from deputy prime minister in the coalition governments of the 1970s to prime minister in 1996. ¹⁶

Two of the newspapers and their owners mentioned in the intelligence report in Ant, constituting the Muslim Brotherhood’s media wing in Turkey, have been highly influential over the past 48 years: Bugün and its owner Mehmet Şevket Eygi, a prominent thinker in Turkish Islamism; and Muammer Topbaş (of the Topbaş family, one of the most powerful Islamist family businesses in Turkey), the owner of Babıali’de Sabah. Publishing headlines like “The anti-NATO commies have dirtied the streets,” in the Islamist Bugün, Eygi staunchly advocated a Turkey with strong NATO ties, lambasting Turkey’s ascendant left with the words, “No to NATO, eh? God damn all of you.” ¹⁷ In 1968, Eygi wrote an article for Bugün entitled “In the Country of Sharia,” which consisted of his impressions of Saudi Arabia, and was effectively a piece of pro-Saudi propaganda. ¹⁸ Muammer Topbaş, the owner of the other aforementioned Islamist newspaper, Babıali’de Sabah, also had close ties to Saudi Arabia. Another member of the Topbaş family, Eymen Topbaş, founded Al Baraka Türk together with Korkut Özal during the 1980s, while various other prominent members of the family took on high-ranking positions at the Saudi-funded İlim Yayma Cemiyeti (Society for the Propagation of Knowledge) and Bereket Vakfı (Baraka Foundation). ¹⁹ Yet another scion of the Topbaş family, Mustafa Latif Topbaş, a highly successful businessman during the AKP era, was named the 14th richest person in Turkey by Forbes magazine in 2012.

Also presented in the “Muslim Brotherhood” organizational chart in Ant was a list of the institutions and societies through which Islamism sought to acquire a popular base in Turkey, along with their associates. One organization in the chart, the aforementioned İlim Yayma Cemiyeti, received donations from the King of Saudi Arabia at the time. Moreover, the İslam Enstitüleri (Islamic Institutes), which were represented as being connected to the İlim Yayma Cemiyeti, hosted a talk by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who spent the summer of 1967 in Turkey. The ties between al-Qaradawi and Islamists in Turkey have steadily grown closer over the past half-century. Known today as a prominent Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, al-Qaradawi described Erdoğan as “the hope of Muslims and of Islam” in a 2016 speech. ²⁰ Another organization featured in the chart is the Associations for the Struggle against Communism, which had a significant Islamist presence. In the 1960s, Fethullah Gülen, the founder and leader of the Gülen Movement, played a key role in the founding of the Erzurum branch of the Associations for the Struggle against Communism. ²¹

One of the societies listed in the “Muslim Brotherhood” organizational chart is especially worthy of mention given its role in the rise of Islamism in Turkey over the past half century: the aforementioned Turkish National Students Union (MTTB). As was noted at the beginning of this section, İsmail Kahraman, the current speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, was the MTTB’s president at the time of the publication of the 1968 report, which described the organization as “under the control of the pan-Islamists.” ²² Kahraman, who has served as a mentor in the training of Islamist youths at MTTB, has been a lifelong opponent of secularism. Seeking to promote the Islamist line at MTTB, Kahraman described the ascendant left of the 1960s as “the servants of our national enemy, communism;” he resolutely opposed the anti-NATO protests of the time, describing them as “part of a plan to make Turkey communist.” ²³ AKP leaders like Tayyip Erdoğan and Abdullah Gül cut their political teeth at the MTTB during the 1970s and served as managers in the organization as well. ²⁴ Furthermore, in a book published by the MWL entitled A World Guide to Organizations of Islamic Activities, the MTTB was at the top of the list of “the MWL’s offices and representatives” in Turkey. ²⁵

During the Cold War, Turkey was hardly immune from the anti-communist ideology that predominated among NATO member countries. The intelligence report that Ant published in 1968 called attention to the fact that Islamism in Turkey had benefited from this situation; it also singled out then-Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel for criticism. “National intelligence reports on the threat of reactionism” had been provided to Prime Minister Demirel as well; however, the report complained that Demirel had “deceived the ignorant masses by exploiting religion to gain votes” and that he remained indifferent to “the danger of reactionism which is threatening our constitutional regime and reforms, a danger which is about to draw Turkey into the darkness of the Middle Ages.” The report added the following warning: “The forces of reactionism, which today are rapidly organizing and have become a state within the state, will one day demand the head of Demirel as well.” ²⁶ It is surely no small irony that Demirel, who did not perceive the rise of Islamism in the late 1960s as a threat – but rather facilitated its presence within the state by forming coalition governments with Islamist parties during the 1970s – led the struggle against Islamism as president during the 1990s, working hand in hand with the military.

SAUDI CAPITAL AND THE RISE OF ISLAMISM

Mumcu’s book “Rabıta” published in 1987 provides a detailed account of how Turkey’s state ideology shifted to the “Turkish-Islamic synthesis” following the 1980 military coup and how Islamism – with Saudi support – flourished during the administration of Özal, who made no secret of his Islamist sympathies. By that time, left-wing bureaucrats – especially within the security and intelligence apparatuses – who were concerned about Islamization had long since become a minority. In all likelihood, they were the ones to provide Mumcu (who shared their essential worldview) with the information he used in his work. On January 24, 1993, Mumcu himself was the victim of a mysterious assassination by car bomb.

A close examination of the networks exposed by Mumcu – networks linking politics, Islamic capital, and the cemaats – reveals a striking fact about present-day Turkey: the individuals and firms in question were ones that would later achieve prominence during the AKP era. The following are some of the individuals involved with the Saudi-financed organizations and foundations listed by Mumcu in 1987: Eymen and Mustafa Latif Topbaş of the Topbaş family, which has a share in BİM supermarkets, is part of the Erenköy cemaat (a branch of the Nakşibendi religious order), and has close ties to Erdoğan; Hasan Kalyoncu, the founder of Kalyon İnşaat – which was awarded a contract for Istanbul’s third airport and is one of the owners of the pro-AKP media outlet Sabah-ATV – along with its current president, Cemal Kalyoncu; Sabri Ülker, the founder of the Ülker Group (which has long supported Islamist publications and foundations) as well as former prime minister Davutoğlu’s high school classmate Murat Ülker; former AKP finance minister Kemal Unakıtan; and Abdullah Tivnikli, who joined the board of directors of Türk Telekom following its sale to the Saudi firm Oger Telecom. ²⁷ Having formed deep ties to Saudi capital during the 1980s, these individuals entered the limelight during the AKP era, receiving lucrative construction tenders and becoming an increasingly powerful force in the media and politics. ²⁸

Saudi and Gulf capital steadily increased their presence in Turkey beginning in 2002, when the AKP came to power. As companies like Digiturk, Finansbank, and Türk Telekom were purchased by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Gulf capital became a crucial component of Turkey’s real estate and construction sectors. Many skyscrapers built in Turkey’s big cities in recent years count Gulf companies among their owners. Turkish bureaucrats with close ties to Saudi money typically rise quite speedily through the ranks. Take, for instance, the case of Efkan Ala, who served as minister of the interior between 2013 and 2016. Prior to becoming minister of the interior, Ala served as undersecretary of the Prime Ministry; in 2012, he was appointed a member of the Audit Committee of Türk Telekom, in order to represent the Saudi company Oger Telecom. Without a doubt, the Saudi firm viewed Ala as someone it could trust and as the one who would best represent Oger Telecom. One could also mention Murat Çetinkaya, the governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey since April 2016, who has long held high-ranking positions at Gulf-controlled, Turkey-based firms such as Al Baraka Türk and Kuveyt Türk. But this influx of Gulf – and especially Saudi – capital into Turkey is highly problematic. For one thing, such money is not subject to normal accountability mechanisms, meaning that its entry into Turkey suffers from a lack of transparency. Moreover, every sum of money invested in a country comes with an attached ideology, so to speak. Investors from Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, are the product of an anti-democratic monarchical system, with a totalitarian worldview shaped by Wahhabi doctrine. It would be surprising if they did not seek to alter the political and economic makeup of Turkey in line with their own interests. ²⁹ Visiting Saudi Arabia in 2010, then-Prime Minister Erdoğan declared “whatever the EU is to us, Saudi Arabia is, too”; nonetheless, in the seven years since that time, Riyadh has achieved far more cordial ties with Ankara than Brussels has. Turkey created the Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) in Syria in partnership with Saudi Arabia; Turkey also partnered with the Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) in Syria under Saudi leadership, and in February 2016, Saudi fighter jets were deployed to İncirlik Air Base. ³⁰

ISLAMISM AND RELATIONS WITH THE WEST

By the 1990s, Islamism had become a redoubtable economic force in Turkey, consisting of a network of cemaats that had evolved into holding companies, and with a presence in all state institutions. Rather than share political power with anyone, it sought total power for itself. Around the same time, Turkey’s judiciary and military bureaucracy had also begun to perceive political Islam as a threat. Thus the “reformist” wing of Islamism spearheaded by Erdoğan and Gül reckoned there would have to be a purge of the judiciary and military, and that in order for this to happen, they would need support from Turkey’s foreign allies, particularly the US and EU. In the run-up to the February 28 coup and the subsequent closing down of the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) and the founding of the AKP, this reformist wing distanced itself from the Millî Görüş (National Vision) line espoused by Erbakan, and began to climb the rungs of power by forming strategic alliances with the West.

As scholar İlhan Uzgel has remarked, two of the AKP’s most prominent politicians, Tayyip Erdoğan and Abdullah Gül, underwent “a significant cognitive learning process” starting in the mid-1990s, realizing that the West, and the US in particular, played an indispensable role in their “coming to power, and staying in power, in Turkey”: “Therefore, the young generation [reformists] of the National Vision preferred to rise to power not in spite of the West, or the US, or the Jewish lobby, but with the full support of all of the above, using them as a means by which to bargain for more and more power.” ³¹ And indeed, during their visits to the US in 2002, both before and directly after the elections, Gül and Erdoğan delivered important messages regarding the course to be charted by the AKP. In January of 2002, for instance, Erdoğan met with Graham Fuller (a CIA Middle East expert and one of the architects of the “moderate Islam” project sponsored by the RAND Corporation) as well as former US ambassador Morton Abramowitz; at a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an important think tank, he described the US as “Turkey’s natural partner.” ³² Erdoğan’s statement regarding his contacts in the US – “they are keeping track of us” – is quite telling. ³³ Undoubtedly, Erdoğan was aware that high-ranking members of the US political establishment sought to use the AKP model to turn the tide of post-September 11 Middle Eastern religious fundamentalism; Erdoğan viewed this as an invaluable resource in the power struggle about to erupt in Turkey. The following lines, written by journalist Derya Sazak in January of 2002, are a striking reflection of the relationship the AKP leadership established between domestic and foreign policy: “Making references to the ‘moderate Islam’ of his electorate, Erdoğan has declared that the political model found in Turkey, based on the principle of ‘coming to power and departing from power through elections’ within a democratic, secular state order, can set an example for every country in the Muslim world.” ³⁴ As early as November of 1999, Abdullah Gül visited the US together with Recai Kutan, the founder of the Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party, FP). During their visit, he stated, “We have learned our lesson from the experience of the Refahyol government” [the short-lived coalition government between Necmettin Erbakan’s Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) and the center-right Doğru Yol Partisi (True Path Party)]. Gül went on to explain that he “was in favor of EU membership” rather than an “Islamic Common Market.” ³⁵

This policy of rapprochement with the US, which Uzgel described as “pragmatic change,” along with the AKP’s in-person messages to Washington that it had embraced democratic principles, did not represent a fundamental shift resulting from a process of profound introspection. Rather, it represented a pragmatic search for a foreign ally that would strengthen the AKP’s hand at home. ³⁶ Erdoğan himself effectively admitted as much, stating, “I have never used the expression, ‘I have changed.’ If saying that one has changed means a renunciation of one’s values, then using such an expression is impossible. We have merely shed our old skin in response to worldwide developments.” ³⁷ This image of “shedding one’s skin” – i.e. adapting to present conditions without altering one’s true nature – well captures the AKP’s trajectory between 2002 and 2011, both in domestic and foreign policy. In a 1993 interview, Erdoğan, then serving as the Istanbul chairman of the Welfare Party, famously stated, “We hold that democracy is only a vehicle. It is a vehicle to choose whatever system you wish to arrive at.” ³⁸ In light of such statements from Erdoğan, one should hardly be surprised at the current state of the rule of law, separation of powers, and freedom of the press in Turkey following 15 years of AKP rule.

Around the same time, Fethullah Gülen, who moved to the US in 1999, and was a close ally of the AKP from 2002 to 2013, also advocated establishing close ties with Washington. Gülen’s own Cold War-era anti-communist discourse owed much to Said Nursi, the leader of the Nur Movement, within which Gülen was raised. In the 1940s, Nursi urged the CHP government of the time to oppose communism – which he likened to “the invasion of the terrible dragon from the Northeast [the USSR]” – and to “embrace the Quran and the reality of belief.” According to Nursi, it was necessary to side with the US in this conflict: “It is possible for a devout Muslim to become good friends with a mighty state like America, which is earnest in its defense of religion.” ³⁹ In 1997, Gülen publicly expressed the pro-US stance he had inherited from Nursi, stating, “Fanatical communists harbor antipathy towards America without any rational or logical basis.” He added, “It is important to follow the US closely – along with whatever parts there to which we feel an affinity – and to avail ourselves of it properly. In this way, one can raise a ‘golden generation,’ a young generation which will represent science and technology throughout the world.” ⁴⁰

During that same period, others began to find fault with Turkey’s unilateral dependence on the West, arguing that a Cold War-style alliance with the West would ultimately be untenable, and that new approaches to foreign policy were necessary. İsmail Cem, Turkey’s foreign minister between 1997 and 2002, argued that Turkey needed to align itself with the East, not just with the West; Cem aimed at turning Turkey into a “world power” by developing independent policies towards the surrounding regions. ⁴¹ In ulusalcı (leftist-nationalist) circles and among certain high-ranking army officers, a new foreign policy approach known as “Eurasianism” emerged, which questioned the validity of Turkey’s relations with the West. This outlook reached its zenith in 2002, when the secretary-general of Turkey’s National Security Council, General Tuncer Kılınç, declared that Turkey had not received the slightest benefit from the EU, stating, “I view it as advantageous for Turkey, if possible, to adopt an approach which would also include Russia and Iran, without neglecting America.” ⁴² With the AKP’s coming to power in 2002, these trends in foreign policy came to an end, while the era of unconditional rapprochement with the US and EU began. Following the September 11 attacks, the US settled on the AKP as a “model” for Middle Eastern countries, as a means of countering the rise of religious fundamentalism in the Muslim world. The US viewed the AKP as suitable because it was a standard-bearer of neo-liberalism, having embraced free-market economics, and because it had come to power by free and fair elections. In 2004, US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented Iraq with the example of Turkey, stating that in Iraq, “there will be an Islamic republic, as there are other Islamic republics – Turkey and Pakistan.” ⁴³ Thus the West supported the AKP as a model of moderate Islam; Erdoğan, for his part, was quick to turn this to his advantage in domestic politics. The AKP believed that a purge of the military and judicial bureaucracy and, more broadly, the country’s Republican secular elites – who, in any case, had begun to question the nature of Turkey’s relations with the West – would be inevitable in order to reinforce its own power. It waged a fierce campaign against them, not hesitating to resort to show trials when necessary; in all of this, it had the full support of the West. In the resulting struggle for power – which included such events as the 2007 presidential crisis, the 2008 closure case against the AKP, and the subsequent Ergenekon and Balyoz operations – political Islam emerged triumphant.

Thus the AKP’s domestic policy began to drift towards authoritarianism, while in foreign policy its relations with the West grew increasingly more awkward. Cultivating ties with radical groups in the Middle East following the Arab Uprisings, the AKP diverged significantly from the moderate Islam the US had come to associate with it. Notably, debates in the US about Turkey’s political drift and its distancing itself from the West began in earnest after 2009. Especially following 2011, the AKP supported Muslim Brotherhood parties in the Middle East, taking sides in the internal chaos and clashes in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Libya. One could also cite the AKP’s misguided approach to radical groups like the Nusra Front in the Syrian Civil War and its use of the refugee crisis as a means of threatening the EU. At present, the US and the EU have a problematic relationship with Turkey’s Islamist government. Ankara, for its part, is aware that the West has considerable leverage over the AKP. The AKP views the US’s close ties to the Gülen Movement, the July 15 coup attempt, and the prosecution of Reza Zarrab (who is alleged to have overseen the flow of billions of dollars through Turkey to circumvent the embargo against Iran) as attempts to overthrow Turkey’s government. One could cite, for example, the following statement from none less than Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ: “It is unclear whether the person on trial is Reza Zarrab, our Honorable President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or [his wife] Emine Erdoğan.” ⁴⁴

Behind Turkey’s tensions with the US and EU lies a paranoid fear that the methods, which the AKP (along with the West and the Gülen Movement) once used against its opponents from 2002 onwards, are now being used against the AKP itself. In 2004, when negotiations regarding Turkey’s EU bid officially commenced to great fanfare, the country’s economy and politics seemed firmly tethered to the EU, allowing foreign capital to flow into Turkey in abundance. Now, in 2017, the situation could not be more different. The rule of law has been suspended in Turkey, corporations have been taken over by the government, pro-AKP trustees have been appointed as mayors in numerous municipalities, opposition politicians and journalists have been arrested, and the country as a whole has become increasingly authoritarian as it leaves the orbit of the EU. As a result, Turkey’s economy is in utter turmoil. Many, not least the AKP, are aware that these problems have reached a boiling point and that a solution is unlikely to materialize. There is no doubt that this sense of desperation induced Erdoğan, the leader of a NATO country, to state, “If Turkey joins the Shanghai Five, things will go much more smoothly.” ⁴⁵ In short, Turkish Islamism, which rose to prominence in Cold War-era Turkey as part of the struggle against an ascendant Left, is now transforming a secular democratic republic into an authoritarian far-right Islamic polity, in line with its own world view. Turkey’s Western allies, especially the US, are trying to determine a framework and a set of principles on which to base their relationship with the Islamists. Turkey was once a secular republic and – for all its flaws – a functioning democratic polity. The alliance, which was formed to put an end to that polity, in the name of defeating authoritarian Kemalism, has now been dissolved. The relationship between Turkey and the West exists, for the moment, on a transactional basis. Yet at a time when Turkish democracy has been shaken to its foundations, such a pragmatic relationship is unlikely to last for long.

About the author:
*Behlül Özkan, Associate Professor, Marmara University

Source:
This article was published by The Hudson Institute and Current Trends in Islamist Ideology.

Notes:

In response to the launches of ballistic missiles of possible intercontinental range by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United Nations Security Council today moved to strengthen sanctions on the Northeast Asian country’s exports.

In a resolution adopted unanimously, the 15-member body strongly condemned the DPRK’s ballistic missile launches on 3 July and 28 July, which the country has stated were of “intercontinental” range.

The Council reaffirmed previous Council decisions that the DPRK not conduct further launches using ballistic missile technology, nuclear tests, or any other provocation.

The Council moved to significantly strengthen the sanctions on the DPRK, imposing a full ban on the export of coal, iron and iron ore from the DPRK. Previously these items could be exported for livelihood purposes, for a limited amount.

The Council also prohibited countries from increasing the total number of work authorizations for DPRK nationals. It banned new joint ventures or cooperative entities with DPRK entities or individuals as well as additional investments in existing joint ventures.

Member States are requested to report to the Security Council, within 90 days of the adoption of this resolution, on concrete measures they have taken to effectively implement this resolution.

The Council also designated several additional individuals for a travel ban and assets freeze, as well as designating entities for an assets freeze.

On the political front, the Council calls for resumption of the Six-Party Talks and reiterated its support for the commitments set forth in the Joint Statement of 19 September 2005 issued by China, the DPRK, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States.

The commitments included that the goal of the Six-Party Talks is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner, and that the United States and the DPRK respect each other’s sovereignty and exist together peacefully.

The notion that ‘Cheap energy trumps clean energy’ has fueled Asia’s obsessive addiction to coal and other fossil fuels (CFF) and has become ingrained in the mindset of the people. The harsh reality is that many countries in Asia, especially least developed countries (LDCs) like Bangladesh continue to believe that CFF remains the cheapest source of energy and will continue to do so.

However, this belief is far from the truth in today’s day and age. CFF are limited resources and are fast depleting, hence their prices will steeply increase in the future. On the other hand, renewable energy (RE) is unlimited and due to rapidly evolving technology and global efforts, it is becoming increasingly affordable and accessible. Further, although CFF may look cheaper on paper, it is actually several times costlier than RE, once you take into account the cost of the negative externalities. As per a 2015 UN Report, natural disasters induced by climate change cost India 10 billion USD per year. “In the near future, RE will prove to be the most cost effective source of energy; which is why it makes sense to invest in it now,” opines Dr. Saleemul Haq, an award winning climate change scientist from Bangladesh.

While the world’s largest polluter, the US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and reneged on its international commitments to reduce carbon emissions and has even reduced its contribution to the UN Climate Fund, developing countries (DCs) like India and China have emerged as regional leaders by doubling their efforts to combat climate change. Other Asian nations like Vietnam and Malaysia have also joined the RE revolution.

Although it is an arduous undertaking for these coal addicted nations, they have taken laudable measures to reduce carbon emissions and switch to RE. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, India has decided to halt further CFF extraction projects for energy requirements and instead; increase dependency on RE through concerted efforts in R&D and government policies. Due to these efforts, RE such as solar and wind energy is becoming increasingly affordable and accessible. Further, due to fiscal and tariff incentives provided by the Government, India has become a hub for foreign investment in RE. Among other measures, India has liberalized the RE sector in recent years to facilitate transfer of foreign technology to hasten the shift from dirty energy to RE.

Despite being crippled with numerous socio-economic problems in addition to population explosion, need for rapid industrialization and historical dependency on coal, India adopted the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) as early as 2008 to unilaterally reduce emission intensity although it did not have any commitments to reduce carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The NAPCC, recognizing India’s need for development, adopted the sustainable development approach, i.e. envisaged measures that will aid in carbon mitigation as well as achieve other socio-economic objectives.

In 2016, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled against India in the solar dispute, thereby favoring the US. An analysis of the WTO’s ruling in light of impending climate change sends a clear message- in international trade, monetary interests trump climate change considerations. It is also apparent that in regulating international trade, the WTO can have an adverse environmental impact. Despite its crushing defeat in the WTO, India has emerged as a global leader in solar power.

Today, India boasts of some of the world’s largest solar plants which are located in the States of Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. Recently, India built the world’s first canal top solar power park in Gujarat which not only generates RE, but also saves land area (a scarce resource in an overpopulated country like India). India has built the world’s first fully solar powered international airport. Private sector participation in RE via public- private partnerships has also witnessed an upsurge as evidenced by Adani Group’s investment in the world’s largest single location solar plant in Tamil Nadu. Apart from grid solar power installations, India has transformed millions of lives by providing non-grid solar lamps throughout rural India.

Other non-conventional sources of renewable energy in India include ‘waste to energy’ which serves dual purposes. It reduces the quantity of solid wastes disposed (thereby mitigating environmental degradation) while simultaneously generating electricity. “Although it is costlier than solar/ wind energy, its dual efficiency makes it an attractive investment option” argues India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) while promoting R&D in this area to make it more affordable.
However, not all Asian nations are RE giants like India and China. Bangladesh, an LDC is still vastly dependent on CFF and is still undertaking environmentally fatal coal power plant projects to desperately push economic development.

Bangladesh has entered into a joint venture funded by Indian Exim Bank with Indian state owned energy companies-NTPC and BHEL to build a coal fired plant in Rampal, an area 14kms from the world’s largest mangrove forest delta and biodiversity hotspot- the Sunderbans (home to several endemic species of flora and fauna including the critically endangered Bengal Tiger). Since the Indian legal framework and judicial bodies will not allow India to build and operate a new coal plant in this ecologically sensitive area containing vast deposits of fossil fuels underground; India has decided to exploit Bangladesh’s economic weakness and lack of environmental regulations by jointly building it in the Bangladesh territory of Sunderbans. On the one hand, India attempts to overcome its CFF addiction and shift to RE, on the other hand, it aids and abets ecocide in its neighboring country; thereby negating its positive efforts.

What India has failed to grasp in this instance is the internationally recognized principle of transboundary damage. Sunderbans is a shared ecological resource between India and Bangladesh and the adverse transboundary effects of the power plant will not only harm Bangladesh but also West Bengal (India).

The multi-billion-dollar project is in its 7th year now and the protests of the local community have been suppressed by the selfish corporate interests and Bangladesh’s myopic vision of economic growth. The project has already cost local communities valuable agricultural land and fishing grounds and in addition to this, they have been undercompensated for their loss.

The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Report prepared by the Bangladesh Government is purposely flawed and fails to account for several negative externalities. The sensitive, complex and unique web of life that is Sunderbans faces destruction as it will be exposed to millions of hazardous, radioactive substances and environmental degradation on several fronts.

To go forward with this project would unnecessarily and irreparably damage a shared natural heritage and expose millions of poor, vulnerable local communities to the vagaries of climate change. Although, India is valiantly trying to establish itself as a global leader in fighting climate change, it owes a responsibility under international law to ensure that its activities do not cause harm to other countries.

India must not use Bangladesh territory as a polluting ground because climate change is a global issue and carbon emissions are not restricted within political territories but have transboundary impact. Instead, India must spur Bangladesh towards RE by sharing knowledge and technology.

DCs need to overcome their coal addiction in a phased yet time bound manner by implementing long term transition plans to move towards sustainable development. For instance, they should levy high taxes on CFF and use the funds thus generated to subsidize RE and make it more accessible.

In the context of measures to counter climate change, regional alliances among DCs assumes extreme importance. Lowering regional carbon emissions is much more important than lowering national carbon emissions. Regional leaders like India and China must not only strive to counter climate change within their own territories but must also encourage and assist regional countries to adopt similar measures.

International organizations like the WTO must be more empathetic towards climate change because although their primary aim may be to discipline global trade, it will become increasingly redundant if half the globe is under the sea.

*Srinivas Raman is a law student at National Law University Jodhpur (India).

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz in an exclusive on-air interview told New York City’s WABC Radio Host Rita Cosby Friday that the new District of Columbia federal grand jury impaneled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is bad news for President Trump, not because of its existence, but because of where the jury chamber is located… Washington, D.C.

Mueller was selected to probe the allegations made against President Donald Trump and some of his family members and staff that they colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin and/or his minions to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Despite incredibly scarce amount of evidence — and mostly relying on politically-driven conjecture — the Democrats and a few Republicans continue their quest to “nail the President.”

“It [the location of the grand jury] gives the prosecutor a tremendous tactical advantage… the case now can be brought not in Northern Virginia, which is a swing area, sometimes Democrat, sometimes Republican… but the District of Columbia, which is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump Administration,” the world-renowned Harvard Law School professor said on Rita’s show.

When asked by Cosby if he thinks this geographic move stacks the deck against the President, Dershowitz definitively says, “Yes, I do.”

He added, “I think it’s a tactical move designed to send a message that if the prosecutor decides to prosecute, he will have a real advantage with the jury pool where the case will be held.

Below is a verbatim transcript from the key section:

ALAN DERSHOWITZ EXCLUSIVE

00:00 Rita – You talked about the new grand jury being impaneled in Washington D.C., with the Special Counsel Robert Mueller overseeing it. What’s your sense of the fact that now there is this second grand jury – there was one of course in Virginia, now we know of the existence of this second one?

00:16 Dershowitz – Well, the second one is important because of where it is. It gives the prosecutor the power to indict in the District of Columbia, which is a district that is heavily Democratic, and would have a jury pool very unfavorable to Trump and the Trump Administration. So it gives the prosecutor a tremendous tactical advantage. If he wants to bring a case against anybody in the Administration, the case now can be brought not in Northern Virginia, which is a swing area, sometimes Democrat, sometimes Republican, but the District of Columbia, which is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump Administration, so I see the significance not so much that he impaneled the grand jury – you have to impanel the grand jury to get subpoena power – but where he impaneled it.

01:13 Rita – That’s an interesting point. Do you believe that it kind of stacks the deck against the President by doing that?

01:18 Dershowitz – Yes. Yes, I do. I think it’s a tactical move designed to send a message that if the prosecutor decides to prosecute, he will have a real advantage with the jury pool where the case will be held, provided there is jurisdiction in the District of Columbia, and there would be generally jurisdiction almost anywhere.

US President Donald Trump signed into law a bill imposing new sanctions against Russia while acknowledging that the document has a number of shortcomings including “unconstitutional provisions”

“While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed. In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions,” says the statement by Donald Trump published on the White House website.

Earlier, the Senate voted 98-2 in favor of the bill. US President could use the power of presidential veto, but did not do it.

“Despite its problems, I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity,” the American leader said.

In turn, European politicians expressed concerns that new sanctions could jeopardize EU interests, including energy security.

“The College of Commissioners discussed today the state of play of the US draft Bill on Russia sanctions. Commissioners expressed their concerns notably because of the draft Bill’s possible impact on EU energy independence. […] Depending on its implementation, this could affect infrastructure transporting energy resources to Europe. It could also have an impact on projects crucial to the EU’s diversification objectives such as the Baltic Liquefied Natural Gas project,” says the statement by the European Commission, published on Wednesday, July 26.

Commenting on the current situation, Chi Kong Chyong, Research Associate and Director of Energy Policy Forum, EPRG, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, said it is important to understand the nature of EU’s concerns regarding the new US sanctions.

“It has been discussed for a few years now by energy experts and academics that if Russia would sell gas to Europe very cheaply, then US LNG could find hard to compete with Gazprom in Europe. This has been supported by many researches including mine. If Gazprom ‘flooded’ Europe with cheap gas then US LNG exports to Europe would be minimal. From Gazprom’s commercial perspective, to realise this strategy and compete with LNG in Europe, the company believes that it needs direct access to North-Western European gas markets to minimise commercial and political risks associated with exporting gas through transit countries. Thus, one economic angle to look at the new sanctions against participation of European companies in Gazprom-led gas projects is to give competitive advantage to US LNG in Europe,” the expert said.

Meanwhile, the problem of energy security in Europe cannot be solved in a single way, given the diversity of market and political conditions across the EU countries.

“While the exporters of gas – Russia and USA – are looking for more customers in the oversupplied market environment, European energy security is at odds: European gas markets are very diverse – for some markets, more cheap Russian gas does not create huge energy security concerns; for others, more US LNG contributes both to economic and energy security. There is no single solution to the problem of energy security for all EU Member States. […] Therefore, it is a political choice of each MS to choose energy suppliers and their ‘level of energy security’ but this should be done in a way consistent with European energy laws and regulations, and not subject to short-term national political cycles,” the analyst said.

In his opinion, the European Commission’s negative reaction towards the sanctions is understandable.

“The European Commission predominantly uses ‘soft’ power, for example, laws and regulations, to reach political objectives and hence it is understandable to see its reactions towards the sanctions. I think that the European Commission believes there are economic tools that it theoretically can use to support more LNG in selective Member States – regulations of prices for access to internal transmission network services. These regulations could be perceived to be in line with the EU energy laws and regulations without jeopardising fundamental freedom to trade and invest, and to be less politicised,” Chi Kong Chyong explained.

In turn, Jonathan Stern, Distinguished Research Fellow and Founder, Natural Gas Research Programme, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said that the key issue is whether sanctions can be applied retroactively, which means whether they be applied to ongoing projects where investments have already been made.

“I do not think so. The last time the Americans tried to impose retroactive sanctions on a Russian – then Soviet – gas pipeline was in the [Ronald] Reagan era, it was a disaster in terms of transatlantic relations and failed of stop the project. So what we have now is the US attempting to impose sanctions on Nordstream I and Blue Stream: projects which have been ongoing for many years so it is complicated to understand how sanctions can be imposed on these projects,” the expert said.

According to him, Nordstream II has also been targeted.

“However the pipe has been purchased and is currently being coated, while investments have all been made by the European energy companies so I don’t understand how sanctions will apply to that project either. The key issue impacting Nordstream II is whether the EU will succeed in obtaining a mandate from member states to negotiate a new international agreement, and if that happens whether this will hold up the project,” Jonathan Stern explained.

In his opinion, the main impact of sanctions will be on projects where investments and construction have not yet started

“They are, for example, Baltic LNG and the third train of Sakhalin LNG. With regard to these projects – any company, which invest, risks being fined. Baltic LNG was planned to start up in 2022–2023, but no significant investments have yet been made, so sanctions do not have any immediate impact,” the analyst added.

Meanwhile, William Courtney, former US Ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Executive Director at the RAND Business Leaders Forum, stressed that the sanctions are not “anti-Russian”: they were imposed not against the country but in response to specific Russian behavior chosen by the government of the country.

He reminded that at first the West imposed sanctions because of Crimea and further sanctions, including “sectoral” ones, because of the situation in Donbas. Then after the US Presidential elections, the US required Russia to withdraw 35 diplomats and deprived Russian diplomats of access to two vacation estates, one in Maryland and one in New York, which former US President Barack Obama said were being used “for intelligence purposes.”

William Courtney said that new sanctions are primarily in response to “election interference” and continued war in eastern Ukraine, where some 10,000 people have been killed over three years of fighting.

The new sanctions law will allow, but not require, the US president to impose sanctions that could impede the Nordstream II gas pipeline project, he said.

“Washington understands Germany’s and Europe’s energy concerns, and will be sensitive to them. The US had long favored the development of multiple sources of global energy and multiple routes to ship energy to global markets, so as to enhance competition and increase efficiency in the global energy industry and lower prices to consumers,” said a retired American diplomat, who has served as Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasian affairs in the Bill Clinton administration.

Moreover, he expressed the opinion that some trends in Russia – Russian coercive foreign policy, shrinking space for civil society in Russia, diminishing of the efficiency of the Russian economy and declining productivity – are a source of concern.

“The West would benefit if Russia’s foreign policy became less coercive, if Russia’s politics became more open, and if Russia’s economy became more productive. If and when this will happen is uncertain,” he said.

Roberto Castaldi, Research Director of International Centre for European and global governance, Director of the Research Centre on Multi-Level Integration and Governance Processes at eCampus University, called sanctions against Russia symbolic.

“The sanctions are little more than a symbol. Therefore they will remain,” he explained and added that Europeans cannot ignore the fact that the Europeans borders were changed and close their eyes on the situation in Ukraine.

In his opinion, sanctions against Russia will not be lifted in the near future.

“Until the Minsk agreements remain dead letter the sanctions will stay. Russian economic downturn is pushing Putin to use foreign policy for legitimacy purposes. This makes it difficult to change course in the bilateral relationship with the EU,” Roberto Castaldi added.

In turn, Fernand Kartheiser, Luxembourg Parliament member for the Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR), drew attention to three equally worrisome trends.

“The first assumption is that the leading Western power, the United States, seems to be behaving more and more irrationally and unpredictably in international relations. For all those allied to the US this is a most unwelcome development. Many people, including me, had hopes that President Trump would try to fix the relationship between the US and Russia. Unfortunately this has not yet taken place and the political Washington continues to organize a witch-hunt against Russia,” the politician said.

The second alarming moment, in his opinion, is that the sanctions may become both unreadable and therefore inescapable.

“People tend even to forget why they exist at all. For instance, the Vice-President of the European Commission said in the Luxembourg Parliament, that the sanctions had been introduced because ‘of Syria’ – which is not the case. In addition, the growing political, legal and structural chaos around these sanctions is making an exit strategy even more difficult to put in place,” Fernand Kartheiser explained.

Moreover, from his point of view, the sanctions cannot be easily justified under international law.

“My personal reading is that they are getting closer and closer to clear illegality and are simply a way of trying to enforce American political and economic interests onto Russia and the EU, especially in the field of energy. All together, these sanctions are not reaching any positive aim and are becoming more and more dangerous not only in respect to our relations with Russia but also for the cohesion within the Western Alliance,” Luxembourg Parliament member said.

In his opinion, further development of the situation is difficult to predict.

“It remains to be seen, whether the Commission will try to defend European economic interests in the context of these sanctions. But in my eyes, Europe is now paying a price for having continuously given in on these sanctions, extending them again and again, even though many Member States were not enthusiastic about them. A few Eastern European States, with the support of the US and the UK, are pushing us into a conflict posture against Russia. As a conservative politician from Luxembourg, I say clearly that I don’t approve of this policy which takes the EU and its Member States as hostages for the benefit of the strategic goals of a minority,” Fernand Kartheiser said.

Moreover, in his opinion, the current situation demonstrates possible miscalculations in the policy of the European Union.

“In a way, this ‘Russia question’, which is largely artificial and unjust, shows us also that a too ambitious European political integration can be a mistake. Many [in Europe] are even dreaming of a European army, but doesn’t the present situation around Russia show us exactly the dangers of such dreams?” the deputy wondered.

“I advocate a friendly and reasonable relationship with Moscow. Sanctions and threats are not the means that we should use to resolve the open questions between the West and Russia,” the politician resumed.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/64367-2017

By John Feffer*

Back in the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev had a magic touch internationally. Traveling outside the Soviet Union, he often received the adulation that was so frequently lacking at home. When Gorbachev visited other Communist countries, crowds would turn out to welcome him as a savior.

He had that effect in Beijing when he visited on May 16, 1989. The protests in Tiananmen Square had started the month before, and the protesters saw in Gorbachev a possible future trajectory for China. According to a contemporary account in The New York Times:

The demonstrations were doubly embarrassing for the Chinese leaders because of the obvious enthusiasm that many of the protesters felt for Mr. Gorbachev. Several had prepared banners in Russian hailing him as a great reformer, and a crowd of workers and bicyclists applauded when he drove past them on his way to the Great Hall of the People.

Even more startling was his appearance at East Germany’s celebrations of its 40^th anniversary on October 7, 1989. As he passed along Unter den Linden, crowds on either side of East Berlin’s famous boulevard cried out, “Gorby, help us.” Two days later, 70,000 people showed up to demonstrate, non-violently, in Leipzig. The East German regime, as Gorbachev had warned, was living on borrowed time. The Berlin Wall would fall a mere one month later.

Gorbachev made other important visits — Czechoslovakia in April 1987, Romania in May 1987, Cuba in April 1989 — that contributed to a wave of transformation that took place in East-Central Europe (though not China or Cuba). Of course, Gorbachev failed to transform the Soviet Union as he’d hoped and ended up destroying the very structure he wanted to rehabilitate. Still, he’ll be remembered for his contributions to ending the Cold War and bringing hope to many throughout the Communist world.

Now along comes Donald Trump, the head of another putative superpower desperately in need of internal reform. Trump has promised his own form of perestroika in the form of his attacks on the “administrative state.” He offers his own form of glasnost with his obsessive tweeting. Trumpeting a xenophobic foreign policy, he’s also vowed to thoroughly transform the bloc that he nominally leads.

And when Trump goes abroad, he has his own transformative effect. But while Gorbachev promoted democratization in his wake, Trump promotes exactly the opposite.

The Trump Touch

Donald Trump is the Tinkerbell of tyranny. He sprinkles pixie dust on autocracies to make them more so and on democracies so that they move ever closer to dictatorship.

Trump’s touch was on full view in Saudi Arabia during his first overseas stop as president of the free world. It was an odd choice of destinations, since Saudi Arabia is one of the key leaders of the unfree world.

But Saudi Arabia is Trump’s kind of place, where oil is king, women are submissive, no one protests on the street, and the ruling clique does pretty much whatever it wants to do. Trump seemed fully at home in this feudal kingdom, and he had nothing but praise for his hosts. While there, he also met with other autocrats of the Gulf, such as those ruling Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Not long after he left, Bahrain decided that Trump had effectively given the country a green light to crack down on its opposition. A mere two days after meeting Trump in Riyadh, where the president assured King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa that his administration wouldn’t complicate bilateral relations with anything so trivial as human rights considerations, the Bahraini government used force to disband a nonviolent sit-in in support of the country’s most prominent Shiite leader. Five protesters died, and the authorities arrested hundreds. Then, the government shut down al-Wasat, the most prominent independent newspaper, and the Trump administration uttered not a peep of protest.

Saudi Arabia, having extracted a promise of even more U.S. military assistance with which to prosecute its war in Yemen, decided to see how far it could go to leverage its new relationship with the Trump administration. Together with the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, it moved against Qatar, a Gulf outlier for its relatively cordial relations with Iran and its relative tolerance for independent journalism in the form of Al Jazeera. This time, the Trump administration was divided, with Trump himself seeming to side with Riyadh while the State Department and the Pentagon stuck up for Doha, a key ally on military matters in the region.

The latest place to experience this Trump effect is Poland. Since Poland is a democracy, at least for the time being, the people fought back and produced an unexpected result.

The Putative Polish Putsch

Trump’s decision to visit to Poland just before the G20 summit was just as pointed as his choice of Saudi Arabia as a first overseas stop. The Polish government that took over 2015, led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS), has taken just the kind of stances that Trump loves: against immigration, against a free press, against the rule of law.

Poland was the perfect place for Trump to hammer home his veiled white supremacist message. Peter Beinart, in The Atlantic, contrasts Trump’s speech in Warsaw to George W. Bush speech there in 2003:

In his 2003 speech, Bush referred to democracy 13 times. Trump mentioned it once. And for good reason. Ideologically, what links the current American and Polish governments is not their commitment to democracy — both are increasingly authoritarian. It is their hostility to Muslim immigration. The European Union is suing Poland’s government for refusing to accept refugees. Among Trump’s biggest applause lines in Warsaw was, “While we will always welcome new citizens who share our values and love our people, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.” Given that Trump had linked “our values” to America and Poland’s “tradition,” “faith,” “culture,” and “identity,” it wasn’t hard to imagine whom that leaves out.

Equally important, at least for the PiS audience, was the benediction Trump gave to Poland’s leadership. Poland, Trump said, is “an example for others who seek freedom.”

Shortly after the visit, the Polish ruling party decided to remind the world of precisely what that example represents. It attempted to ram through several laws that would have severely hobbled rule of law in the country. One would have allowed the government to fire all Supreme Court justices and appoint its own replacements; a second would have given parliament, controlled by PiS, the authority to appoint members of the National Council of the Judiciary, a body designed to preserve the independence of the judiciary.

Building on earlier moves to eliminate any pesky judicial constraints on its authority, which prompted an EU “probe” into Polish actions, PiS was following a game plan devised by Viktor Orban and Fidesz in Hungary: to clear away all constitutional barriers to creating an illiberal democracy.

The surprise came when Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoed the two bills. A former PiS stalwart — he had to resign from the party when he became president — Duda was responding to an EU threat to suspend Poland’s voting rights as well as the enormous wave of protests that had washed over the country. Hundreds of thousands of Poles took to the streets in Warsaw, and many veterans of the Solidarity era, including Lech Walesa himself, spoke out vehemently against the government.

PiS was furious at this apostasy. It put enormous counter-pressure on Duda to force him to sign the third bill in the package, which gives the justice minister the power to appoint the heads of all lower courts.

The EU is nevertheless following through on its threat to begin proceedings against Poland, beginning with a legal suit filed by the European Commission against the country for breaking rules on judicial independence and sizeable fines from the European Court of Justice.

In Poland, Donald Trump sees a future trajectory for his own administration. He hasn’t yet attempted to change the laws regulating the courts because he’s been too busy packing them with right-wing ideologues, starting with Neil Gorsuch at the Supreme Court and including 27 lower-court judges (three times what Obama nominated over the same period). Trump has been woefully slow in filling administration positions, particularly at State, but he’s moved at lightning speed to transform the judiciary.

More generally, Trump’s trips to Saudi Arabia and Poland are part of a new geopolitical realignment that advisers like Steve Bannon are pushing. Forget NATO. Forget the Community of Democracies. Donald Trump wants nothing less than a worldwide suppression of liberal values such as rule of law, freedom of speech and assembly, and an independent press.

Gorbachev presided over the end of a geopolitical system — the Cold War. Popular protest — in East-Central Europe and in the Soviet Union itself — led to the unraveling of Soviet-bloc Communism as well. Trump may inadvertently preside over the end of U.S. hegemony, as both Europe and Asia chart more independent paths.

Let’s hope that popular resistance destroys his Trumpian perestroika as well, before it gets any further off the ground.

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands.

Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters has long called for the impeachment of US president Donald Trump. In an emotional interview she’s now added to her list, VP Mike Pence… briefly confusing him with Vladimir Putin.

During an interview on ABC’s show “The View” Saturday, the long serving politician once again called for the impeachment of Trump adding this time that his vice president Mike Pence should suffer a similar fate.

However, in what was perhaps a freudian slip, the congresswoman said that once they were finished with Trump, Putin is next.

“Do you think Pence will be better than Trump if he were impeached?” asked the shows host Joy Behar.

“No,” Waters replied. “And when we finish with Trump we have to go and get Putin. He’s next.”

“Putin or Pence?” Behar asked.

“Uh, Pence,” Waters said amidst nervous laughter from the shows co-hosts.

Representative Waters has previously argued that Donald Trump will inevitably be impeached because of his alleged ties to the Russian president who she also claimed is “advancing in Korea.”

As US President Donald J. Trump gropes with a set of bad options for responding to North Korea’s rapidly expanding nuclear and ballistic missiles program, he risks creating a similar, potentially explosive dilemma in the Middle East with his efforts to tighten the screws on Iran, if not engineer an end to the two-year old nuclear agreement Iran concluded with world powers.

In fact, Mr. Trump’s apparent determination to either humiliate Iran with ever more invasive probes of universally certified Iranian compliance with the agreement or ensure its abrogation could produce an even more dangerous crisis than the one he is dealing with in East Asia. Putting an end to the nuclear agreement could persuade Iran, as did US policy under former president Barak Obama in the case of North Korea, that a nuclear military capability is central to its security.

The risk in East Asia is a devastating military confrontation in which in the words of US Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who warned, quoting Mr. Trump, that “If there’s going to be a war to stop (North Korea), it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die over here.”

The key difference between North Korea and Iran is not the spectre of massive casualties in case of military action. It is the fact that in contrast to East Asia where the pariah state’s nuclear proliferation has not prompted others in the region like South Korea and Japan to launch programs of their own, an Iranian return to an unsupervised nuclear program would likely accelerate an already dangerous arms race in the Middle East to include countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE seeking a nuclear capability of its own.

Even without the arms race, Israel, the Middle East’s only, albeit undeclared, nuclear power, threatened prior to the conclusion of the nuclear agreement, to militarily take out Iranian facilities.

A termination of the agreement could also accelerate thinking in Riyadh and Washington about the utility of fostering unrest among Iran’s ethnic minorities in an attempt to destabilize the Islamic republic and create an environment conducive to regime change. The strategy risks not only adding to conflict already wracking the Middle East, but further endangering stability in Pakistan.

Even without a covert effort to destabilize Iran, Iranian leaders would likely see an end to the nuclear agreement as part of an effort to ultimately topple them – a perception that would enhance the attractiveness of the North Korean model.

The risk is enhanced by another difference between the North Korean crisis and a potential one involving Iran. World powers agree that the North Korean program needs to be curbed but differ on how that can best be achieved.

When it comes to Iran, the United States is, however, likely to find itself out on a limb by itself. The US’s partners in the agreement with Iran – China, Russia, France, Germany and Britain – believe Iran is in full compliance and there is no justification for endangering an accord that prevents the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear military capability for at least a decade. Similarly, the US’s closest allies in the Gulf, dread the prospect of escalated tensions with Iran.

“Few countries have more to lose in such a scenario than Washington’s Gulf Arab allies, which is why they have urged the United States to rigorously enforce, but not scrap, the nuclear agreement…. As long as the JCPOA is in force and being implemented, Iran will not become a nuclear power and there is therefore no need for a dangerous and unpredictable military confrontation. Without it, such a conflict, or the equally alarming and unacceptable emergence of Iran as a nuclear power, could become inevitable,” said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Gulf-funded Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Mr. Ibish was referring to the nuclear agreement by its acronym.

A litmus test of which way Mr. Trump will go looms large when the president in three months’ time must decide whether to certify to Congress for a third time that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement. Indications suggest that the president is looking for a way to either unilaterally abrogate the agreement or provoke Iran to walk away from it.

Mr. Trump’s problem is that his unsupported view of the nuclear agreement is not an isolated issue but fits a pattern that has alarmed the United States’ European and Asian allies as well as China and Russia. The pattern was established by his unilateral termination of US adherence to the Paris climate change accord, cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), cutting of funding to UN agencies, sowing of doubts about the US’s commitment to the NATO principle that an attack on one is an attack on all, and an overall sense that he threatens security and stability by undermining the international order.

Mr. Trump last month instructed White House aides to give him the arguments for withholding certification in October. The Trump administration is also looking at pushing for more intrusive inspections of Iranian military sites that it deems suspicious, a move Iran has rejected and considers inflammatory. Mr. Trump would likely argue that an Iranian refusal would amount to a violation of the agreement.

On the plus side, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster fired two proponents of tougher action against Iran, Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen-Watnick. Proteges of Mr. Trump’s strategic advisor and far-right ideologue Steve Bannon, Messrs. Harvey and Cohen-Watnick were the two remaining hires of Mr. Mc Master’s short-lived predecessor, General Michael Flynn, an anti-Iranian firebrand.

Concerned that new US sanctions imposed this month will scare off potential European investors, Iran, in a precursor of the kind of volatility that would be sparked by an end to the nuclear agreement, said that it would strengthen its Revolutionary Guards and its Al Quds Force. The targets of the US sanctions, the Guards are the spearhead of growing Iranian influence across the Middle East with their involvement in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

“Trump’s presidency could follow the same trajectory as the man he so often ridicules: George W. Bush – that of a president who manufactured a crisis, ignited an endless conflict, and eroded America’s standing around the globe,” warned businessman and scholar Amir Handjani in a commentary on the US effort to end the nuclear agreement.

China has stepped up its rhetoric in an increasingly tense border row with India, hinting at the possibility of military action in a propaganda push that analysts are calling “genuinely troubling,” AFP reports.

For more than a month, Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a standoff on a remote but strategically important Himalayan plateau near where Tibet, India and Bhutan meet.

On Thursday, August 3, Chinese defence ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang warned that Beijing had shown restraint but had a “bottom line.”

“No country should underestimate the Chinese forces’… resolve and willpower to defend national sovereignty,” he said in a post on the ministry website.

It is a line that has been echoed almost word for word this week by the foreign ministry, the official Xinhua news agency, the ruling Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, the official military news website of the Chinese armed forces, and other outlets.

On Wednesday, the foreign ministry released a 15-page document of “facts” about the border dispute, which included a map of alleged intrusions and photographs of what it stated were Indian troops and military vehicles on China’s side of the frontier.

Calling for the “immediate and unconditional” withdrawal of Indian troops, it warned Beijing would “take all necessary measures” to safeguard its interests.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Thursday that India was building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of troops in the area.

“This is by no means for peace,” Geng said.

Washington’s role in the 1990s bloody breakup of Yugoslavia is the oft-forgotten prologue in the modern history of American empire. Though President Donald Trump promised to restore the US republic, his administration is quickly reverting to imperial form.

August 5 marked the 22nd anniversary of a Croatian offensive (Operation Storm) that obliterated the centuries-old Serbian community living in what was known as the Serbian Krajina. The Serbs of Western Slavonia had been driven out or killed in May 1995. Both operations were undertaken with tacit approval from Washington, after Croatian forces were armed and trained by US contractors in direct violation of a UN arms embargo.

In fact, US diplomat Richard Holbrooke recalled in his memoirs (To End A War, first published in 1998) how he and his colleagues would coordinate Croatian attacks while the State Department and the Pentagon officially spoke against them. Holbrooke also presented the US involvement in Croatia and Bosnia ‒ which resulted in the Dayton Accords of 1995 ‒ as a triumphant reassertion of American power in Europe, after the end of the Cold War led some on the continent to ponder the need for US dominance.

While it was tempting to dismiss Holbrooke’s characterization as self-serving in 1998, just a year later NATO began its drang nach Osten, adding the first Eastern European members even as it launched a war of aggression against the remnants of Yugoslavia. The latest shard of the former federation to join was Montenegro, in June 2017.

For the purpose of bringing all of Yugoslavia’s ruins into the alliance, in 2003 Washington sponsored the so-called Adriatic Charter, a sort of “Junior NATO” club anchored by Croatia and Albania. Though both were admitted into NATO in 2009, the organization’s purpose is not yet complete, US Vice President Mike Pence told the gathering of its leaders in Podgorica, Montenegro on August 2.

“For 15 years, the United States has helped guide your countries as you walk the path toward peace at home, unity in Europe, and allied for our common defense,” Pence said. “Take this opportunity, through your actions, to draw even closer to each other and to the West; complete the unfinished business of the Western Balkans; and finish the journey that we started together so many years ago.”

Holbrooke himself could have delivered Pence’s Podgorica speech, had he not died of a ruptured aorta in 2010. Likewise the former secretaries of state, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton. Sure, Pence made a couple of references to President Trump’s campaign rhetoric, but cast them as continued commitment to NATO rather than a re-examination of America’s attempt to rule the world through military force, as Trump’s keynote foreign policy speech in 2016 implied.

There were a number of cynical incongruities in Pence’s oratory. For instance, he praised the Balkan countries’ contributions in the fight against ISIS and “radical Islamic terrorism” even though many fanatical ISIS fighters are Muslims from Bosnia, the Albanian-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo, and even Albania proper ‒ all ruled by US-backed regimes. In fact, in 2007, a leading US congressman (Tom Lantos, a California Democrat) championed declaring Kosovo an independent state by saying it would send a message to “jihadists of all color and hue” that the US was not anti-Muslim.

“The United States of America rejects any attempt to use force, threats, or intimidation in this region or beyond,” Pence said. “The Western Balkans have the right to decide your own future, and that is your right alone.”

This after the US has spent 25 years bombing and occupying parts of the region, overthrowing governments it disliked via “color revolutions,” and having its ambassadors act like colonial governors rather than diplomats.

Pence also praised “free and fair national elections” in Western Balkans countries, “with the participation of all political parties, and with a result that reflected the will of your people.” Yet in Albania the opposition had to be talked out of boycotting the vote they called unfair, and in Macedonia the US ambassador pushed hard for a minority coalition that would include a bloc of ethnic Albanian parties, raising the eyebrows of some in the US Senate.

Though it was NATO that occupied Kosovo in 1999 and Washington that led the efforts to declare it an independent state in 2008, Pence accused Russia of seeking “to redraw international borders by force” and working to “destabilize the region, undermine your democracies, and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe.”

Say again? Was it Russia that declared Yugoslavia “in dissolution” in 1991, or the European Community’s Badinter Commission? Was it Moscow that booted Yugoslavia out of the UN, though it was a founding member, and insisted on Serbia and Montenegro reapplying for membership, or Washington? Was it Russia that asserted the Communist-drawn borders of Yugoslavia’s republics were sacrosanct (except when it comes to Serbia) or the US and NATO?

In peddling this false history of “Russian aggression,” Pence sounds exactly like the empire-loving Washington establishment, the very “swamp” his boss swore he would drain. It makes one wonder who was the target of this speech, the ever-obedient client regimes of the “Western Balkans” he was addressing, or the swamp back in Washington seeking a suitable replacement for the president they loathe?

But wait, there’s more. At one point, Pence quoted a line from a famous 19th-century poem by a Montenegrin prince-bishop, about how adversity reveals true heroes. This suggests that whoever wrote his speech at least made an effort to look into the country’s history. That look must have been entirely cursory, however, as the poem in question celebrated Montenegro’s Serbian identity and the struggle against the Ottoman Empire and its “Turk converts” in the early 1700s. The current regime in Montenegro is working hard to assert a separate and openly anti-Serb national identity for the country, while Turkey is a major US ally in NATO ‒ for the time being, anyway.

Last, but not least, the very phrase “Western Balkans” is an attempt to erase the region’s history, culture, traditions and diversity that Pence facetiously praised in his remarks. It is a geographical term devoid of any meaning, a blank slate for US and NATO to project their fantasies, while the actual name for the region ‒ Yugoslavia ‒ seems to have been banished to the proverbial memory hole, lest its shade disrupt the self-righteous sleep of those that helped make it a desert and called it peace.