Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
September 3, 2003
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
Recent
Stories
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
3, 2003
Conscripting Turkey
Imperial
Mercenaries Wanted
By EMRAH GÖKER
On December 30th, 1900, amidst the heated debates
about US military campaigns in Asia and the Philippines and about
the "burden" on the shoulders of British gentlemen
serving the Empire in her "savage" colonies, Mark Twain
bitterly saluted the new century:
"I bring you the stately matron
called Christendom--returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored
from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria, South Africa and the
Philippines; with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full
of boodle and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap
and a towel, but hide the looking-glass. Give her the glass;
it may from error free her / When she shall see herself as others
see her."[1]
Twain's words, unfortunately, reach out
to us even after a hundred years. Of course, the contemporary
culprit of imperialist agony and bloodletting is not--and was
not, a hundred years ago--an abstract theological entity. Those
who have been resisting the US army-state continue to inform
the world, tirelessly, about the destructive activities of the
institutions, financial groups, think-tanks, politicians, etc.
that are collectively managing the "war without end".
Still, the question remains: Can the Empire, which expands by
shaping the "savage/rogue/terrorist/unruly" elements
enclosed within the imperium in its own image, be made to see
itself as its victims see it? Surely, challenging capitalist
imperialism with a "mirror" to expose its orientalist
and civilizing delusions is only but one step in the political
struggle. Nevertheless, it is still a vital step, if we consider
the material effects of the imperial "civilizing will"
on peripheral states like the Turkish one, whose imagination
of the "Middle East", of the "Arab", and
of its very own Kurdish citizens imitate that will. As the occupation
of Iraq unfolds, democracy and social justice are being further
undermined in Turkey: The political and (im)moral economy of
the expanding imperium is most fitting for the power-hungry agendas
of the military and business fractions of the Turkish bourgeoisie,
albeit not for the same ends. In this essay, I want to touch
upon the most recent debate on sending Turkish troops to Iraq,
revived once again since the parliament's rejection (days before
the invasion began) of allowing US troops inside the country.
Looking into this ongoing episode in Turkey will allow me to
reflect upon two related topics--the dangerous erosion of democratic
principles in my country, triggered by the "war on terrorism",
and the Turkish construction of the "Middle East" as
a sickly cross-breed of the Ottoman and Anglo-American colonial
projects.
"Our strategic
interests"
Within two weeks following the July 4th
"Sulaymaniyya controversy" where eleven Turkish Special
Forces troops (along with a number of Turkoman civilians) were
detained by US soldiers in Sulaymaniyya, news about sending Turkish
troops to Iraq began to circulate. During the July 18th Ankara
visit of General John Abizaid (head of US Central Command) and
General James L. Jones (Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) "cooperation"
between the Turkish and US armies was discussed.[2] This visit
helped the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and
the corporate media ease the carefully-staged nationalist uproar
following the Sulaymaniyya incident by preaching that sending
troops was a "wonderful opportunity to repair our damaged
relationship with our 'strategic ally'". Abdullah Gül's
(Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs) Washington
visit between 23rd and 25th of July finally officialized the
proposal for the hiring of Turkey as an imperial mercenary.[3]
(Ironically, on July 25th, 1950, the Turkish parliament voted
for sending 4,500 troops to the "anticommunist" war
in Korea in order to secure membership to NATO. Almost a quarter
of those soldiers never returned, sacrificed to "our strategic
interests".[4] On the very same day some fifty-three years
later, Colin Powell was urging the Turkish parliament to act
as quickly as possible on the troops question.)
"We will
not be occupiers."
To prevent a misunderstanding: There
was no obvious or covered-up US pressure on the AKP government
during the unfolding of the troops proposal. Once we submit that
the AKP leadership, corporate media, prominent Istanbul businessmen
and the Army General Staff have learned to share and operate
in Pentagon's current Weltanshaaung, we can understand their
spontaneous enthusiasm to jump on the Iraqi bandwagon of "liberation"
and "normalization".
The continuing public debate since Gül's
visit is emblematic of the growing trend of militarization of
politics in Turkey. Free-floating (and quite hollow) signifiers
like "regional strategy", "national interest",
"strategic partner" bounce about in numerous paper
columns, strenuous IR and Political Science articles, endless
TV debates, press releases, and so on. There is today an inflation
of "realists" on the opinions market, sermonizing that
the occupation is there to stay, that the US cannot--and should
not--be resisted, and that Turkey will either learn to be a willing
and obedient player, or be left out of the "game".
Some of these warmongering "realists" also dream that
Turkey, as the unique secular-well-but-still-Muslim-and-wow-even-member-of-NATO
child of "Western civilization", will embrace, educate,
inspire and liberate the desperate Iraqi masses.
Cüneyt Ülsever, for example,
who is a right-wing columnist for the best-selling popular-nationalist
daily Hürriyet, contends that the Army can be the "field
sociologist" for the occupying US forces in Iraq.[5] According
to his enigmatic proposal, since US cultural and religious differences
make it impossible to win a "political war" in Iraq,
Turkey might give a helping hand to its "strategic ally"
as the knowledgeable neighbor (not to mention "ex-colonialist").
According to him, "there never was a people or a state"
in Iraq, and unless Turkish troops go in to help finish the US
job of liberation, chaos is bound to reign "behind our border",
which, of course, is against "our national interests".[6]
Taha Akyol, a self-acclaimed "conservative
liberal" from Milliyet, regurgitates the civilizing desire,
arguing that since Turkey has "a well-established state
and legal tradition, a long history of modernization and an entrepreneurial
middle class strong enough to lead", it was able to transform
the political-Islamic movement into a "conservative-democratic"
one. It follows that Turkey has a "mission" to present
the Arab world a "concrete model of success".[7] Since
Iraq's stability will guarantee Turkey's security, Akyol says
in another article, the Army can assume a friendlier (than the
ugly military face of the US) role there, pioneering the development/reconstruction
of social services and urban infrastructure.[8] Abdullah Gül,
Prime Minister Erdog(an's "number one", agrees with
this proposal for "good cop, bad cop" on a national
scale, where Turkey plays the humanitarian: "We wouldn't
go there to fight against the Iraqi people and armed forces,
we'd act to liberate the Iraqi people. We'd help them achieve
tranquility, peace, stability, help them secure their basic needs.
We'd contribute to the rebuilding of utilities and the provision
of food None other than that can be expected from Turkey."[9]
Since the beginning of August (I am writing
this at the end of the month), this is the official government
position on the troops question--definitive role for the Turkish
Army in "problematic parts" of Iraq[10] should be a
humanitarian/civilizing one, and armed conflict should be avoided
to the best ability of the troops. Ankara and Washington officially
exchanged questions and answers about some of the specifics,
and despite the calls from President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Speaker
of the Parliament Bülent Arnç[11], the government
declared that it need not wait for a UN endorsement to create
a multinational task force for Iraq. The current talk is about
10,000 Turkish troops.[12] Ankara has already begun a smiling-face
PR campaign among Iraqi tribes in order to promote its mercenaries
and to learn about the probable reactions against Turkish military
presence in Iraq. Pakistan, more reluctant to be subcontracted
for the occupation, is sending delegations to Turkey.[13] After
the latest National Security Council meeting, the Army leadership
stated that Turkey cannot afford to be "disinterested"
in the fate of its neighbor and left the political decision to
the parliament.[14] So the clock is ticking for the new resolution,
expected to be introduced in mid-September. Swords, once again,
are drawn.
"Yes, we have
claims on foreign soil!"
As Iraq was orientalized by the Turkish
warmongering minority, the uglier face of the "mission to
Iraq" also surfaced. According to this line--no doubt endorsed
by some of the same figures celebrating Turkish humanitarianism--helping
the US "finish the job" is a serious matter of "national
security", a necessary part of Turkey's own "war against
terrorism". Faruk Log(og(lu, Turkish Ambassador to the US,
has summarized the official position, a year before the invasion
of Iraq, in a telling interview with Daniel Pipes' Middle East
Forum: "Turkey and the United States share similar values.
Both countries are democracies, respect the rule of law, respect
human rights, and embrace the notion of a free market economy.
Accordingly, Turkey has been a strategic friend, ally, and partner
to the United States throughout the decades... Turkey sympathizes
with the U.S. war on terror because it has also suffered at the
hands of terrorists over the past 15 years. In fact, Turkey has
lost more than 40,000 of its citizens to the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) and other terrorist groups. The leadership in Turkey's
capital, Ankara, understands that the war on terror will require
a long and sustained struggle along many fronts in many countries."[15]
More recently, Fikret Bila from Milliyet
argues that a cooperative alliance in Iraq between Turkey and
the US depends on the removal of all threats against Turkish
unity in Northern Iraq--especially the eradication of PKK/KADEK
is in order. Building a unified Iraq, one army, one police force,
is thus in the interest of both Ankara and Washington.[16]
Ertugrul Özkök, leading Hürriyet
journalist, and by far the most notorious right-winger (almost
to a fascistic degree) within the militarist camp, reminds his
readers about the "martyrs" sacrificed during the war
against Kurdish guerrillas, arguing that the persisting chaos
in Iraq will help PKK grow in power. To prevent this, Turkey
has to make the "strategic calculation" of the number
of soldiers it must be ready to lose in a mission to Iraq.[17]
Özkök, in another article, contends that having a strong
economy is not sufficient to be a "great state"--a
powerful, mobile army, high on morale and strong in combat capability,
is a must. According to him, France and Germany have become "weak"
states because their civil society organizations and their intellectuals
have run a successful campaign of pacifism which, in turn, "rendered
their armies useless".[18] Özkök's exemplary militarist
(if not overtly fascist) mindset is not satisfied with this call
to arms, he goes on to endorse capitalist expansionism for Turkey:
The status quo, he argues, wants to imprison Turkey within its
national borders, but Turkish business should break the taboos
and expand beyond the borders. "We should have claims on
foreign soil", not, "of course", for war-making
purposes, but for exporting Turkish capital and buying-out companies
in vulnerable countries like Serbia.[19]
In my opinion, the General Staff leadership,
closer to the NATO Central Command and distant to anti-American
sentiments of some less powerful elements in the Army, is more
at home with the "securitization" of a Turkish mission
to Iraq. "Humanitarian" emphasis appears to better
suit the government's PR campaign. One thing is clear, though:
As more and more civilians like the journalists I quote become
"embedded" in the expanding capitalist-militarist imperium,
any form of democratic, antimilitarist, reintegrationist, libertarian
politics to address Turkey's Kurdish question is efficiently
excluded from the political field. Recently, the AKP government
was not shy in utilizing the antiterrorist épistémè
against the labor campaign of the Confederation of Public Workers'
Unions, implying that the ongoing protests of public workers
were a "threat to national unity".
Pitfalls of Turkish Anti-Americanism
In the absence of a political will which
is able to form a progressive coalition of antiwar politics,
class politics, gender politics and a Kurdish politics of recognition
against capitalist imperialism, an anti-politics of reactionary
nationalism is growing in Turkey. The self-acclaimed "scientific
socialist" Workers Party (I.P) calls for a Turkey which
would, in isolation from both European and American influence,
become a superpower by allying with/guiding ex-Soviet Turkic
republics and secular anti-American forces in the Middle East.
I.P finds itself allied with orthodox Kemalist intellectuals
from other tendencies, the Islamist-nationalist Party of Great
Unity (BBP) and the fascist National Action Party (MHP) in endorsing
a reactionary anti-Americanism and in supporting "an independent
Turkish Army" which can be the only political organization
that can lead to "democracy and progress".
It is yet uncertain whether this irredentist
tendency of absent-minded anti-Americanism can attract a significant
number of voters in the coming election--I personally think that
this version of militarism, reacting against the imperial version,
is more likely to endorse a dictatorial military junta than stage
an electoral campaign. But if we remember how the German National
Socialist Workers Party came to power, who knows?
Urgent Need to
Fill the Political Gap
One thing we can know, though: The overwhelming
majority of Turkey's citizens was against any kind of US military
adventure at their doors before the invasion, their sentiments
of discomfort about US "surplus imperialism"[20] have
not changed as the occupation continues. Turkish Daily News cites
a recent poll conducted by "respected" pollster Verso,
where 62.2% of the respondents opposed sending Turkish troops
to Iraq, and only 17.4% agreed that an Iraq mission was desirable.[21]
Today, we need a movement that can articulate such discontents
of the citizenry about US imperial schemes and[22] act in unison
with the growing global resistance. Otherwise, as I tried to
lay out above, the cries of Turkey's dispossessed can be usurped/silenced
by the various political agents at work today, pushing the country
down either extreme-nationalist or imperial paths.
If we return to the question of orientalist
delusions in Turkey, one of the contributions (among many) of
the urgently needed coalition will be the opening up of the Turkish
polity to the diverse forms of grassroots knowledge and opinion
coming from the Muslim, Arabic, Kurdish, etc. subaltern upon
which the imperium is violently imposed. Tanl Bora, a socialist
publisher and journalist, is right on target when he argues that
those who can only know "Turkey" with a statist mindset,
framed in the debilitating angst of "national security",
do only need "geostrategic information" about the "Middle
East".[23] Thus they are entirely ignorant about the cultures,
peoples, politics, life-worlds of the region. For both the supporters
of the Turkish mission to Iraq and their nationalist critics,
the "Middle East" is imagined as a battlefield upon
which enemy forces clash.
A Mediterranean-Middle Eastern coalition
of movements, from Spain to Kuwait, can challenge the "intelligence-gathering"
establishment of the imperial Reelpolitik, share forms of grassroots
knowledge across borders and thus try to come up with viable,
collective alternatives to supply dignity, justice and security
for the peoples threatened by fundamentalisms--including that
of the Empire. Contra Samuel Huntington's Schmittian thesis about
the impossibility of reducing fault-lines across populations
and territories,[24] an ensemble of movements collectively resisting
the Empire can boldly face the existing fault-lines and turn
them into spaces for the "elaboration of common interests
and historic compromises".[25]
We, activists everywhere, should not
delude ourselves--resisting the Empire is not only about "human
rights", or about getting rid of Texan cowboys occupying
the Dark House, or about exposing oil interests, or about protecting
the environment. Resistance is also, necessarily dare I say,
about getting rid of capitalism and finding a wiser way to run
our households, if that's what "economy" means. The
Empire makes no mistake about its economic interests, neither
should we:
The Empire is a business concern first
and foremost, and, by this standard, it has fully justified itself
in whatever parts of the world it has absorbed. (...) Mesopotamia
has already absorbed a vast outpouring of British capital, of
which an enormous amount has been spent on permanent improvements.
(...) Our withdrawal [from Iraq] would almost certainly involve
the closing down of the [Basra] port. Basrah [sic] now imports
far more than it exports, and a very large proportion of the
revenue of the country is derived from customs duties. But what
country of firm would export to a land seething with internal
strife and Bolshevism? Where would be the necessary security?
(...) How, then, can we make a paying concern out of a country
which the war has thrust into our hands, from which it is impossible
to withdraw and in which millions of British capital have been
invested? (...) To secure an equitable return for invested capital
within a reasonable time, and to train the people in the art
of government, I believe we must make Mesopotamia a British Protectorate.
It should so remain, until its peoples have learned sufficient
discipline to be assured of some equilibrium and permanent progress.
(...) Let us not hear any more about Arab "aspirations",
"cultural autonomy", and such like sentimentalities.
They have already done an infinite amount of harm, and may do
irretrievable damage. I believe the Arab will learn, in the course
of long years, the advantages of self-discipline and cooperation,
but at present he is nowhere near the beginning of the alphabet.
He has fine qualities, rarely in evidence, which occasionally
reveal what he may attain. But until their manifestation becomes
a normal state of affairs, it is grossly unfair to bolster him
up with ideas of his own importance and greatness.[26]
Emrah Göker
is a sociology graduate student at Columbia University. He is
also a member of the NYC-based Peace
Initiative/Turkey. He can be reached at emrah_goker@hotmail.com.
[1] A Salutation to the Twentieth Century,
by Mark Twain, New York Herald, 12/30/1900.
[2] Top US Generals Discuss Iraq with
Turkey, Turkish Daily News, 07/19/2003.
[3] US Officially Requests Troops, Urges
Quick Decision, Turkish Daily News, 07/26/2003.
[4] The phrase, used in referral to the
Korean War, belongs to Taha Akyol, leading right-wing columnist
of the widely circulated daily Milliyet. Akyol is in the forefront
of the militarist camp supporting the US war effort and Turkey's
active participation. See his Galitia and Iraq, Milliyet, 08/20/2003
[in Turkish].
[5] We Are Not Any Different From Each
Other, Hürriyet, 07/24/2003 [in Turkish].
[6] Why Should We Send Troops to Iraq?,
Hürriyet, 07/26/2003 [in Turkish].
[7] Turkey's Mission?, Milliyet, 07/30/2003
[in Turkish].
[8] Opinions of Erdog(an and Gül,
Milliyet, 08/02/2003 [in Turkish].
[9] Gül: "If We Do, We'll Go
There for the Iraqi People", by Fikret Bila, Milliyet, 08/06/2003
[in Turkish].
[10] Exact mission locations are not
rectified yet. There are signs, though, that Pentagon wants to
install Turkish troops in those "most sensitive" regions
where guerrilla attacks have been frequent.
[11] Arnç is an AKP MP and was
the most prominent figure of the antiwar group within the party
during the rejection of the resolution last March. He is reported
to remain "more silent" as the government prepares
the third resolution on Iraq.
[12] Ankara to Decide on Troops in Talks
with US, Turkish Daily News, 08/14/2003.
[13] Turkey Readies for Iraq Mission,
Turkish Daily News, 08/15/2003.
[14] Turkey Defines its Iraq Role, Turkish
Daily News, 08/23/2003.
[15] Turkey, A Partner In The War On
Terror: A Briefing by Faruk Log(og(lu, Middle East Forum, 05/31/2002.
[16] Turkish-American Relations, Milliyet,
07/21/2003 [in Turkish].
[17] Japanese Troops Are Going, What
About Us?, Hürriyet, 07/30/2003 [in Turkish].
[18] Words Which Forced Me End My Resting
Period, Hürriyet, 08/16/2003 [in Turkish].
[19] Yes, We Have Claims on Foreign Soil,
Hürriyet, 08/19/2003 [in Turkish].
[20] I borrow the term from Ellen Meiksins
Wood, Empire of Capital (Verso, 2003), Chapter Seven.
[21] Majority of Turks Oppose Sending
Troops to Iraq, Turkish Daily News, 08/05/2003.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Does the Middle East Exist for Turkey?,
Radikal, 08/03/2003 [in Turkish].
[24] Samuel Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1996).
[25] Europe: Vanishing Mediator, by Etienne
Balibar, first George L. Mosse Lecture at Humboldt-Universität
Berlin for the Academic Year 2002-2003, 11/22/2002.
[26] Quoted from the Allborough Middle
East Classics edition (1991, introduction by Paul Rich) of Thomas
Lyell's The Ins and Outs of Mesopotamia, first published in 1923.
Lyell, a loyal Imperialist of the Queen, served as a civil administrator
(Assistant Director of Tapu and District Magistrate, Baghdad)
during the British colonization of Iraq.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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