[The Sabbaticus]

7 years of recession, 1/4 reduction of GDP, record high levels of unemployment' were not meant to 'bring some sense into them

.

They were meant to punish the Greeks and maintain the status quo (Germanic hegemony) within the EU.

[Drlee]

Time to punish Turkey. They are a mouse that is roaring. I hope the EU embargoes their goods and stations substantial military force on Turkey's border.

They have become a rogue state.

Trump will do nothing unless he needs a war and Putin says it is OK.

[noemon]

There is one issue on which Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), are in complete agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish territory and must be reconquered. So strong is this determination that the leaders of both parties have openly threatened to invade the Aegean.

The only conflict on this issue between the two parties is in competing to prove which is more powerful and patriotic, and which possesses the courage to carry out the threat against Greece. While the CHP is accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP party of enabling Greece to occupy Turkish lands, the AKP is attacking the CHP, Turkey's founding party, for allowing Greece to take the islands through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, the 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements, and the 1947 Paris Treaty, which recognized the islands of the Aegean as Greek territory.

In 2016, Erdoğan said that Turkey "gave away" the islands that "used to be ours" and are "within shouting distance." "There are still our mosques, our shrines there," he said, referring to the Ottoman occupation of the islands.

Two months earlier, at the "Conference on Turkey's New Security Concept," Erdoğan declared: "Lausanne... has never been a sacred text. Of course, we will discuss it and struggle to have a better one." Subsequently, pro-government media outlets published maps and photos of the islands in the Aegean, calling them the territory that "Erdoğan says we gave away at Lausanne."

To realize his ultimate goal of leaving behind a legacy that surpasses that of all other Turkish leaders, Erdoğan has set certain objectives for the year 2023, the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic, and 2071, the 1,000th anniversary of the 1071 Battle of Manzikert, during which Muslim Turkic jihadists from Central Asia defeated Christian Greek Byzantine forces in the Armenian highland of the Byzantine Empire.

The idea behind these goals is to create nationalistic cohesion towards annexing more land to Turkey. To alter the borders of Turkey, however, Erdoğan must change or annul the Lausanne Treaty. Ironically, ahead of his two-day official visit to Greece in December -- touted as a sign of a new era in Turkish-Greek relations -- Erdogan told Greek journalists that the Lausanne Treaty is in need of an update. During his trip, the first official visit to Greece by a Turkish head of state in 65 years, Erdoğan repeated his mantra that the Lausanne Treaty must be revised.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that Turkey "gave away" Greek islands that "used to be ours" and are "within shouting distance". "There are still our mosques, our shrines there," he said, referring to the Ottoman occupation of the islands. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

The following month, Erdoğan targeted CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, again accusing the party that signed the Lausanne Treaty of giving away the islands during negotiations. "We will tell our nation about [this]," Erdoğan said. What this statement means is that Erdogan accepts that the islands legally belong to Greece. Yet, at the same time, he calls the Greek possession of the territory "an invasion" -- apparently because the islands were once within the borders of the Ottoman Empire -- and he now wants them back.

Meanwhile, the CHP has been equally aggressive in its rhetoric, with Kılıçdaroğlu telling the Turkish parliament that Greece has "occupied" 18 islands. When Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos was described as "uncomfortable" with this statement, CHP's deputy leader for foreign affairs, Öztürk Yılmaz, responded, "Greece should not test our patience." Yılmaz also reportedly stated that "Turkey is much more than its government," and that any Greek minister who provokes Turkey, will be "hit with a sledgehammer on the head...If [Kammenos] looks at history, he will see many examples of that."

History is, in fact, filled with examples of Turks carrying out murderous assaults against Anatolian Greeks. In one instance, the genocidal assault against Greek and Armenian Christians in Izmir in 1922 was highlighted in a speech before the parliament by Devlet Bahceli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP):

"If they [the Greeks] want to fall into the sea again -- if they feel like being chased after again -- they are welcome. The Turkish nation is ready and has the faith to do it again. Someone must explain to the Greek government what happened in 1921 and 1922. If there is no one to explain it to them, we know how to stick like a bullet on the Aegean, rain from the sky like a blessed victory, and teach history to the couriers of ahl al-salib [the people of the cross] all over again."

Turkish propagandists also have been twisting facts to try to portray Greece as the aggressor. Ümit Yalım, former secretary-general of the Ministry of National Defense, for example, said that "Greece has turned the Greek-occupied islands into arsenals and military outposts that Greece will use in its future military intervention against Turkey."

Turkish politicians all seem to have their own motivations for their obsession with the islands: Traditional Turkish expansionism, Turkification of Hellenic lands, neo-Ottomanism and Islam's flagship of conquest -- jihad. There are also strategic reasons for their wanting to invade the islands, which can be understood in a statement made by Deputy Prime Minister Tuğrul Türkeş about Turkey's control of Cyprus since 1974:

"There is this misinformation that Turkey is interested in Cyprus because there is a Turkish society there... Even if no Turks lived in Cyprus, Turkey would still have a Cyprus issue and it is impossible for Turkey to give up on that."

The same attitude and mentality apply to the Aegean islands. Although Turkey knows that the islands are legally and historically Greek, Turkish authorities want to occupy and Turkify them, presumably to further the campaign of annihilating the Greeks, as they did in Anatolia from 1914 to 1923 and after. The destruction of any remnant of Greek culture that existed in Asia Minor, a Greek land prior to the 11th century Turkish invasion, is almost complete. There are fewer than 2,000 Greeks left in Turkey today.

Given that Turkey brutally invaded Cyprus in 1974, its current threats against Greece -- from both ends of Turkey's political spectrum -- should not be taken lightly by the West. Greece is the birthplace of Western civilization. It borders the European Union. Any attack against Greece should be treated as an attack against the West. It is time for the West, which has remained silent in the face of Turkish atrocities, to stand up to Ankara.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist born and raised in Turkey. She is presently based in Washington D.C.

Gatestone

[noir]

Time to punish Turkey. They are a mouse that is roaring. I hope the EU embargoes their goods and stations substantial military force on Turkey's border.

They have become a rogue state.

Trump will do nothing unless he needs a war and Putin says it is OK.

Your allies.

On the other hand, during the Cold War he American needed a base in that region

[foxdemon]

Let’s not forget the Turks cutting of power to the US base. Why do the Americans put up with being treated like this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/02/how-the-u-s-military-scrambled-in-turkey-to-keep-working-during-the-coup-attempt/?utm_term=.efabd02572bc

Checkpoint
How the U.S. military scrambled in Turkey to keep working during the coup attempt
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff August 2, 2016


INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey — During the first night of the coup, the lights went out here around 2 a.m., as local authorities shut off this sprawling airfield’s power, beginning what would be a kind of siege of the joint Turkish-U.S. base.

U.S. Air Force Col. David Trucksa, the commander of the 447th Air Expeditionary Group, had been at his post commanding a contingent of U.S. ground attack aircraft and refueling jets at Incirlik for little more than two weeks when — on the night of July 15 — his second in command called and told him to flip to the news.

It was his first notice that a coup was underway outside the base.

Trucksa immediately started calling up his chain of command and summoning key personnel who were off-duty. It had been a long week of flying, he said, and people were spread across the base starting their weekend.

[Pentagon’s top general seeks to cool anti-American sentiment in Turkey]

“And then boom, the power went out,” said Trucksa in an interview with a small group of reporters here.


Incirlik is a key facility in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State.

“We had a portion of our forces still airborne over Turkey, Iraq and Syria,” Trucksa said. “So the question is: If this base gets attacked, what do we do? A lot of things were going on in [a] short amount of time.”

Though the power was out, Trucksa said key components of the base, including communications, were backed up immediately by generators, which would run until July 22 when power was restored.

With the base on emergency power, the Americans could communicate with the outside world and get their aircraft back to the tarmac, Trucksa said.




Air Force Master Sgt. Derrick Goode was trying to get ahold of seven of his people when the base’s power went out. Goode, who usually uses Facebook Messenger to communicate with subordinates, was instead forced to drive to the dorms and start banging on their doors to get them up.

By daybreak, the base was on full alert and U.S. Air Force security forces had ramped up their patrols around the American portions of the airfield.


Sometime after dawn, the Turkish military closed the airspace around Incirlik, grounding reconnaissance and attack aircraft used in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

One U.S. official in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operations, said that even though U.S. aircraft couldn’t fly for little more than a day, operations in the region were “severely impacted.” He added that the fighting around Manbij — a key city in northern Syria through which Islamic State fighters are funneled to various battlefields — was effectively stopped as air support for local ground forces was almost non-existent.

“Having Incirlik back open is a major thing,” the official said. “To say that Incirlik closing wouldn’t have a significant impact on our operations is not a true statement.”

When the coup attempt began, the base’s control tower, manned by both Turkish and U.S. Air Force personnel, but under the authority of the Turks, had allowed at least one Turkish KC-145 refueling aircraft to launch.


The tanker reportedly assisted a number of F-16 fighter jets controlled by the plotter who bombed the Turkish parliament buildings and other government structures. But as the coup unraveled, the man likely responsible for authorizing the launch of the refueling aircraft, Turkish Air Force Gen. Bekir Van, contacted his U.S. counterparts and sought asylum, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

Van was told that the United States could do nothing as the base was Turkish soil, and later that morning Turkish national police quietly drove on base and arrested him.

In the following days, Turkish police would arrive periodically and take Turkish Air Force members off the base, said Goode. He added that they would arrive with no warning, but did not search any of the U.S. facilities or question U.S. personnel.

With the coup over, Incirlik limped into the next week running on generators that required constant refueling. Most facilities kept working. The commissary closed for a day, but only because the Turkish locals couldn’t get on base, said Goode. The mess hall continued to serve hot food and, because of the summer heat, showers without functioning electric heaters still had hot water for days after the outage.


“We had plenty of water and plenty of food,” Goode said. “You saw a lot of images of MREs coming in and water; all of that was just backup.”

“Nothing was ever rationed at any point,” he added.


In the days since the coup there have been periodic protests near the base — the byproduct of a sharp spike in anti-American sentiment because of allegations of U.S. participation in the failed uprising — but operations at the base have returned to their normal tempo.

The United States has denied any involvement in the coup, and on Monday, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with high-ranking Turkish officials to discuss Turkish-U.S. cooperation, including the U.S. presence at Incirlik.

“One thing that was very clear to me is that they believe, as I do, that Turkey and the United States working together against [the Islamic State] is a hell of a lot better than us not working together,” Dunford told reporters after the meetings.

[Drlee]

I don't know why we allow those pipsqueaks to cause so much trouble. You would have to ask Trump Putin.

“One thing that was very clear to me is that they believe, as I do, that Turkey and the United States working together against [the Islamic State] is a hell of a lot better than us not working together,” Dunford told reporters after the meetings.

This is a very frightening comment. I am not surprised that he got away with it though. It seems that the US is very handy for Turkey as long as we are fighting ISIL. Other than that they feel free to give us the finger.

[noemon]

Turkey threatens US 6th Fleet Operating in Cyprus' waters.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım threatened Exxon Mobile's hydrocarbon survey ships but also the US 6th Fleet currently participating in a naval exercise in the area between the 7-18 March 2018.

“The Republic of Cyprus would not be allowed to get away with selling the energy resources surrounding the island,” Yildirim said on Wednesday. With reference to the turkish-occupied North part of Cyprus, he added “the natural riches surrounding the island of Cyprus is the common wealth of all the people who live on the island.”

And he threatened that “This and other provocative activities that create faits accomplis will be responded to in an appropriate fashion.”

It was a clear message to the US Fleet protecting the Exxon Mobile survey vessels.

Last month, Turkish war ships threatened to sink drilling ship commissioned by Italy’s ENI and ultimately managed to block the process as the Italian government did not dare put the lives of their countrymen at risk.

A day earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reacting to U.S. Sixth Fleet heading to East Mediterranean, said , “while European states’ boats are abandoning refugees to their deaths, we try to rescue every innocent’s life. You can only make it there with your Sixth Fleet, aircraft carrier.”

Yildirim underlined that any underground riches surrounding the island should only be extracted with the permission of both the island’s administrations.

“Any work in which one of these interlocutors is not part of the deal will be evaluated by us as a threat to the sovereign rights of North Cyprus,” he said.

Turkey has been illegally occupying 40% of Cyprus since 1974.

[Drlee]

I hope Turkey does not let its alligator mouth overload its hummingbird ass.

We have an embattled president just looking for some way to distract from his problems at home. He is a huge military fan and can't wait to play with his toys.

Turkey is a sad mess. Like most everyone I know, I am just getting tired of mouthy Islamic failed states on some kind of testosterone high. I think most Americans are in the mood to break something over there.

[ThirdTerm]

This issue is almost identical with the Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan. In 2010, a Chinese trawler, which was operating in disputed waters, collided with Japanese Coast Guard's patrol boats near the Senkaku Islands. By colliding with Japanese patrol boats, the Chinese fishermen made a point that the islands were theirs. Imia/Kardak is claimed by Turkey and Greece and the larger Aegean dispute also comprises disputes over the continental shelf and territorial waters as is the case with the Senkaku Islands dispute.

[noemon]

In the same manner, Cyprus is claimed by Turkey and Greece.

Cyprus is an independent country with 35% of its territory illegally occupied by a foreign power that is currently attempting to occupy more of its sea territory. The fun part is that despite the Europeans pretending that they don't need the Americans, the French and Italian navies protecting the Italian drill from Turkish aggression chickened out and ordered the removal of themselves and the drill while the Americans sent in their 6th Fleet to protect official EU territory while European politicians who usually provide us with various provocative messages against Greece's "unnecessary" military spending are absolutely silent in the face of blatant Turkish aggression.

[noemon]

Right, I see you edited:

Imia/Kardak is claimed by Turkey and Greece and the larger Aegean dispute also comprises disputes over the continental shelf and territorial waters as is the case with the Senkaku Islands dispute.

Indeed this is the Greek EEZ and the inhabited island of Kastelorizo which is half way between Greece and Cyprus creates an obstacle for Turkey who is disputing that the Greek islands have a continental shelf and is claiming that the islands should not be considered at all when delineating the borders between the 2 countries. Turkey claims Aegean waters west of Greek islands, that is territory between the Turkish mainland and the Greek mainland and refuses to take the matter to the Hague which Greece has proposed to end the matter. Essentially Turkey is claiming Greek lakes between Greek islands and the Greek mainland. The 18 islands that both Erdogan and the Kemalist opposition promised to invade are west of the Eastern-most Greek islands.



Turkey is claiming numbers 4, 5, 6 & 7 as Turkish territorial waters and has parked its navy there harassing French and Italian ships from conducting drilling operations. It is in spots 6 & 7 that the US 6th Fleet is currently operating.

[Istanbuller]

It seems like Erdogan does not miss any chance to bash the US actions. We are having problem with US bureaucracy, not with Republican Party administration and American state. US bureaucracy is still being handled by former administration officials and ıt is like Clinton is in charge of it.

Thus, we are getting mixed signals from there. We have to wait until things get clear. American are currently fighting each other at home.

[Drlee]

We are having problem with US bureaucracy, not with Republican Party administration and American state. US bureaucracy is still being handled by former administration officials and ıt is like Clinton is in charge of it.

Nonsense. You had better be afraid of the new republican regime. The older bureaucrats still see Turkey as an ally. Trump would throw you under the bus for a 1 point increase in the polls. Ryan sees you as an unnecessary expense. You have it exactly backward.

[Istanbuller]

Hold on there.

It should be Turkey who is mad at you. It was you who was behind the coup attempt against Erdogan. It is you who support and arm terrorist and terorist sponsoring states who are hostile toward Turkey.

You can't do anything. Turkey is just too powerful and big to be invaded by a foreign force.

[MadMonk]

Hold on there.

It should be Turkey who is mad at you. It was you who was behind the coup attempt against Erdogan. It is you who support and arm terrorist and terorist sponsoring states who are hostile toward Turkey.

You can't do anything. Turkey is just too powerful and big to be invaded by a foreign force.

You truly belive that the US sponsored that pathetic shitshow of a coup/military exercise? If they had, odds are that Erdogan would now be toast. I criticize the US foreign policy all the time, its objectives as well as its incompetence/callousness, but they are not that incompetent.

Do whatever you want. Dream of power and strength while projecting to the world your weakness, your desperate need for the world to fear you. You are led by a madman who would kill/jail a lot of people in order to stay in power, sadly you are not the only ones.

[Drlee]

It should be Turkey who is mad at you. It was you who was behind the coup attempt against Erdogan. It is you who support and arm terrorist and terorist sponsoring states who are hostile toward Turkey.

You can't do anything. Turkey is just too powerful and big to be invaded by a foreign force.

Mad Monk is quite right.

Just to add. The US could defeat Turkey in a matter of days. Ask Saddam, whose armed forces were far larger and more powerful than Turkey's, how that worked out for him. Oh wait. You can't. He got hung or something.