This is the very definition of Erdogan’s, and Davutoglu’s, ambitions.
In the recent batch of State Department cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, one scholar was quoted as anointing the Turkish foreign minister “Turkey’s Kissinger,” while in 2004 a secondhand source was quoted as calling him “exceptionally dangerous.” But his abilities, and his worldview, matter because of the country whose diplomacy he drives: an Islamic democracy, a developing nation with a booming economy, a member of NATO with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a canny, forward-thinking populist who has drastically altered Turkish politics. Erdogan and Davutoglu share a grand vision: a renascent Turkey, expanding to fill a bygone Ottoman imperial space.
Davutoglu is seen as a champion of Turkish greatness.
Henri Barkey, a Turkey scholar at Lehigh University, pronounces his book “Strategic Depth” as“mumbo jumbo,” adding that Davutoglu “thinks of himself as God”.
Foreign Policy magazine ranked him No. 7 in its recent list of “100 Global Thinkers,” writing that under his leadership, “Turkey has assumed an international role not matched since a sultan sat in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace.”
Davutoğlu is generally linked to the notion of Turkish neo-Ottomanism, which favours a commonwealth with its neighbours and old Ottoman connections. Although his foreign policies have been regarded as neo-Ottomanist by Western and especially U.S. media, Davutoğlu does not accept such a characterization.
One of Davutoglu’s greatest diplomatic achievements was the creation of a visa-free zone linking Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, thus reconstituting part of the old Ottoman space.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The victory of the moderate Islamist AK party in the 2002 parliamentary elections was a seismic event in Turkey, culturally as well as politically. Turkey had been an aggressively secular republic since its establishment in 1923; Turkey’s Westernized intellectuals, living in the coastal cities, especially Istanbul, looked upon the Islamists as bumpkins from the Anatolian hinterland. “These people came out of nowhere,” as Candar puts it.
On the flight home from Brussels, where he conferred privately with Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and met with his European counterparts, Davutoglu was in an ebullient mood. He feels the wind of history filling his sails. Turkey, the crossroads of civilizations, the land where East and West, North and South, converge, is pointing the way to the world’s future. “Turkey is the litmus test of globalization,” he told me. “Success for Turkey will mean the success of globalization.” The world, as Davutoglu likes to say, expects great things from Turkey.
The author of this book is the Nobel Prize laureate, Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, and the former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for three successive terms from 1997 to 2009, Mohamed ElBaradei. He declined to avail his services for a further fourth term in the IAEA; and the IAEA Board of Governors was split in its decision regarding the next director general. After several rounds of voting, on July 3, 2009, Mr. Yukiya Amano, Japanese ambassador to the IAEA, was elected as the next IAEA director general.
The following book review was written by George Perkovich, Director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-editor of “Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.” The book review was posted on The Washington Post on 21 April 2011.
This book was published by Metropolitan Books (in 352 pages),
(April 26, 2011).
George Perkovich said in his review:
[Mohamed ElBaradei fought the Bush administration over the war in Iraq, blocked it from attacking Iran, and for his efforts received harassment from American hardliners and, eventually, the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, having retired from the International Atomic Energy Agency, he plans to run for president of Egypt. He has interesting stories to tell, and he tells them with verve.
Like other presidential aspirants, ElBaradei places himself in a flattering light and takes the popular side of issues voters care about. But “The Age of Deception” is more than a campaign biography: Written before the recent Egyptian upheaval, it reaches far beyond the politics of Cairo. The struggles ElBaradei waged in Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Libya to shape the international management of nuclear technology represent a central dynamic of the 21st century.
Will rule of law trump unilateralism? Can a progressive international order be built when states differ over which rules should be strengthened and how they should be enforced, and when rulers in North Korea, Burma, Syria and Iran reject norms that others respect? ElBaradei’s vivid narrative brings these and other big questions to life.
“I am totally against wars,” a 12-year-old Spanish girl named Alicia wrote to ElBaradei after he received the Nobel Prize in 2005. “I thank you very much for your efforts to try to avoid the war in Iraq. Despite the fact that your strategy, based on dialogue, was absolutely not to the liking of the USA, you knew how to stay firm and you showed that there were not nuclear weapons in Iraq, even while gaining the hate of the most powerful country.”
Alicia sums up“The Age of Deception” in many ways. ElBaradei repeatedly describes the nuclear infractions of North Korea, Iran, Libya and other nations and then insinuates that the United States should be blamed for scaring them into misbehaving or impeding him from working out fair-minded solutions with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For example: The Iranians “were busily undermining the very solution they had worked so hard to achieve,” he writes after learning in 2006 that officials of former president Mohammad Khatami’s administration planned to attack the new president Ahmadinejad politically if he agreed to a deal with Washington. “I sighed. Tehran had been spending way too much time watching D.C. politics, I thought.” And: North Korea is “isolated, impoverished, feeling deeply threatened by the United States but nonetheless defiant.”
Libya had in the 1990s secretly bought uranium enrichment equipment and a blueprint for a nuclear weapon from the infamous network of Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan. This had not been detected by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but by British and American intelligence. ElBaradei was briefed before the story broke in December 2003. “I was told,” he writes, “that the genesis of the Libyan nuclear weapon program — and Gaddafi’s other WMD programs — was in retaliation for the April 1986 U.S. bombing raids during which Gaddafi’s adopted daughter, Hannah, was killed.” One is left to wonder whether he thought the Libyan terrorist attacks weeks earlier that killed Americans on TWA flight 840 and in the La Belle disco in Berlin were irrelevant, for he does not mention them. He does describe meeting Gaddafi who “spoke earnestly of his desire to develop Libya.”
Young Alicia tapped into ElBaradei’s wishful credo in another portion of her letter. “I hope that in the conflict with Iran you are luckier and that things get solved by using dialogue and not through arms,” she wrote. “And that the politicians of the USA accept the opinion of the UN.” But the world is not as nice as 12-year-old girls wish. Some states are ruled through violent repression, and even if their leaders are willing to compromise on some things, they may not accept peaceably the enforcement of international rules they violate, including resolutions of the U.N. Security Council.
Iran’s leadership is portrayed as fearful of the United States and very difficult to deal with. Still, ElBaradei insisted that Tehran would significantly constrain nuclear activities that could be used for military purposes if only Washington would take “yes” for an answer. ElBaradei makes no mention of the Iranian strategy revealed by the Khatami government’s chief negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, in a July 2005 interview. Rowhani, an urbane cleric since displaced by President Ahmadinejad, declared, “wherever we accepted suspension” of a nuclear activity, “we thought about another activity.” When Tehran suspended work on uranium enrichment at Natanz, it “put all of [its] efforts” into uranium conversion at Esfahan. This stall-and-advance, bait-and-switch approach continues today.
ElBaradei offers no insight into what can and should be done when unaccountable leaders refuse to accede to the requirements of the IAEA or the U.N. Nor does he address the possibility that despotic regimes cling to nuclear-weapons capability to protect their rule against domestic and foreign pressures for change.
The high-minded dialogue ElBaradei repeatedly calls for is not always sufficient, leaving the reader to wonder what then? Certainly, the United States should be more committed and supple in its diplomacy. Washington needs to realize that the states it fears are even more fearful of its power and judgment. But that is far from sufficient to solve the tough nuclear cases. President Obama, despite his Nobel credentials, has been unable to resolve the nuclear impasse in North Korea and Iran, or to persuade France, Russia, China, Pakistan and others to join him in moving towards a world without nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei displays an enmity toward Western nuclear-armed states that is sometimes overt and sometimes subtle, sometimes deserved and sometimes unfair. A fascinating mix of emotions and calculations seems to animate his analysis. Anyone wishing to glimpse some of the central tensions in 21st-century international diplomacy should read “The Age of Deception.”]
Jordan Fabian reported on March 2011 at TheHill.com
Ralph Nader
“Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says that President Obama should be impeached for committing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The consumer advocate and former presidential candidate said in an interview that aired Friday that Obama has committed “war crimes” on the same level as President Bush.
“Why don’t we say what’s on the minds of many legal experts; that the Obama administration is committing war crimes and if Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached,” Nader said in an interview with the anti-war Democracy Now! Organization.
Nader’s comments came before the U.S. launched military strikes into Libya on Saturday but are among the toughest criticisms Obama has endured from the left.
The consumer advocate participated in an anti-war demonstration outside the White House this weekend, during which over 100 protesters were arrested.
Impeach Obama For Committing 'War Crimes'
The U.S. sought the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution and commitments from European and Arab nations before taking action in Libya to thwart the country’s leader, Col. Gaddafi, from killing civilians amidst a rebellion against his regime.
Nader’s comments, however, were mainly directed at Obama’s prosecution of the Afghanistan war. Some liberal activists have objected to Obama’s decision to escalate the war and are unhappy with government’s treatment of Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking classified documents to the organization WikiLeaks.
“[Bush officials] were considered war criminals by many people. Now Barack Obama is committing the same crimes,” Nader said. “In fact, worse ones in Afghanistan. Innocents are being slaughtered, we are creating more enemies, and he is violating international law.”
Obama appears to be facing growing resistance from the left over his administration’s foreign policy.
Anti-war filmmaker Michael Moore sharply criticized the president’s authorization of military strikes in Libya and cadres of liberal House Democrats are questioning the constitutionality of the Libya operation.”
Ralph Nader: Impeach Obama for War Crimes Committed in a Number of Countries.
Ralph Nader: “The End of America?”
Ralph Nader – An “Unreasonable” Man
A Man of Principles – Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader asks if Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom
About: Ralph Nader:
Ralph Nader Presidential 2008 Campaign
Born on February 27, 1934, he is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.
Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.
Nader is a five-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008.
Background and early career:
Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant.
Nader graduated from The Gilbert School in 1951, followed by Princeton University four years later and then Harvard Law School. He served six months on active duty in the United States Army in 1959, then became a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a professor of history and government at the University of Hartford from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, Nader moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and also advised a United States Senate subcommittee on car safety. Nader has served on the faculty at the American University Washington College of Law.
Activism & Non-profit organizations:
Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader’s work, came to DC to help him with other projects. They came to be known as “Nader’s Raiders” and, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results.
Throughout his career, Nader has started or inspired a variety of nonprofit organizations, with most of which he has maintained close associations.
Personal life & Personal finances:
Nader is a Christian. He has never married. Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: “He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn’t have both. That’s the kind of person he is. He couldn’t have a wife — he’s up all night reading the Congressional Record.”
According to the mandatory fiscal disclosure report that he filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2000, Nader owned more than $3 million worth of stocks and mutual fund shares; his single largest holding was more than $1 million worth of stock in Cisco Systems, Inc. He also held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Magellan Fund. Nader said he owned no car and owned no real estate directly in 2000, and said that he lived on US $25,000 a year, giving most of his stock earnings to many of the over four dozen non-profit organizations he had founded.
Personal details:
Born: February 27, 1934 (age 77), Winsted, Connecticut, U.S.; Political party: Independent; Other political affiliations: Green (affiliated non-member), Reform (affiliated non-member), Peace & Freedom (affiliated non-member), Natural Law (affiliated non-member), Populist Party of Maryland (created to support him in 2004), Vermont Progressive Party (affiliated non-member); Alma mater: Princeton University, Harvard University; Occupation: Attorney, consumer advocate, and political activist; Religion: Christian; Service/branch: United States Army; Years of service: 1959. Website: nader.org http://www.nader.org/
