More on Obama's Visit to Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey —President Obama, directly addressing a majority Muslim country for the first time in his presidency, said Monday that the United States “would never be at war with Islam.” In a wide-ranging speech before the Turkish Parliament in the capital, Ankara, Mr. Obama extended his campaign of outreach to the Muslim world, painting himself as a man who understands it and would seek to build a bridge between Islam and the West. “America’s relationship with the Muslim world cannot and will not just be based on opposition to Al Qaeda,” he said. “We seek broad engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.” He drew applause when he said, “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.” And in a move with potential political risks at home, he drew on his personal ties to Islam. Introduced as “Barack Hussein Obama,” he told the Parliament that the United States had been “enriched by Muslim-Americans.” “Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country,” he said. “I know, because I am one of them.” Then he paused. And waited. And, after about five seconds, as the translator caught up, the applause came. The line was a bold one for Mr. Obama, who has been falsely labeled a Muslim by detractors. The accusations persist on some right-wing Web sites, which may try to interpret the last sentence as proof of those views. But Mr. Obama, who has become increasingly confident and sure-footed as his one-week maiden overseas trip is drawing to a close, is seeking to use Turkey as an example of the type of relationship that can be struck between the United States and a Muslim country. Turkey is a secular Muslim democracy that is pivotal to American foreign policy goals from Iraq to Afghanistan to Middle East peace. Mr. Obama also threw his weight firmly behind Turkey’s accession to the European Union, an issue that has split Europe, with France and Germany lobbying against it. “Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union,” Mr. Obama said. “We speak not as members of the E.U., but as close friends of Turkey and Europe.” Mr. Obama also waded into the fraught issue of Turkey’s relations with Armenia, and the genocide of more than a million Ottoman Armenians beginning in 1915. Turkey acknowledges the killings but says they were casualties of war, not a systematic genocide, and has vehemently opposed the introduction of a bill in the United States Congress that would define it that way. When he was a Senator, Mr. Obama said he supported that view, but during a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul before the Parliament speech, he did not use the word genocide and said that Turkey and Armenia had made progress in talks. During the Parliament speech, he spoke eloquently of the Armenia issue, saying that “history unresolved can be a heavy weight.” “Our country,” he said, “still struggles with the legacy of our past treatment of Native Americans.” Many Turks took pride in the fact that Mr. Obama had chosen Turkey for his first visit to a Muslim country, and said that recognition would help Turkey in its relations with the West and with other Muslim countries. “It makes me happy that the Islam lived in Turkey is seen as a better version compared with other countries and that the message would be sent out from here,” said Samet Yildirim, a 26-year-old sandwich shop worker in Ankara. Earlier in the day, Mr. Obama paid tribute to the memory of modern Turkey’s founding father, laying a wreath at the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is due to visit Istanbul before returning to Washington on Tuesday. The visit was the latest of Mr. Obama’s efforts to change the tone of American relations with the Muslim world. In his inaugural address in January, Mr. Obama pledged to extend a hand of respect to the Muslim world, a sentiment which he also repeated in his interview with the Al Arabiya satellite television network later in January. At a meeting on Sunday in Prague, he called on leaders of the European Union’s 27 nations to seek greater cooperation and closer ties with Muslim nations, including allowing Turkey to join the European Union. But President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said that the decision was the European Union’s to make, not Washington’s. In Turkey, Obama Says U.S. ‘Never’ at War With Islam
The Independent & The Independent on Sunday
World Focus
Monday, 6 April 2009
It's all supposed to be about campaign promises. Didn't Barack Obama
promise to deliver an address from a "Muslim capital" in his first 100
days? It's got to be in a safe, moderate country, of course, but where
better than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular/Islamist nation of Turkey,
whose rulers talk to Syria as well as Israel, Iran as well as Iraq?
But when the Obama cavalcade turned up in the heart of the old Ottoman
Empire last night, he and all his panjandrums were praying that he did
not have to use the "G" word.
The "G" word? Well, if it doesn't trip him up in Turkey today, Mr
Obama is going to have to walk into a far worse minefield on 24 April
when he has to honour another campaign promise: to call the 1915
massacre of 1,500,000 Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turkey a
"genocide". Presidents Clinton and Bush jnr made the same pledge in
return for Armenian votes, then broke their solemn promise when
Turkish generals threatened to cut access to their airbases and major
US-Turkish business deals after they were in office.
This is no mere academic backwater into which Mr Obama must step but a
dangerous confrontation with the truth of history, an explosive swamp
of bones and old photographs - along with a few still-living survivors
- through which he must either walk with dignity or retreat with
shame; and the entire Middle East will be watching the results. For
the Palestinians - most of whom, ironically, are Sunni Muslims, the
same religion as the Ottoman Turkish murderers - it is a crucial
issue. For if Mr Obama cannot risk offending America's Turkish allies
about a 94-year-old persecution, what chance is there that he will
risk offending America's even more powerful ally, Israel, by
condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the
ever-growing illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the
constant destruction by Israel of Palestinian homes that prevent the
creation of a Palestinian state?
Starting on 24 April 1915, Enver Pasha's Turkish army and militias
rounded up almost the entire Armenian community, massacred hundreds of
thousands of men and sent vast death marches of women and children
into the deserts of Anatolia and what is now northern Syria. Expert
historians, including Israel's own top genocide academic, insist that
the shooting-pits, the organised throat-cutting, the mass rapes and
kidnappings - even the use of primitive suffocation chambers - all
constituted a systematic genocide.
And it is important to record exactly what Mr Obama said on his
campaign website in January 2008. "The Armenian genocide is not an
allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a
widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical
evidence. America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the
Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend
to be that president." Which pretty much locks up any attempt to
wriggle out of the promise. Or so you would think.
But already the administration's soft shoes have been trying to
finesse away the pledge. "At this moment," Mike Hammer, a White House
National Security Council spokesman, said last month, "our focus is on
how, moving forward, the US can help Turkey and Armenia work together
to come to terms with the past". That Mr Obama should allow such a
statement to be made, along with the usual weasel clichés about
"moving forward" and "coming to terms", speaks volumes.
Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs in general have tried to - or
should - compare the 1915 slaughter with Israel's treatment of the
Palestinians, but there are some faint historical mirrors which
rightly worry them. The Turks allege that they began killing Armenians
in the city of Van because Armenian insurgents, backed by a regional
superpower, in this case, Tsarist Russia, attacked the Turks of
eastern Anatolia. Israel claims it bombarded Gaza last December and
January because Palestinian "terrorists", backed by a regional
superpower - Iran - fired rockets at Israelis.
The political parallels are not exact, of course, but Israel can in
any case scarcely debate them when it officially refuses to
acknowledge the Armenian genocide in the first place.
But for Mr Obama, there are more pressing points. US and Turkish
officials are already discussing how Ankara can help in a US military
withdrawal from Iraq, and Mr Obama desperately wants Turkey to help
open up the Muslim world to his government to staunch the massive
wounds the Bush administration inflicted.
April 5 2009
Talking Turkey
Obama's trip to Ankara promises to be a genuine meeting of minds.
The Bush administration spent years trying to isolate people the
Turkish government thought should be engaged'Iran, Syria, Hizbullah,
Hamas, to name a few. The Obama administration broadly endorses
engagement. Turkish-American relations are therefore about to change
from being good despite fundamental disagreement to being a genuine
meeting of minds. Some people in Washington have been screaming that
Turkey's increasingly good relations with the countries in its
neighborhood means it is "turning away from the West." Apparently they
view international relations as a form of monogamy in which it's
evidently dangerous to go out on a date. In fact, international
relations are like business partnerships. An extensive Rolodex greatly
increases a partner's value.
President Obama's visit this week to Turkey will also be unusual
because, for once, America wants more from Turkey than Turkey wants
from America. Turkey will respond generously because Barack Obama is
likely to be around for a long time, and he will certainly remember
anyone who helped make his first major foreign trip a success.
>From Turkey's perspective, the most important item on the agenda is
what it does not want: official U.S. recognition that what happened to
the Armenians was genocide. I doubt Obama would have accepted an
invitation to visit Turkey now if he was not planning to oppose a
congressional resolution on the subject, or if he intended to use the
G word on April 24, when he will make a statement commemorating the
Armenian massacres of 1915. What this Turkish government will also ask
for is unambiguous American backing for its plans to amend its present
military-dictated Constitution along more democratic lines. They will
not want to hear, once again, the Bush "we don't take sides" approach.
Heading up America's agenda are two items on which there is much
common ground. First, Iran. Obama has indicated he wants to open
wide-ranging negotiations, but he will not rush into them without
first testing the waters. Similarly, Obama is serious about making
progress on Mideast peace. Like Tony Blair and Tayyip Erdogan, Obama
is thought to recognize that Hamas can no longer be ignored, though he
cannot possibly say so publicly. Turkey's leaders (and their advisers)
can provide Obama with valuable insights, and help start the ball
rolling. This would allow Obama to avoid political exposure in
Washington for "talking to terrorists" until he has a sense of the
other side's position. Before setting anything in motion, though, he
likely wants to take the measure of Prime Minister Erdogan and
President Abdullah Gül personally. Both should remember that
the role of matchmaker is transitory, and the principals must soon
talk alone. In the long term, there is also the potential for friction
because America is probably less willing to compromise than Turkey and
may terminate discussions that Turkey would choose to keep
going. Turkey, after all, will suffer much more than the United States
if sanctions against Iran are ratcheted up.
Obama would also like to get more help on Afghanistan, principally
more Turkish soldiers. This is a potential source of friction. Since
Obama managed during his NATO meeting to pry commitments from France
and Britain for a few hundred additional personnel, it will be hard
for Turkey to do nothing.
Another item is Iraq. What needs to be agreed upon is already in place
(except Turkey's relatively uncontroversial agreement that it will act
as a corridor for U.S. withdrawal). Turkey will want intelligence
sharing about the Kuridstan Worker's Party, or PKK, to continue, but
there is no indication it will not. America will want Turkey's
discussions with the Iraqi Kurds to continue. After Gül's
successful Iraq visit, why wouldn't they? Both sides are hoping that
Iraq will remain stable as the United States withdraws, but there are
no major items either might agree to that it is not already doing.
Then there is Cyprus, but the real problem here is between Turkey and
the European Union. Europe wants Turkey to open its ports and airports
to the Greek Cypriots. Turkey wants Europe to ease the commercial
isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in exchange, but
the Greek Cypriots veto this. The United States can offer its support
and its good offices, but it does not have much leverage over either
the European Union or the Greek Cypriots. This is also broadly true of
Turkey's EU entry negotiations.
A final item is the Nabucco pipeline bringing Central Asian gas to
Europe via Turkey. Both America and Turkey would like to see it
built. The question, however, is who will pay for it? Neither America
nor Turkey has much spare cash right now.
And will Obama choose his Turkey visit to give a much anticipated
speech of reconciliation to the world's Muslims? Of course not. Obama
has to speak from the center of the Muslim World. Egypt must be the
favorite, but a speech in Saudi Arabia would carry enormous symbolism,
though I doubt the Saudis would go along. A good outside bet is
Jordan. King Abdullah, remember, is a descendent of the Prophet'and a
U.S. ally.
TIME Magazine
April 5 2009
Turkey Is Ready to Welcome Obama
By Pelin Turgut / Istanbul Sunday, Apr. 05, 2009
American presidents have visited Turkey before but never this soon
into their presidency. That's just one reason why Barack Obama's
arrival this Sunday evening has all of Turkey aflutter. Turks see
Obama's visit as proof of his commitment to building bridges with the
Muslim world, as well as a reflection of the new administration's
desire to have Turkey ' with a Muslim majority but officially secular,
democratic and a candidate for E.U. entry ' play a much bigger role in
the wider region.
Before his election Obama promised to visit a Muslim country within
his first few months as president ' and he has chosen one that had
fraught relations with his predecessor in the White House. In 2003,
Ankara broke with its traditional ally by refusing U.S. troops passage
through Turkish territory to neighboring Iraq, an act of defiance from
which ties never fully recovered. Public support for the U.S. in
Turkey fell to historic lows as the war progressed. Washington was
further aggravated by the Turkish government's pursuit of greater
engagement with the Islamic world, including an energy deal with Iran
and talks with leaders from the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (See
pictures of Obama's travels in Europe.)
Both Washington and Ankara seem ready to start over. Both see Turkey
playing an important role in regional issues, from Syrian-Israeli
peace talks to oil and gas security in the Caucasus and the withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Iraq. "Under Bush, Ankara and Washington were
divided on many fronts," says Sahin Alpay, politics professor at
Bahcesehir University in Istanbul. "With Obama, they are moving closer
together on all of these."
It helps that Turks are already warming to the new president. One
recent poll found that 39% of Turks said they trusted Obama; fewer
than 10% said the same of Bush. Obama is so popular that a leading
Turkish bank is running an ad campaign based on an Obama look-alike.
During his stay, Obama is expected to seek Turkish support for his
Afghanistan and Pakistan plans, a cornerstone of his foreign
policy. Turkey currently maintains about 900 soldiers in Afghanistan
as part of the NATO contingent there, and, as the only Muslim country
involved, its presence is crucial to securing support on the
ground. Obama is expected to push for an increase in Turkish forces
and to ask for Ankara's help in facilitating a smooth withdrawal from
Iraq.
Obama's influence has already been telling. On Saturday he convinced
Turkey to drop its objections to Dane Anders Fogh Rasmussen becoming
the next head of NATO. Turkey had threatened to veto Rasmussen because
of his handling of a 2006 crisis over controversial Danish cartoons
depicting the Prophet Mohammad. According to White House officials,
Obama promised Turkey that one of Rasmussen's deputies would be a Turk
and that Turkish commanders would be present at the alliance's
command.
It won't all be roses though. Dividing his time between the capital
Ankara, where he will address Turkish MPs, and Istanbul, where he is
to meet with religious leaders and youths, Obama is also expected to
deliver a message urging Turkey to embrace further democratic reforms
and to refocus on its long-term goal of joining the European
Union. Movement towards membership of the E.U. has stalled, both
because of European leaders' unwillingness to contemplate a future
with Turkey, and the current government's Islamic leanings, which have
led it to turn eastwards and greater involvement with the Middle
East. "The United States must remain an iron clad supporter of Turkish
membership in the E.U.," 29 Democratic and Republican Congressmen
wrote in a letter to the president prior to his departure.
In Ankara, Obama will also hear from opposition leaders, including the
country's only legal Kurdish party, whom the government refuses to
engage with to address the grievances of the large and restive Kurdish
minority based mostly in the southeast. Kurdish lawmakers say they
will speak to the president about ending the conflict with the
militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which spills over into Iraq
and is potentially destabilizing for the region, and more regional
autonomy.
Another contentious point on the agenda is the continuing effort in
the U.S. Congress to recognize the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by
Ottoman Turkish forces as a genocide, a term Turkey rejects. While
campaigning, Obama said he would recognize the killings as genocide
but has given no sign that he will raise the issue while here. He may
be helped by the fact that Ankara is quietly working to normalize
relations with Armenia and is expected to re-open its border
shortly. That announcement could be made during the Obama visit.
But despite the likelihood of some disagreements, Turkish officials
see the trip as a chance to strengthen ties with an old ally and an
opportunity to put the past eight years behind them. "Obama is turning
away from previous confrontational policies to dialogue," says
Alpay. "And Turkey represents the possibility of a solution through
dialogue on many problems which are important to him."
By Joshua Chaffin in Prague, Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris and Chris
Bryant in Berlin
FT
Published: April 5 2009 18:31 | Last updated: April 5 2009 18:31
On the eve of his first visit to Turkey, US President Barack Obama on
Sunday urged European leaders to overcome their reservations and grant
the country full admission to the European Union as a way to build
stronger ties to the Muslim world.
`Moving towards Turkish membership in the EU would be an important
signal of your commitment to this agenda and ensure that we continue
to anchor Turkey firmly in Europe,' Mr Obama told fellow heads of
state at an EU-US summit in Prague.
Mr Obama's plea restated a well-known US position but had special
resonance since it came just hours before he was due to leave for
Ankara as part of his first visit to a mostly Muslim country. It was
swiftly rejected by two of the EU's biggest member states ` France and
Germany ` however.
`I have always been opposed to this entry and I still am,' French
president Nicolas Sarkozy said in a television interview. `When it
comes to EU matters, it's for member-states of the European Union to
decide,' Mr Sarkozy added.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said she believed it was `in all
our interests' that Turkey develop close ties to the EU, but
suggesting that this could take the form of a `privileged partnership'
rather than full membership.
The exchanges over Turkey stood out at a summit meeting that was
largely dedicated to emphasising the renewed health of a transatlantic
relationship frayed by the Iraq war.
Appearing beside José Manuel Barroso, the president of the
European Commission, Mr Obama called the EU-US relationship `one of
the key foundations for progress in the world' and vowed to `pursue it
and strengthen it' in the future.
That sentiment, endorsed by a beaming Mr Barroso, appeared to trump
lingering differences between the two parties on fundamental issues `
such as how to tackle the economic crisis effort in Afghanistan.
Mr Obama also called on EU members to accept some detainees from the
US prison in Guantánamo Bay to help him meet his pledge to
close the centre by January next year. The US President said it was
`urgent that the European Council issue a common position supporting
the right of your member states to accept detainees if they so
choose'.
EU members have been split on how far they are prepared to go and
whether they would accept Guantánamo inmates ` particularly
those with no link to their own countries.
Mr Barroso offered special praise for the Obama administration's
commitment to fight global warming, saying that the `EU was now much
more on a convergence path with our American friends' heading into a
December meeting in Copenhagen aimed at achieving a global pact on
climate change.
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