Turkey goes on offensive

[akritas]

Erdogan pressures PM on Pontic memorial and Muslim minority in Thrace

Turkey is unhappy about a new monument in Thessaloniki marking the genocide of Pontic Greeks, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Greek Premier Costas Karamanlis during a meeting in Vienna yesterday as Ankara steps up pressure in its disputes with Athens.

The two men met at the sidelines of a summit of European and Latin American leaders. The meeting had been requested by Erdogan and he used it to raise a number of points which seem to be aggravating Ankara.

The most significant of these was the unveiling last Saturday of the monument commemorating the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks during World War I and in the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 at the hands of Turkish forces.

Erdogan told Karamanlis there was a lot of sensitivity to this sort of issue in Turkey, sources said. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the erection of the monument “cast a shadow over friendly relations between the two countries.”

Erdogan also broached the subject of the treatment of the Muslim minority in Thrace, northeastern Greece.

Ankara’s objections are the latest in a series of complaints which Athens believes are actually efforts by Turkey to divert attention from European Union pressure on the EU candidate to meet the bloc’s membership obligations. “History has been written and cannot be rewritten,” said Evangelos Antonaros, the alternate government spokesman.
“The objective in Greek-Turkish relations is to make use of the opportunities offered by Turkey’s European outlook to build a future that will benefit both people and the region,” he said.

Publicly, Karamanlis insisted that no new issues were raised during the 45-minute meeting, saying it focused mainly on economic issues, such as tourism.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis will attend a journalism conference on June 10 in Istanbul, where she will meet with Gul.

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Greek-Turkish Poseidon adventure


A German research vessel's mission in the Aegean draws fire from Ankara,which says it must be notified of cruises in Greek and international waters

GEORGE GILSON

Greek President Karolos Papoulias (C) is greeted by European Parliament President Josep Borrell (R) in Strasbourg on May 17

TURKEY pressed its claim to co-administration of the Aegean Sea with objections to a German seismological research mission in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas conducted by the University of Kiel marine research institute.

The institute had applied in late 2005 for the Greek government's permission for the 30-year-old research vessel Poseidon to conduct the three-phase mission because some of the work would be conducted within the six-mile range of Greece's undisputed territorial waters. The permission was granted by a special inter-ministerial committee including both foreign affairs and defence ministry officials. Ankara was not contacted as the ship would not enter territorial waters.

Despite Ankara's continuing territorial claims in the Aegean, President Karolos Papoulias reiterated Greece's support for Turkey's EU accession in a speech to the European Parliament on May 17. But he insisted that Turkey must meet all requirements. "It must be clear that EU accession presupposes full implementation of its principles and rules, and that this is a non-negotiable principle of European culture which cannot be circumvented for any geopolitical motives," he said. Deputy French Foreign Minister for European Affairs Catherine Colonna said in Athens the following day that Turkey must apply the Ankara Treaty, requiring it to open its ports and airports to Cypriot vessels, by the end of the year.

Turkey went on the diplomatic offensive over the research ship issue, registering complaints to both the Greek and Turkish foreign ministries. Dr Thomas Mueller, the director of the project, confirmed to the Athens News that three Turkish frigates shadowed the Poseidon in the first phase of the mission, in international waters off the coast of Crete. "Then the Turks said 'Why did you announce the cruise to the Greeks and not to us?'," he notes.

After feverish diplomatic activity between Berlin, Athens and Ankara, the German foreign ministry agreed to simply notify the Turkish foreign ministry of its intention to proceed with the second and third phases of the mission, between May 20 and June 13, in the Aegean Sea. The Turkish government then lifted its objections, Mueller said. He stressed that the German notification was an "act of politeness". "We make it very clear that it is a notification and not that we are asking for clearance," he stressed, as no clearance from national authorities is needed for research within international waters.

In an effort to defuse tensions, Mueller also offered to add a Turkish scientist to the team of seven German and one Greek researcher on board the ship. He contacted the German embassy in Ankara on May 18 to see if a Turkish colleague would be sent. Mueller said he saw the Turkish reaction as economically motivated, possibly in relation to oil reserves. "They are claiming the Aegean Sea for economic reasons. I wish that Greece and Turkey would come to an agreement on that," he says.

Poseidon's captain, Michael Schneider, told the Athens News that scientists were satisfied with samples from the first phase, and that results will be shared with Greek and Turkish scientists. He said the next phase beginning May 20 is around all southern Aegean islands, and that the research is unrelated to oil exploration. "I've worked in drilling departments and on oil rigs, and it makes no sense to put rigs in a volcanic area," he said.

Turkey based its initial objections on article 6 of a 1976 bilateral agreement, drafted in the context of bilateral talks on the Aegean dispute, which states: "The two parties undertake to refrain from any initiative or act concerning the Aegean continental shelf that might trouble the negotiations." Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Namik Tan said that Germany entangled itself in Greek-Turkish disputes. "The German university's procedure of applying to Greece and its research mission is absolutely in accord with international practice," Greek foreign ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos said on May 18.

A financial weekly on May 16 reported in its lead story that Shell Petroleum had contacted the Greek and Turkish governments regarding Aegean oil exploration. But Shell Hellas spokeswoman Fani Tsokani denied the report to the Athens News.

Mueller also denied that the Poseidon's research cruise involved oil exploration, and said that the object of the mission is to track the possibility of future earthquakes in the Aegean area. "It is not a prediction of earthquakes," he stressed. He underlined that the two dozen Ocean Bottom Seismography (OBS) devices that will be laid down and tracked for one year are passive seismography devices that only listen and record the earth's seismic activity, whereas oil exploration requires active seismography that sends out signals.


ATHENS NEWS , 19/05/2006, page: A08
Article code: C13183A081

[akritas]

An intresting editorial article from the NY Times with title A Violent Detour in Turkey


Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said last week that recent violence in Turkey did not presage a return to the "old days" of coups and military rule. We hope he's right.

In recent years, there has been much debate in Turkey over the conflicts between its secular constitution and many Turks' conservative Muslim impulses. Lately those confrontations have taken some troubling turns.

This month, a gunman shot five judges in a courthouse, killing one and wounding the others. Initial reports indicated that the assailant was enraged about a decision by the judges that strictly upheld Turkey's ban on wearing head scarves in public buildings. The news further polarized the debate over the role of religion in public life, and the judge's funeral turned into a mass demonstration in support of staunch secularism.

The outcry was seen as a setback for Turkey's ruling party, in power since 2002, which supports a greater public role for religious expression.
Since the funeral, however, the motive behind the attack has become increasingly unclear, and sorting out the facts will take time. But the overriding question is: Are the bad old days coming back?

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a conservative Muslim, but he also has overseen the pro-Western reforms that qualified Turkey to open membership talks with the European Union. During the reform process, he stressed that more democracy was the best way to resolve Turkey's polarizing issues. He was right, and now is the time for him to forcefully reassert that view. Washington can help promote Turkish democracy by using its longstanding ties with Turkey's generals to communicate zero tolerance for military meddling.

Turkey borders Iran, Iraq and Syria, and is an ally of Israel, a member of NATO and a candidate for the European Union. The world can ill afford for it to become less democratic.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/opinion/30tue4.html