http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1048476619316 "On Sunday Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said Turkey's future membership bid would be called into question if it went ahead with announced plans to push troops into Iraq"
I wouldn't take him too seriously if i was you, just last week he said he wouldn't allow US aircrafts through Belgian Airspace, the start of the war made a mockery of that statement...
????? You do realize you are talking about the small, irrelevant people living in the sorry excuse for a country squeezed between France, Germany, Holland and Luxemburg, don't you?
Re: Re: EU warns Turkey not to invade With Giscard running around saying what 75% of Europeans think* about Turkey ("not European" i.e. even if they were as wealthy as the Swiss and liberal as the Swedes they shouldn't join the EU), I'm not sure this is a good time to be further alienating Europe especially since Turkish-USA relations (imho) are finished. At least they've still got the Israelis. LOL *and the other 25% are afraid to say
Re: Re: Re: EU warns Turkey not to invade As if US relations with everyone except Britain and Israel are decent anymore.
Ow yes. Despite the whole war of the tulips thing the US can count on the spineless Dutch government elected by the ignorant majority for years to come.
Re: Re: Re: Re: EU warns Turkey not to invade The situation with Turkey is far more serious. The entire basis of the relationship is security related and that's been shot to hell. The others, especially Germany, will be smoothed over without much difficulty. Of course, with possibly 6 more years of Bush one can never tell.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: EU warns Turkey not to invade My point was that even most of our traditional allies now no longer trust us. They fear us now more than anything else and while the consequences may not become immediately manifested, the chickens will come home to roost eventually. I can't remember who said it, but when someone was asked about the difference between tactics and strategy, the answer was "Strategy is the art of making sure the victories won now by your tactics don't carry the seeds of future defeats." or words to that effect. If that is true, the Bush administration is gunning for a place among the worst geopolitical strategists ever.
"since Turkish-USA relations (imho) are finished" Why? Turkey have been one of USAs best allies for decades and have done whatever the US asked of them. They helped the US in the Korean war, in the Cold war and in the Gulf war. Why is it that the first time they disagree with the US they are no longer an ally?
You haven't been paying attention to the Bush adminstration much, have you? "If yer not with us, yer agin us!"
This isn't a case of just disagreeing. They have compicated matters greatly for us. I don't believe we can't trust them anymore. In any case, it's my guess that relations are severely damaged, not necessarily my hope. Here's Bill Safire's column: "Turkey's Wrong Turn" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/24/opinion/24SAFI.html "Ankara Islamists kept allied supply ships floating off Turkey's shores, while those politicians dickered over the price of a transit toll. Six billion cash plus 10 billion in loan guarantees wasn't good enough in that time-consuming bazaar. We had to send our ships around to Kuwait, lengthening the war and causing more allied and Iraqi casualties. Adding diplomatic insult to this military injury, Turkey massed 40,000 troops on its border with Iraq, hoping to grab the oil fields of Kirkuk if Iraqi Kurds rectified Saddam's ethnic cleansing by daring to return to their homes. The Turks' excuse for seizing today's moment of liberation to bite off a rich chunk of their neighbor is this: they insist that Iraqi Kurds plan to set up an independent state, which would then supposedly cause Turkish Kurds to secede and break up Turkey. " "That's strictly Erdogan's cover story for an oil grab, undermining the coalition's plans for an Iraq whole and free. Even America's severest critics recognize Turkey's move as venal: pacifist Germany just threatened to remove its crews from the Awacs sent to Turkey by NATO that we arranged to protect the Turks from any wartime backlash. Thus has the novice wheeler-dealer in Ankara succeeded in alienating both the trans-Atlantic coalition of the willing and old Europe's union of the unwilling.
Yes, that was in regards to THE WAR ON TERROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not ************ing iraq jesus you just can't deal with it can you?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: EU warns Turkey not to invade Well, I hope they aren't but I suspect they are. Right now, our allies know they can't do anything to stop us from unilaterally conquering Iraq so a few of them have hopped on the bandwagon strictly through fear or hopes of reward despite the fact that they don't want to. I believe they now see the USA as a rogue elephant. Under Bush the First and Clinton, US imperial hegmony wasn't so bad because those administrations were smart enough to at least gave them lip service and stroke their egos. Now Bush the Second has gone and made a dog's dinner of everything and I think he has woken them up to the fact that there's nothing to stop a US administration that believes the US has a unique right to go conquer anyone we want just because we feel like it. If that doesn't frighten them, they're even bigger idiots than US conservatives think they are.
I read that colum earlier today and I don't think the author is very objective. Quote from the article: "That's strictly Erdogan's cover story for an oil grab, undermining the coalition's plans for an Iraq whole and free" How does he know that? Isn´t that exactly what anti americans claimed was the US' reason for starting the war with Iraq? He also makes the Turkish government sound as Islamic fundamentalists, which they are not. It seems like Bill Safires oppinion is that you cannot trust Turkey because they have a muslim government.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: EU warns Turkey not to invade Trust me, there are no limits to the Idiocy of most European policy makers...
No, no, no, you can't trust them because they have a different opinion about a matter then the US. A few weeks ago, when they were asking logistic support for an eventual war, they were still worth trusting...
Of course, the article is very biased (it's an opinion piece), but the problem for Turkey is that just about everyone in the West is angry with them at this moment, starting with Europe. Here's a more pointed comment by Louis Michel ""it is unthinkable that Turkey becomes a member of the EU, if it invades Kurdistan." Note "Kurdistan" http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=10664 Here's a "serious" article about the strains in Turkish-USA relations. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/24/international/worldspecial/24TURK.html "It's quite serious," said Cem Duna, a former Turkish ambassador to the European Union and to the United Nations. "This is a relationship that was built up very carefully and meticulously for the last 40 years or so," Mr. Duna said. "It was always referred to as a strategic partnership." "Now," he added, "that concept is lost, because it turned out to be neither a partnership nor strategic for that reason. That is very important damage. The trust that was built over this period is no longer here."
LOL. Very true. But it just shows the extent to which we were embarrassed, which doesn't bode well for future relations. As an aside, has the USA ever had a worse SS than Colin Powell? It's easy to place to the blame on Bush or Rumsfeld, but still.