The Week That Was

Not surprisingly, the news last week was dominated by coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden, with the odd report from Libya thrown in for good measure, but a lot of other things happened around the world, some of them with serious implications for global affairs. Foreign Policy did a nice job of recapping the week that was in this roundup. Among the highlights: an assassination attept against Turkey's Prime Minister; the beginning of trials in Egypt against former officials from the Mubarak regime, along with the suggestion that former President Hosni Mubarak could face the death penalty if he is found to have ordered security forces to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators; and signs of a power struggle within Iran's government, complete with charges of witchcraft.

You can say a lot of things about the world, but you can't say it's a boring place.

4/11/54: The Most Boring Day

Just in case you were wondering what was the most boring day of the 20th century, detailed computer analysis has determined that it was in fact April 11, 1954. On that day there was an election in Belgium, a Turkish academic was born and a British soccer player died. That was about it.

The “Most Boring Day” honor was bestowed upon 4/11/54 by True Knowledge, a data search engine developed by Cambridge University that has compiled a database of 300 million facts, figures and events. The scientists at Cambridge designed True Knowledge to be a better Internet search engine, not to pick the most banal day of the 20th century, but its programmers figured the boring day challenge was a good test of True Knowledge's abilities. April 11, 1954 stood out for its not-worthiness since no notable people were born or died, nor were there any major news events. According to the Times of India, April 30, 1930 had previously been considered the dullest day of the century based on a BBC news bulletin that simply said of the day: “There is no news.”

Turkey's Rambo Takes Aim At Israel

While we're on the topic of media, Foreign Policy is reporting that relations between Israel and Turkey will likely suffer another blow with the upcoming release of a Turkish spy film. “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” is the latest adventure for Agent Polet Alemdar, who Foreign Policy describes as a sort of “Rambo for the Islamic world”; Alemdar's target this time is Israel, specifically Israeli agents who intercepted a Turkish aid ship bout for Gaza.

You likely remember the story of the Gaza-bound relief flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces earlier this year; while several of the boardings went off peacefully, the boarding of the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara went terribly with a battle breaking out on deck between the Gaza activists and Israeli commandos, which left nine of the Mavi Marmara's crew dead. “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” is the story of Alemdar's quest for revenge against the Israeli agents responsible for the events aboard the Mavi Marmara, a story that actually sounds a lot like the movie Munich, the story of Israeli agents exacting revenge against the Palestinians who planned the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Similarities aside, the Israelis are livid over the release of “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine”, which they say is another example of the “creeping anti-Semitism” in Turkey today. It's worth noting that Israel-Turkey relations hit another low point recently after a Turkish television movie about secret agents painted Israel's Mossad is a very unflattering light. Following the airing of that movie, the Turkish ambassador to Israel was publicly dressed down on Israeli television, an act that outraged the Turks.

But it's not only the Israelis who are angered over their portrayal in another country's pop culture, Chinese officials are also fuming over recent depictions of their officials in the British spy series Spooks (MI-5 here in the states). According to reports in the British press, government officials in China have ordered Chinese television networks not to do business with the BBC in protest over a storyline in the latest season of Spooks, which cast the Chinese as the bad guys planning to, among other things, set off a “dirty bomb” in London if the British interfered with their plans; a pretty strong reaction considering that Spooks doesn’t even air in China. Officially, the Chinese foreign ministry said it would have to “look into the matter” of the alleged BBC boycott.

Americans OK With Fading US Influence

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is out with their survey of American perceptions of the United States' role in the world, Global Views 2010.  The takeaway from they survey is that a majority of Americans think the United States role in global affairs is diminishing, but surprisingly they're ok with that.  Only a quarter of Americans think that the US plays a larger role as the leader of the world than the country did ten years ago; while nine out of ten Americans think it is more important to focus on fixing domestic problems than for America to try to solve problems abroad.  More than two-thirds of Americans also thought the rise of aspiring global powers like Turkey and Brazil was a good thing since essentially it would mean that there would be other countries to help in dealing with global crises.

What's really interesting about these results is that they seem to fly in the face of the dominant thought among American politicians – namely that Americans expect the United States to play the role of the “sole superpower” and the world's policeman - the country that guarantees law and order around the world. As a result, much of our foreign policy today is based around this idea, along with fear on the part of our political leaders of doing anything that would take America away from this role in the eyes of the American public.  For example, at the core of arguments about why the United States must remain engaged in Afghanistan is this belief that if the US were to end the mission there before achieving “victory” (whatever that means) it would mean a loss of global prestige that the American people wouldn't stand for.

Yet the Global Views 2010 survey indicates that Americans would stand for a diminished leadership role for the United States on the world stage, in fact many would seem to prefer it if it then meant that we would be able to concentrate on resolving pressing domestic issues.

Other interesting results from the survey were a decided lack of support for a military strike by the United States against Iran to try to stop their nuclear research program (only 18% were in favor), along with a widespread belief that an American military strike would result in terrorist attacks against US interests in retaliation.  A majority also believed that if Israel launched an airstrike against Iran the United States should not engage in military action against Iran in support of Israel.

So Much For The Sanctions...

Speaking of Iran, the whole sanctions regime endorsed by the United Nations and strengthened by the United States and Western Europe seems to be rapidly falling apart. Iran and Russia have struck a deal to begin the fueling process at their Russian-built nuclear reactor in Bushehr. Russia began work on the reactor back in 1994, but progress has been incredibly slow, and at times has stopped entirely (partially in response to requests to Russia from the United States that they halt work as part of the “isolate Iran” foreign policy plan). But now Russian officials say that they will start loading nuclear fuel into the plant on August 21, with Iranian officials saying the plant will go online by the beginning of September.

Meanwhile Russia's LUKoil has delivered shipments of gasoline to Iran this month as well. While Iran has vast oil reserves, they lack oil refining capacity, meaning that they have to import much of their gasoline (perhaps as much as 40%). The US and Europe passed a secondary round of sanctions that go beyond the most recent United Nations sanctions, which specifically target the nation's gasoline imports – the idea being that a shortage of gasoline would cause public unrest that could bring about the end of the A-jad regime (a bit of wishful thinking there). But LUKoil's recent deliveries show that Russia's not crazy about the idea of isolating Iran, who is one of their major trading partners. China and India have also indicated that they are not planning to go along with the oil and gas boycott of Iran either. And now you can add Turkey to that list as well, last Thursday the Turkish government said they would support Turkish companies if they decided to sell gasoline to Iran; perhaps another clear indication that after nearly two decades of trying to join the European Union club, Turkey is looking to carve out a niche for itself as a region power in the Middle East.

And to quote the old TV pitchman: “but wait, there's more.” Last week Iraq's oil ministry held talks with their Iranian counterparts and were “open” to an Iranian proposal to build a natural gas pipeline across their country so that Iran could start selling their natural gas to Syria. Iran has one of the world's largest reserves of natural gas and have recently been talking with Pakistan as well about a proposal to build a pipeline to their country as well. But the Iraq/Syria pipeline deal is particularly interesting since not too long ago (say the 1980s), Iraq and Iran were mortal enemies. Since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein though, the two countries have set aside much of their old animosity, with Iran wielding an increasing amount of influence in Iraq.

You can chalk that up as another unintended consequence of the Iraq War II. Something to keep in mind if we decide to take military action against Iran, a decision that might be helped along by the continuing erosion of the sanctions regime against that country.

Hurray! Sanctions On Iran (well, sort of…)

So the big news on Wednesday was that the United States succeeded in getting the United Nations Security Council to agree on a new round of sanctions against Iran aimed at getting that country to suspend action on their nuclear development program. Predictably, the US is touting the new sanctions as an effective tool against Iran’s ambitions; in reality though they’re far less than advertised and certainly not the “crippling” sanctions that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threatened to levy against Iran just last year.

Any truly effective sanctions regime against Iran would target their oil exports – the place where Iran earns the bulk of their foreign currency. But Wednesday’s sanctions specifically avoid putting restrictions on Iran’s oil exports, a compromised that the US had to make in order to get China (which relies on Iranian oil to help fuel their ongoing economic expansion) on board. Similarly, Wednesday’s resolution bars foreign governments from supplying Iran with weapons – but only “weapons” that meet a specific set of definitions included in an annex to the sanctions resolution. One item that apparently somehow does not meet the “weapon” definition is the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system Iran has been trying to buy from Russia for three years now. So far Russia hasn’t delivered the S-300s for possible reasons that include technical problems with the system, to pressure from Israel not to complete the deal (Israel fears the S-300 would be so effective it would make any attack against Iran’s nuclear production sites too costly to the Israeli Air Force; at the same time Russia has begun to buy unmanned drone aircraft from Israel to cover up a hole in Russia’s military intelligence gathering capacity, an arrangement that may be jeopardized by the final sale of the S-300 to Iran). There is nothing in the new sanctions though that would actually prevent Russia from delivering the S-300.

The annexes to the sanctions bill are in fact filled with loopholes, many of which are outlined in this informative (but thanks to an odd choice of background/font colors, very hard-to-read) post. For example, a lot of the reporting on the sanctions say that several dozen individuals and more than a dozen banks and companies are specifically targeted (the reason why US officials are touting the sanctions as “smart”); in reality though there is only one individual and one bank that were not covered by earlier UN sanctions.

In an attempt then to “do something” on the Iranian issue, the US watered down the sanctions put before the Security Council enough so that the Chinese and Russians wouldn’t veto them, but in the process they passed a sanction regime that – despite assurances from the White House – won’t have enough “bite” to actually compel Iran to abandon its nuclear program (the whole point of the sanctions in the process). To make matters worse, the US seems to be opening a rift with Brazil and Turkey – two countries that in recent months have been coming into their own as fledgling powers on the world stage. Brazil and Turkey recently worked together on a scheme that would have had Iran ship uranium to Brazil in return for fuel for their nuclear research reactors. The United States was quick to try to scupper the Brazil/Turkey deal, based in part on new assessments that the Iranians had more nuclear material than they were originally believed to possess (in other words the Iranians were happy to give some nuclear material to Turkey as part of the deal since they had more hidden away). Brazil and Turkey though felt the US opposition was really motivated by a desire not to have more voices setting the tone of global affairs; notably both countries voted against the Iran sanctions resolution (Lebanon, serving a term in one of the SC’s rotating seats, abstained in the final vote). It’s a move likely to set the tone for future international negotiations, adding Brazil and Turkey to the growing list of countries the United States will have to try to “win over” when it comes to building international consensus on a given issue.

Working On The Railroad In Iraq

Iraq’s international railroad network is expanding again.

Earlier in the month, Iran announced plans to link their southern city Khorramshahr and the Iraqi port Basra with about 35 miles of newly built railway. Now according to the BBC, a rail-link between Iraq and Turkey has been opened for the first time since the 1980’s.

The journey between Gazientep, Turkey and Mosul, Iraq takes about 18 hours. German workers originally built the route almost a century ago as part of a plan to link Baghdad and Berlin by rail. Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980’s damaged the line to the point where it needed to be closed, while Turkish conflicts with Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq kept them from investing in repairs to the route. But in recent years trade between Turkey and Iraq, particularly the Kurdish northern region that abuts Turkey, has turned into a multi-billion dollar business, and has led to a reopening of the railroad.

Turkey now has plans to expand their network of high-speed passenger trains to include the Gazientep-to-Mosul route.

Turkey Seeks the Bones of Santa Claus

Technically they want the bones of St. Nicholas, the real-life inspiration for Santa, but the intent is the same. St. Nicholas was canonized for his lifetime of acts of anonymous charity, including once climbing down a chimney to leave a bag of gold as a gift - inspiration for Santa's preferred method of ingress. The real St. Nick was buried in his native Demre, Turkey seventeen centuries ago. But when invading Arabs converted the region to Islam in the middle ages, a group of Italian sailors dug up the Christian saint's remains and took them to their hometown of Bari for safe-keeping.

The Turkish government is now considering asking Italy for the return of the remains. But even without the bones of St. Nicholas, according to the BBC, Demre is still capitalizing on being the birthplace of Santa Claus.

The Politics of Pipelines

My latest post over at The Mantle and World Policy Journal takes on Europe's need for natural gas and the politics that surround the supplies. Right now Europe gets a significant portion of their natural gas from Russia - a situation that the European Union would like to change and that Russia would like to maintain. Read about the lengths that each side is willing to go to meet their goal, and the role that Turkey could one day play in the gas supply drama.

Meet President van Rompuy!

This week Herman van Rompuy became the first president of the European Union, capping a nearly decade-long battle by European bureaucrats to reform the political structure of the EU.

If you're reaction to the headline was "who?", the BBC was kind enough to publish this profile on President van Rompuy. His selection as EU president has already brought out the critics, some of whom say that van Rompuy was the only man bland enough for all 27 EU members to agree upon. Former British PM Tony Blair lobbied hard for the job, but ultimately failed to gain enough support, especially from EU powers like Germany - Blair's support for the Iraq War and George Bush weighed against him. Others though are asking what exactly the EU president will do, his/her duties under the Treaty of Lisbon are pretty vague, and President van Rompuy himself has defined his role more as a manager than as a strong leader.

But two countries could be impacted by the selection of van Rompuy as EU president. One is his native Belgium, where van Rompuy will have to give up his job as prime minister, a move that could launch the nation into a political crisis. Following national elections in June 2007, Belgium was effectively without a government for almost a year as the country's two main ethnic groups - the Dutch-speaking Flemish and the French-speaking Walloons - failed to agree on a prime minister. After an interim government fell apart, Belgium's King Albert II stepped in and asked van Rompuy - a political moderate respected by both sides - to take the job, finally ending the crisis. The question now is if there's another van Rompuy waiting in the wings, or if the Flemish and Walloons will restart their battle over which side should lead the country.

Meanwhile Turkey likely won't be happy over van Rompuy's new role. For a decade now, Turkey has been trying to join the EU club, only to have negotiations over their membership drag on and on. While in the Belgian parliament five years ago van Rompuy spoke out forcefully against Turkish membership in the EU. "Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe," he said, adding "the universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigor with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey."

Whether President van Rompuy moderates that position remains to be seen, but another high-profile European leader, France's Nikolas Sarkozy, is also against Turkey's membership in the EU, so I wouldn't expect a lot of progress in membership talks anytime soon. How Turkey reacts to that will be interesting to see.

China Accused Of 'Genocide' Over Uighur Treatment

It's nice that some world leader has finally said this: over the weekend Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called China's actions against their Uighur ethnic minority "a kind of genocide." His comments come a day after Turkey's Trade and Interior Minister called for his countrymen to boycott Chinese-made goods in protest of their treatment of the Uighurs. So far Beijing hasn't replied to either comment.

While protests between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang province turned bloody last week, with officially 184 people killed in the fighting, Xinjiang's Uighur community says that the protests were just the end result of decades of oppression from Beijing. Since having their briefly independent homeland of East Turkestan absorbed by China in 1949, Uighurs claim that they have been an oppressed minority and that in the past two decades, as China's become more powerful, the oppression has gotten far worse. Uighurs, who are Muslim and speak a Turkish dialect, say that their mosques are regularly closed, their leaders arrested for non-existent crimes, and the use of their language suppressed. In recent years, Beijing has aggressively promoted the immigration of ethnic Han Chinese into Xinjiang - another attempt, Uighurs say, to stamp out their culture.

It would be tempting to be skeptical of the Uighur claims, if China wasn't accused of using exactly the same gameplan just to the south of Xinjiang in Tibet, where the Dalai Lama has long accused the Chinese government of all the same activities. China fears that both regions could make bids for independence from Beijing.

Meanwhile back in Urumqi (Xinjiang’s capital) China tried to close the city’s mosques last Friday (the holy day in the Muslim week), finally allowing one to briefly open for prayers after a large group gathered outside. Once prayers were over, according to the BBC, Chinese riot police beat a group of Uighur protesters who were asking for the release of relatives swept up in mass arrests earlier in the week.

Obama scores two diplomatic successes in Europe

Barack Obama hit the world stage in a big way this past week with a whirlwind diplomatic tour of Europe. And while a lot of the media coverage on Obama focused on his ‘rock star’ status in Europe (even among his fellow heads of state), Obama quietly scored two diplomatic victories that have been largely (and unfairly) overlooked.

During the G20 summit, Obama personally negotiated an agreement between France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and China’s President Hu Jintao that had threatened to disrupt the meeting. The disagreement on the surface was about China’s failure to support a French proposal to reign in international tax havens, but the relations between France and China have been on the skids since last year when Sarkozy met with the Dalai Lama – something that angered the Chinese and led them to cancel a state visit to France in return. Obama managed to broker a compromise between Sarkozy and Hu that allowed language on tax havens to be included in the final G20 agreement.

Obama then cleared the way for Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to become NATO’s new Secretary-General. All of the members of NATO agreed to the appointment of Rasmussen, except for Turkey, and because the appointment required the unanimous approval of all NATO members, Turkey effectively blocked Rasmussen’s candidacy.

Turkey’s opposition to Rasmussen goes all the way back to 2005 when several Danish newspapers published editorial cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, something that caused outrage across the Muslim world. At the time Rasmussen refused demands to punish the cartoonists, though he said that he personally disagreed with the cartoons. He has also been an opponent of Turkey’s drive to join the European Union.

After meeting with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Rasmussen, Obama was again able to broker an agreement to get Turkey to drop their opposition and for Rasmussen to become NATO’s Secretary-General.

In the grand scheme of things they weren’t huge international agreements, but they were two noteworthy achievements for Obama during his first major trip abroad, and are an indication that America’s diplomatic power on the world stage may finally be returning.

Palestinians could benefit as Israel-Turkey relations fade

If you need any evidence that relationships in the Mid-East are incredibly complex things, burdened by centuries of shared histories, then this is it.

Authorities in Israel are in the process of evicting 500 Palestinians from a neighborhood in East Jerusalem so that they can turn the land into an Israeli settlement. An organization allied with the settlers’ claims to have bought the land from its original owner, Sheikh Jarrah, way back in the 19th century when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire. But now Turkey has stepped into the dispute, presenting Israel with land ownership documents from their Ottoman Empire archives that refute the settlers' purchase claim.

In the past, the Palestinians have repeatedly asked for access to the Ottoman archives to find evidence to back up their land ownership claims, but Turkey has always refused. Turkey was one of the few Islamic countries to have good relations with Israel, something they didn’t want to sour by getting in the middle of Israeli-Palestinian land disputes. But that changed early this year when Israel launched their military operation into the Gaza Strip. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israel's President Shimon Peres got into an angry public exchange over Gaza at the World Economic Forum in January that ended with Erdogan storming off the stage after calling Peres a murderer. Now it seems Turkey's willing to open the archives.

Despite agreeing to freeze settlement construction on disputed lands as part of the "Road Map to Peace" agreement, Israel has continued to build housing blocs on land claimed by the Palestinians, and has been moving aggressively in recent months to clear several Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in order to build several thousand more units for Israeli settlers.

Whether the Turkish documents put a halt to these specific evictions remains to be seen - the Israeli courts said they would take several weeks to review the new information. There have been reports though of settlers previously using forged deed documents to evict Palestinians, including one where a Palestinian allegedly signed over land to a settlers group in 2004; the only problem was that the man in question actually died in 1961.

Obama's whirlwind tour of Europe

All eyes are on President Obama this week as he embarks on his first major foreign trip. What's on the itinerary? Just the G20 economic forum in London; meetings with key European leaders, not to mention his first sit-down with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev; and then a quick hop over to Istanbul where he’ll make good on a campaign promise - giving a policy speech in an Islamic country during his first 100 days as President. So all in all it’s just another week at the office...

The G20 meeting could provide a rough start to the trip for Obama. There’s a widespread feeling around the globe that the American economic model is to blame for the current global economic crisis. Obama wants the developed nations to spend more on stimulus plans to help get the world out of its financial doldrums, a move some European leaders, like Germany’s Angela Merkel, are dead set against. The Europeans will likely use the forum to propose a sweeping set of international economic regulations, something Wall Street doesn’t like. The developing nations are calling for aid to prevent economic-fueled catastrophes in countries across Africa and Asia; and then there’s China, which is the wildcard at the G20.

And according to a report in Germany's Der Spiegel Obamamania, at least among Europe’s heads of state, is waning. A lot of it seems to boil down to their feeling that the Obama Administration isn’t taking Europe (in their opinion) seriously enough, though frankly, there also seems to be a measure of hurt feelings among the Europeans because Obama has recognized that Asia is starting to surpass Europe in terms of power and importance (as witnessed by Hillary Clinton’s choice of Asia rather than Europe for her first trip abroad as Secretary of State).

Then there’s the meeting with Medvedev, which will be closely watched since Obama has made such a point of saying he wants to ‘reset’ US-Russian relations. While both presidents have talked about wanting better relations they keep getting hung up on the same issues - missile defense, Iran and NATO expansion. And to make matters worse, not everyone on the US side seems to have gotten the reset memo.

Gen. John Craddock, NATO’s top commander and chief of U.S. forces in Europe, doesn’t seem to be in a compromise state of mind. Craddock said that relations with Russia were “turned upside down” by Russia's invasion of Georgia last August. The General seems to have missed this story last week, which provides more evidence that the Georgians actually started the conflict with their attack on South Ossetia.

This is the corner that we seem to have painted ourselves into in US/Russian relations - the Russians are dead set against having Georgia and Ukraine become members of NATO, feeling that it will threaten their security; while the US has staked so much in backing their membership that to not continue down that path would look like a sign of weakness, or if you believe the New York Times piece, the death of NATO itself.

It’s quite an agenda of issues, ones that have the potential to shape global politics and economics for years to come. Instead of Obama, maybe sending King Solomon would be a better choice.

Sparks fly at the World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is usually a sedate gathering of heads of state and the world's top economists all coming together to talk shop at the Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland.

Usually...But this year's version has already seen its share of fireworks. First there was the speech by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, which Bloomberg financial news branded as ‘absurd.’ The Russian leader took the financial whiz kids of Wall Street to task for causing, in his words, the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Putin laid the blame for the global financial crunch firmly at the feet of American-style capitalism, with a little gloating to boot.

“Just one year ago we heard the words of our American friends from this tribune about the fundamental strength and the cloudless prospects for the US economy,” Putin said, before adding that now “the pride of Wall Street, the investment banks, have virtually ceased to exist.”

Economist and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson scoffed at Putin’s take on how the world got in this economic mess (apparently ignoring the fact that this is an opinion now being voiced in many parts of the globe...), saying “the idea of the Russians lecturing the West about how to run the economy is absurd.” I’ll be really interested then to see how Prof. Ferguson reacts when France's Nikolas Sarkozy and German's Angela Merkel take their whacks at the US financial system this April at the G20 economic summit (my earlier post ‘Make Way for Moral Capitalism’ should give you an idea of where Merkel and Sarkozy are coming from).

But Putin wasn't the only world leader making waves at Davos. Turkey’s PM, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stormed off the stage after a heated exchange with Israel’s Shimon Peres, saying he would never return to Davos. Erdogan said he left after not getting time equal to Peres’ to address the gathered crowd. The two clashed, not surprisingly, over Israel’s recent military campaign in Gaza. Erdogan didn't hold back saying that Peres “killed children on beaches” and scolded the crowd for applauding Peres because he “killed people. And I think that is very wrong.”

According to the BBC, Peres couldn’t understand why Hamas fired rockets into Israel saying, “there was no siege against Gaza. Why did they fight us, what did they want? There was never a day of starvation in Gaza.” But, due respect to Mr. Peres, I think the Gazans might disagree. Israel maintained a blockade of Gaza - even after agreeing to lift it as part of the earlier cease-fire agreement with Hamas. As a result, many families in Gaza relied on food assistance programs sponsored by the UN and, yes, Hamas, to survive. So while technically Peres is right that “no one starved,” it doesn't mean people weren’t going hungry.

Who knew an economic forum could be so interesting?

German Greens make Turk party leader

Last week I wrote a piece about how even though the Europeans are very excited about his election his victory would be impossible in Europe today. Well, the Green Party of Germany has at least taken a step in the right direction.

At their party conference this weekend the German Greens named Cem Ozdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants, as one of the party's two co-leaders. If the Greens become part of Germany's ruling coalition after the next elections (a good possibility since the Greens have served as a coalition partner a number of times), Ozdemir will be in line for a Cabinet post, a first for a Turk in Germany.

It's good to see the Greens take this important step. There are nearly three million ethnic Turks in Germany, yet they by and large remain at the fringe of German society, often living in rundown sections of Germany’s larger cities. Only five ethnic Turks are in the German parliament, and none of them are in leadership roles.

Like Obama, Ozdemir tried not to let his background define him, saying "don't reduce me to the roots that I — by coincidence — have". He explained that Germans tend to make assumptions about Turks based on ethnic and religious ideas (like all Turks are devout Muslims, which they all are not) and that Turks in Germany then tend to go along with those assumptions. In the end, accepting these assumptions keeps the two cultures, German and Turkish, apart. Ozdemir, 42 years old and the author of several books, sees the parallels with Obama himself, his staff named his Facebook group "Yes We Cem" a play on Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign slogan.

So perhaps Obama is having a positive effect on race relations in Europe after all. In addition to the Green Party in Germany, groups in France and England are calling for ethnic minorities in their countries to be better represented in their national governments as well.

Is Turkey getting fed up with NATO?

That's the question being asked in the wake of the Russia-Georgia conflict.

According to press reports, Turkey is fed up with NATO's military build-up in the Black Sea in the wake of the conflict. So far the United States alone has sent three warships to Georgia to deliver relief supplies, with more are expected to sail for the region. Several other NATO nations have ships in the area as part of a previously planned naval exercise.

The problem is that there are limits that regulate the size of naval vessels allowed to sail into the Black Sea. The only way into the Black Sea is through two narrow straits (the Bosporus Straits and the Dardanelles) that cut through Turkey. An agreement from 1936 (The Montreaux Convention for those keeping track at home) make Turkey the gatekeeper to the Sea, if a country wants to sail a large vessel into the Black Sea, they need Turkey's permission. Turkey is said to be getting tired of the United States repeated requests to sail large military ships into the Black Sea, fearing that it will only provoke a confrontation with Russia.

Of course there's more going on here than meets the eye. Russia is Turkey's largest trading partner thanks to oil and gas shipments. Turkey also feels a little jerked around by the European Union at this point. Turkey has been a candidate for EU membership for since 1999. Since then the EU has added 12 members, but Turkey still remains on the sideline, with their potential membership coming sometime next decade at best. There is a feeling in Turkey that they are being treated unfairly, since they have undertaken many of the massive government reforms that the EU demanded they make to become a member.

So recently, Turkey has been starting to look towards the east. They upset their fellow NATO members recently by welcoming the leaders of both Iran and Sudan to Istanbul. And Turkey has not joined the NATO chorus in condemning Russia for its actions in Georgia. In fact the Wall Street Journal article points out that Turkey considers Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "crazy enough to unleash the next world war".

Turkey could be coming to a crossroads, a time to decide if it's worth waiting around hoping the EU someday let's them in, or if its time to break with organizations like NATO and forge new alliances with their neighbors to the east.

I do Time.com's job for them

Time.com has a report about the latest survey by the Pew Research group on the world's attitude toward the United States. Overall, the news is looking better for the US, for the first time since the start of the Iraq war, foreign opinion of the United States has increased, albeit slightly. Some of that may be because President Bush will soon be out of the picture - nearly 4 in 10 nations polled thought foreign relations would improve under a new president, with most feeling that Barack Obama would do a better job on the world stage than John McCain. On the downside, a majority of nations thought that the US had too much influence on their domestic affairs and nearly half identified us as the world's largest polluter (China was also cited as polluting too much). Their article on the Pew survey is here.

The Time.com article ends with a few items that the author, Gilbert Cruz, puts out as truly imponderable questions that he wished the poll had answered. Frankly, they're not all that imponderable. He asks:

1. Why, for example, do Russians prefer powerful leaders to straight-up democracies? (Pew found 57% of Russians "favor a 'leader with a strong hand'")

This one is fairly simple (especially if you've been reading AWV for awhile). Going back through the history of the Communists and the Czars before them, Russia has traditionally had "strong leaders" - a system where one person held broad authoritarian powers, so in a sense that is what is expected in a leader. Now combine that with the chaotic situation Russia went through in the 1990's under a not-so-strong leader, Boris Yeltsin. Going from a world power (as the Soviet Union) to a pauper country with a collapsed economy was a shock to the Russians and a rather poor introduction to this whole "democracy" thing. Since Russia has seen its economy and at least some of its world standing restored under the strong hand of Vladimir Putin, its not really surprising that 57% would say they prefer a strong leader.

2. Why do Tanzanians like President Bush so much? (Tanzania was one of three countries where a majority approved of Bush)

Probably it’s because of Pres. Bush's efforts at combating HIV/AIDS in Africa. Unless he can pull an Israel-Palestine peace agreement out of his hat in the next few months, Bush's most positive legacy will likely be the effort he has put in at bringing resources to bear against the disease in Africa, which has had a positive effect on reducing HIV/AIDS.

3. Oh, and why does Turkey dislike America so much? (Only 12% of Turks told Pew they had a favorable view of the US)

This one is due in large part to the Iraq war. No part of Iraq benefited more from removing Saddam Hussein from power than did the Kurdish north. The US has been supportive of the Kurds, in large part because it’s been a relatively peaceful part of a chaotic country. The problem is that some Kurdish groups have been fighting a decades-long terrorist war against Turkey in an effort to carve out a Kurdish homeland in SE Turkey. Since the fall of Saddam, some Kurdish groups have been using Iraq as a safe haven to launch attacks into Turkey. When the Turks have tried to use military force to break up what they call terrorist camps in Iraq, the US has tried to stop them, worrying that Turkish action will destabilize the part of Iraq being held up as a model of what the whole country can become (peaceful, stable, etc.).
So if you are a Turk, it is easy to the US as preventing your country from fighting terrorists attacking your homeland, something that might tend to give you a negative view of America.

That's just a few thoughts off the top of my head. I'm sure the folks at Time.com could come up with some more in-depth answers though if they were motivated to go out and look for them.

Kurdish rebels threaten suicide attacks against US

And just when you thought there were enough problems in Iraq...

On Sunday, a representative of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (or PKK) threatened that the group would use suicide attacks against American interests in the area in response to American support for Turkey in their battle against the PKK.

The PKK has long fought for a Kurdish homeland in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. Turkey has accused the PKK of using northern Iraq as a safe haven to launch attacks into southern Turkey. For the past few months Turkey has been launching air strikes and ground raids against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq, including air strikes over the weekend that Turkey claimed killed more than 150 PKK fighters.

Peritan Derseem, a representative for an Iran-based faction of the PKK, said that the Turkish raids were conducted with information gathered from the United States, so now the group was considering retaliation not against the Turks, but against the US. She claimed that some members of the groups now were looking to join suicide squads, and that for now the group was against such attacks, in the future that feeling could change.

The Kurdish north of Iraq, in drastic contrast to other parts of the country, has been relatively calm since the 2003 invasion.

Updates for Sunday

In case you missed the news today -

Fidel Castro's younger brother Raul was unanimously elected as Cuba's president today. He then surprised everyone with his choice of 78-year-old Politburo hardliner Machado Ventura as his vice-president. It was thought Raul may look to pave the way to a younger generation of Cuban leaders.

Meanwhile Turkey's incursion into Iraq is continuing. Turkey is claiming the mission so far is a success, despite losing 15 troops and a helicopter. Turkish officials claim to have killed more than 100 Kurdish rebels so far and believe that many others are retreating from bases along the border.