From our Does-Not-Play-Well-With-Others Department. Imagine what fun they'd be in the EU. "Israel out of NATO event because of Gaza, Turkish official says," from CNN, October 11:
ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) -- Turkey excluded Israel from a planned NATO military exercise partly because of Turkey's criticism of Israel's Gaza offensive nearly a year ago, Turkey's foreign minister told CNN on Sunday.
The Turkish government decided to change the list of participating countries and exclude Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces. As a result, the NATO exercise was effectively scrapped, although a U.S. embassy representative said it was only postponed.
Asked why Turkey excluded Israel from the exercise, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, "We hope that the situation in Gaza will be improved, that the situation will be back to the diplomatic track. And that will create a new atmosphere in Turkish-Israeli relations as well. But in the existing situation, of course, we are criticizing this approach, [the] Israeli approach."
Earlier, the Turkish foreign ministry said "a technical matter," not politics, prompted the delay of the Anatolian Eagle exercise.
Instead of the NATO exercise, Davutoglu said Turkey would be conducting "a national military exercise now after consultations with all the parties involved."
The United States and Italy -- which, along with Turkey, are members of NATO -- were scheduled to take part in the exercise. Both countries withdrew their participation from the drill after learning Israel had been excluded, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing foreign ministry sources.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Ankara would say only that the United States and its allies postponed the exercise "in hopes of re-scheduling it."
"We look at this as a postponement, not a cancellation," said embassy spokeswoman Deborah Guido.
With allies like these...
Turkey is Israel's Muslim ally in the Middle East, and the two nations have enjoyed close military and economic relations over the last decade. But tensions have emerged over strong Turkish criticism of the Gaza offensive in December and January.
The broader issue, of course, concerns the inroads Islamic parties and their supporters have made into secular Turkish politics.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January after accusing Israeli President Shimon Peres of killing children during the six-week war.
The Anatolian Eagle exercise is held every few years to boost international aerial cooperation. It was to run from October 12-23.
Isn't the Erdogan regime cracking down on freedom of the press in Turkey? I just hope democracy works well enough to get the Islamists out of office before Turkey becomes Iran.
Unfortunately, the trend for Turkey is to become ever more Islamist in the future. The days of Turkey being a friendly pro-Western country are long gone.
The Gaza situation is an excuse. Turkey is on a regressive path back into the Islamic orbit. I remember Bush cheerleading to get Turkey admitted into the EU. Thankfully, that was rejected. Turkey can no longer be relied upon.
The Turkey of Mustafa Kemal is slowly slipping away and in its place an Islamist Turkey is manifesting itself. Damn shame for more sensible Turks, for NATO, for Europe and for the world at large. Instructive, though, that the greater the presence of Islam the more regressive, repressive, stupid and non-modern a polity is. In short, looks like Turkey's a goner.
well its time to boot turky from nato but could it be that turkeys pilots are poor that turkey just stand to be humiliated by the jews
When Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January after accusing Israeli President Shimon Peres of killing children during the six-week war, that was the end of it.
Good posts from Wellington, Rahman, Jewdog,Worry and crusader above.
Believe me when I tell you that as far back as 1969 when I visited the university of Ankara with my (red-haired, green eyed) American girlfriend, many girls came to talk to us. They told us quite openly that they would love to wear mini skirts and tight jeans (like she did) but men would spit at them in the street or call them whores and throw rocks at them.
No. There never was a "moderate" Turkey.
Don't ask what Turks said about Jews, even way back then.
No need to know what Turks said about Jews back then. I had an Uncle(now deceased) who fought for the Jewish homeland and lived in Israel since it's birth. He had many
friends throughout the middle east, including Turkey. I recall a visit he made to the states in 1971 and he told us that Jews were villified and held in very low esteem, even back then.From his visits to Turkey, the picture he left with me was one that was not very pleasant for Jews.
In some ways it was better for Jews than in other Muslim countries but his last visit was in 1973, right after the
war.He no longer felt safe and his friends in Istanbul moved to Israel in 1975. They were not Jews but he somehow managed to help them get into Israel where they flourished and the family is till there today, loyal to Israel first. The country that gave them a fresh start.
Ynet news: Article about cancellation of Joint Exercise
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3788011,00.html
Turkey is crumbling under the gains of Islamic harliners.
They will be causing more problems and violence(as they always do, no matter where they are) and Turkey will continue it slide back into the darkest pits of Islamic hell. The EU and Turkey? If Turkey gets into the EU it will be another infectious site of spreading Islamic infection and cancer.
The Turks are not Arabs. So much for the so-called Arab/Israeli conflict. This reaction by Turkey just demonstrates that it is a holy war waged by Muslims against Jews.
The Turks are not Arabs. So much for the so-called Arab/Israeli conflict. This reaction by Turkey just demonstrates that it is a holy war waged by Muslims against Jews.
Remember that not too long ago Recep Er-dirty-DOGan (with my apologies to all those dogs whose feelings have been hurt, because I love them pooches), in his Davos-mad-barking style, said that Ahmadinejadistan's "peaceful nuclear program" was not only no threat to world peace, but that it should be given a green light, while at the same time saying that Israel should be rid of its nuclear weapons, for they constituted a "threat to world peace": http://europenews.dk/en/node/26548
It's about time indeed Israel officially cut diplomatic ties with that barking Hitler/Mahound-wannabe.
Quaere: Why is Turkey in NATO? Is Turkish membership of any value, or is it a danger, to the effectiveness of NATO, as it must necessarily turn its attention away from Russia to the threat from Islam world-wide, and especially the threat, foreign and domestic, that Muslims who take Islam seriously, pose to the West, and the West's most important military alliance, NATO? Of what conceivable good, of what possible benefit, is Turkey in NATO to the other members of NATO? And why should Turkey be a member, and not instead a country that, is of far greater value, militarily and morally to that very West that NATO was originally established to protect -- that is, Israel?
It makes no sense for members of NATO to commit themselves to treating an attack on Turkey as an attack on themselves, when the Cold War is over, and a re-islamizing Turkey makes friends with Iran, and Syria, with a regime intent on undoing Kemalism, and determined to make Turkey firmly part of the Muslim world -- even if, at the same time, the regime of Erdogan is outraged by any attempts by Europeans to keep Turkey out of the E.U. Do the other members of NATO think the Turkish military would come to their aid, if any Infidel nation-state in NATO were attacked, from within or without, by Muslim forces? But NATO members are already under attack by the Muslims in their midst, who now constitute a grave national security risk, one at least as great as that posed by domestic sympathizers with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and under attack by Muslim forces, too, in Afghanistan.
Turkey is part of the very Camp of Islam that is the most dangerous threat to the West, and to what is the Western military alliance, NATO. It makes no sense to keep this Turkey, which is no longer the Turkey that once was a fit member of NATO because, under different circumstances, with a different enemy -- the Soviet Union was for the Turks their hereditary enemy, Russia, under a slightly different guise, and Turkey could and did offer troops (for the Korean War), and listening posts and airbases, but who could imagine Erdogan offering bases today, or any kind of military aid, that would be part of an Infidel coalition against what would be understood to be representatives of Islam.
It is especially maddening that Turkey, but not Israel, is a member of NATO. Israel is not merely an unshakable part of the West, but the Western world is, as all educated people used to know, not conceivable without the inheritance from Israel as from Greece and Rome. And now that Israel was re-established, after nearly 2000 years, in the ancient Jewish homeland, its disappearance would whet Arab and Muslim appetites, and would a deal a great blow -- understood by so few -- to the morale, and to the continued existence, of the advanced West, which is the world's best hope for a semi-decent model of existence.
All these individuals and heads of state seem to suffer from
pre-Israel Gaza invasion amnesia.They never mention Israel's inaction while rockets were raining down on its citizens daily.
Oh!I forgot that the Palestinians don't possess ROCKETS,only
ROCKS.Remember, it's 'UN-ISLAMIC' for a Muslim state to own or use nuclear weapons or rockets.