Headlines these days:
"Turkey coup could threaten country's Nato membership, John Kerry warns"
"Kerry urges Turkey to maintain democratic principles after coup"
"Kerry Warns Turkey that Actions Could Have NATO Consequences"
Uhm, actually - no.
The North Atlantic Treaty has no such provision. Freedom, rule of law, democracy are mentioned in the preamble only, that's the non-binding part.
NATO did not kick Turkey out when it was a military dictatorship nor Greece when it was a military dictatorship and it let Portugal join while it was a dictatorship.
And how could it have kicked them out? There's no article in the treaty regulating how a member could be kicked out.* All others might leave and found NATO 2.0, and that's really the only legal way how to strip Turkey off its NATO membership.
I doubt anyone in Washington, DC who gets elected to high office is stupid enough to even want Turkey to leave NATO.
I suppose Kerry did a disservice by warping the public perception of NATO. Maybe I should add to my list that now some people believe in NATO as the first alliance ever to insist on democracy?
S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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*: I checked all accession protocols, too: None of them even only mentions "democracy".
edit next day: The NATO Secretary General gets quoted implying the same nonsense:
"Being part of a unique community of values, it is essential for Turkey, like all other allies, to ensure full respect for democracy and its institutions, the constitutional order, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an e-mailed statement on Monday."
edit next day: The NATO Secretary General gets quoted implying the same nonsense:
"Being part of a unique community of values, it is essential for Turkey, like all other allies, to ensure full respect for democracy and its institutions, the constitutional order, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an e-mailed statement on Monday."
NATO- Gremlins explains proper use of Military Emblems, Insignia and Uniforms (humour)
ReplyDeleteAfter US soldiers wearing Kurdish badges, considered ‘terrorists’ by Ankara:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/turkey-us-ypg/484631/
https://www.rt.com/news/344811-turkey-us-soldiers-kurds/
and breaking international laws:
https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule62
it becomes more evident why Turkey and Russia move closer one to another:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-russia-meeting-idUSKCN0ZF1C7
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/will-the-pkk-and-the-islamic-state-bring-turkey-and-russia-closer-together
Turkey is moving to a more authoritarian regime. Was the coup a conspiracy?
We could agree that Ankara could have a more democratic attitude toward Kurds, because one cannot solve with cannons what needs to be solved with peaceful and constructive agreements.
EU threatens Turkey that it might stop the adhesion process.
I can still hear the echo of Lord Owen’s words ‘Don’t dream dreams’.
If Portugal and Greece were able to get into the EU, then ‘Turkey will never get into the EU’.
Some NATO members are indeed trying, in their imagination and games, to create the so-called ‘Gog and Magog’ alliance of the Book of Revelation. They should stop role-playing video games like World of Warcraft, that’s very childish and gremlins.
Giving to other alliances the control over the Bosphorus is a tricky game, and Turkey cannot use it as a bargaining chip either.
I never thought of NATO 2.0, but now that it is mentioned, some might think about it…
Is Turkey still behaving like an ally? Their connections are more to Russia and Arabia with similar gouvernments. The coup might just be a convenient excuse for Kerry to issue a public statement about unsaid issues. One such such issue is the presecution of journalists, who uncovered that the secret service of Turkey supplied ISIS, which would long have been gone without support by neighbours such as Turkey.
ReplyDeleteI don't ascribe individual asswipes that (try to) murder and merely claim to have done so as part of some brand to that brand.
DeleteIsrael is hardly a prime target of daesh. They've been conspicuously spared, and it's been noted by the Arab public as daesh hypocrisy already.
There is already a 'coalition' of sorts. The Saudis, Jordanians, Americans, French, British, Turks, Russians ... and then this
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/14/middleeast/islamic-coalition-isis-saudi-arabia/
You might be right: ‘Israel is hardly a prime target of daesh.’ Otherwise it would have been on the news in the last past 20 years or so?
DeleteOne could add, Israel was hardly the target of the now defunct Al Qaeda of Osama Ben Laden.
A country that is so threatened by terrorism actually never was by the worst terrorist organizations the world has ever known in modern history! Congratulations!
100% security indeed does exist; I might send a letter to the French Government to get some good advices from the Israelis counterparts, because they are in much trouble now.
I understand that daesh is more concerned by Southeast Asia, China and some stable democracies like Indonesia, Malaysia etc. It does make much more sense to travel across the globe to find new enemies, than to try to save Palestine.
Who would benefit from the crime?
Even Sherlock Holmes would have come to that conclusion!
Israel faced the PLO, and kinda came to terms with it.
DeleteThe PLO was at least as proficient and capable of global action as AQ or daesh. Unlike them, the PLO was able to tap into contacts with left terror groups.
It's just that these days they have largely insulated themselves against strikes from Arab countries - only their domestic Arabs and Arabs in the still occupied areas can cause much trouble to Israel in the region.
The French troubles are by their own design in my opinion. The majority ruled in favour of the majority for decades and as a consequence a minority of the minority became opposed to the majority and their government.
Turkey seems to be heading to Irans path.
ReplyDeleteWhile not a very likely scenario, it would change the security situation for the EU quite a bit.
Well, according to the US embassy the news was false. The sad lesson here is that our glorious age of information has very little to do with actual information.
ReplyDeleteDoes this really matter? Look at the headlines, and how little backlash they had. Many people seemed to agree with what the headlines imply about the nature of NATO.
DeleteNobody has really investigated who is behind DAESH.
ReplyDeleteImperialism, Fascism, Zionism… any political movement?
For sure, no religious belief is behind it. Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all forbid DAESH behaviour.
But, if DAESH is not stopped there where it is, in the Levant, it might be possible that they succeed in triggering a civil war in Europe, which is their objective.
I am no military expert and certainly not an armour expert, but one must also wonder if it makes sense, in a context of Syrian-Russian-US and Allies air supremacy, that ‘two (DAESH) tanks’ can do the job of ‘two tank battalions !’?; please read the last seven comments at the bottom of the discussion:
http://spioenkop.blogspot.fr/2016/06/no-end-in-sight-failed-tabqa-offensive.html
I see Sven Ortmann is having hard time thinking about the best fixing for German and US army brigades, but it seems that DAESH has already found the solution?
Two tanks and some Toyotas. Let’s feel free to copy and paste their solution and see how it works in the Baltics, for example?
Whether Turkey is heading toward Russia, Iran, China or Mars… on its own, is irrelevant. They are not a superpower on their own. USA and Russia are superpowers, each one of them, and on their own, without Turkey. And their behaviour should be looked at with more scrutiny.
You know the old saying:
‘Truthful words stand the test of time, but lies are soon exposed.’
Legendary and retired US Army Commander Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor has said that Russia would "Annihilate" US in head-to-head battle.
ReplyDeleteMore info: http://www.kotipetripaavola.com/russianato.html
The author of the article quoted Thompson, which in itself means that the article should be avoided.
Deletehttp://www.douglasmacgregor.com/RSGSASCBRIEFFINALshow.ppsx
I was never impressed by MacGregor. He seems overhyped. His main work - the book "Breaking the Phalanx" - was conspicuously devoid of interesting thoughts, but featured a foolish overemphasis on army aviation.
MacGregor's presentation was much-hyped, but it was done on behalf of a known warmonger senator and served the purpose to justify ever higher army spending and increased 'relevance' for the army bureaucracy.
Faults of the presentation:
- use of Belarus as base for the invasion, which is nonsense due to political reasons
- ridiculous assertion that a pet formation of MacGregor can outperform a 4x as large legacy army force
- Polish forces were ignored
- German forces were ignored
- French medium forces (self-deployment capable) were ignored
- yet U.S forces miraculously were at the scene, 1,000+ km away from their barracks
- ridiculous assumption that defenders would not secure flanks / do economy of force on wings (= assumption that U.S.Army would ignore its own doctrine)
- overemphasis on MBTs as providers of combat power
- unlike RAND's scenario analysis, MacGregor not even attempted to use actual wargaming as a tool
Essentially he doomed the legacy force by asserting that it would be concerned about linear defence in but a small share of the frontage, and not even conduct counter-attacks to flanking attempts.
The presentation was designed to fool laymen.
Somewhat related to this, and certainly related to the "freedom" that this blog covers is this article from bellingcat that provides a transcript of some the high level communication by the members of the coup attempt:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2016/07/24/the-turkey-coup-through-the-eyes-of-its-plotters/