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It’s winter in Europe: time for snow, St. Nicholas, and the annual Russia-Ukraine dispute over natural gas supplies. On Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned his counterparts in Ukraine not to try to modify a 10-year gas supply contract between the two countries. It’s a warning not to take lightly—last January, Russia turned off the taps to the Ukrainian pipeline network over what they said was a billion dollar debt owed to them by Kiev and claimed the Ukrainians were siphoning off gas bound for countries further west in Europe. (For their part, Kiev blamed the missing gas on their leaky, outdated pipeline network rather than theft).

Last January’s shutdown had drastic effects. Europe receives about 20 percent of their natural gas supplies from the Russian pipeline network. Countries in the former Soviet-controlled East though get half, or in some cases almost all, of their supplies via Russia. The Russia-Ukraine gas feud shut factories, chilled cities, and provoked a crisis across much of Europe.

Russia has the second-largest known reserves of natural gas in the world; Turkmenistan is thought to have the third-largest reserves, and other Central Asian states have significant stocks of their own. Europe would like to tap into these gas fields with pipelines that avoid Russian territory. Moscow, meanwhile, is eager to lock these Central Asian supplies into new pipeline networks that they would build and operate, knowing that control over a big chunk of Europe’s energy supplies provides a huge amount of political leverage.

Pipelines have thus become a big political issue for Europe. And in the race to build new pipelines, lately Russia seems to be edging into the lead. Read the rest of this entry »

After announcing the existence of a previously undisclosed nuclear facility last week, Iran successfully test-fired surface-to-surface Shahab-3 long-range missiles. Iran declared the nuclear plant to the International Atomic Energy Agency last Monday after reportedly learning that U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the plant for some time. President Obama intended to reveal its existence at the opening of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh as diplomatic leverage in upcoming negotiations. The plant is located about 100 miles south of Tehran in the mountains near the holy city of Qom; Iran maintains the plant is for low-enriched uranium suitable only for domestic energy production and not highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, and Iran conceded to allowing the IAEA to inspect the plant. But on Sunday and Monday, one week after Iran’s nuclear declaration and two weeks after President Obama refashioned President Bush’s missile defense shield, Iran began a series of successful missile launches of its short-, medium-, and long-range missiles, which could reach a maximum distance of 2,000 kilometers. This is far enough to strike Israel or U.S. military bases in the Gulf.  Iran is scheduled to meet Thursday in Geneva with the P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany—for preliminary negotiations on a range of issues including proliferation, though Iran insists its domestic nuclear program is not negotiable.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the Iranians must “present convincing evidence as to the purpose of their nuclear program. We don’t believe that they can present convincing evidence, that it’s only for peaceful purposes, but we are going to put them to the test.”  The United States is preparing to impose additional sanctions on Iran through the U.N. Security Council should negotiations fail, though the U.S. is also quietly assembling a coalition outside the Security Council should China or Russia veto a sanctions package. Russia and China maintain economic interests in Iran and many European nations believe existing sanctions against Iran have proven ineffective in persuading the Iranian government, only negatively affecting the people of Iran.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic party won a 33.8% plurality and maintained majority control in parliamentary elections in Germany on Sunday. Center-left Social Democrats posted their worst ever showing and the pro-business Free Democrats earned their best ever showing since World War II. Merkel will proceed to form a new coalition with the Free Democrats, which she believes will be a less strained coalition than in the past four years with liberal parties. The new coalition will focus on reducing unemployment and stimulating the economy with a two-stage $22 billion tax cut, even as public debt continues to increase.  The two parties may find some friction in upcoming talks as the Free Democrats campaigned for far more conservative policies, seeking deeper tax cuts, restricting Merkel’s healthcare reform efforts, and nuances of Germany’s foreign policy. “We’ll have to argue over several issues,” Merkel said Sunday evening, but stressed to Germans that the government would not dismantle the welfare state. Because all major parties endorse the 4,200 German presence in Afghanistan, excepting the far left, the election is unlikely to change that commitment in either direction.

The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan failed to agree at the United Nations last week on resuming general negotiations and Indian FM SM Krishna rejected a Pakistani proposal to conduct informal discussions even absent formal negotiations.  After fighting three wars with each other over the disputed border land of Kashmir since 1947, the two nuclear-armed nations began a peace process in 2004 but discussions have been strained by rival interests in Afghanistan and, especially, since November 2008 when India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for killing 174 in the Indian financial capital, Mumbai.  India requests that Pakistan apprehend and prosecute those responsible.  Pakistani FM Qureshi announced the arrest of seven people connected to the attacks, with prosecution scheduled to begin October 3.  Indian FM Krishna acknowledged, “Pakistan has taken some steps within its own legal system against those directly responsible for the attack on Mumbai, and the process thus instituted must gather further momentum.”  Meanwhile, India announced that it has built highly destructive nuclear weapons, enabling what Indian officials consider a “proper strategic deterrent” in its international relations.  Senior Indian officials say their weapon yields 200 kilotons; a nuclear weapon with a yield of 50 kilotons is considered “high yield.”  The test is likely to further strain relations with Pakistan and perhaps jeopardize the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement enacted last October under President Bush.  President Obama proposed at the U.N. General Assembly that nations, such as India, joint the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear nations, a proposal India quickly rejected.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey will formally sign an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia on October 10, furthering a roadmap agreed upon in April toward normalizing relations. Though Turkey still disputes Armenia’s claim that mass Turkish killings of Armenians during World War I constitutes genocide, it seeks “zero problems with neighbors,” to quote the motto of Turkish academic and Minster of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu. Turkey, a member of NATO and prospective member of the European Union, has engaged as a mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, most notably the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the 2008 Gaza War, and is also seeking to improve relations with its Kurdish citizens. The Kurds, after rebelling twenty-five years ago, prompted Turkey to ban the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the United States lists as a terrorist organization. Turkey’s reconciliation with the Kurds could dramatically improve its relation with Iraq, where a large number of Kurds settle in the autonomous northern region, projecting Turkey further into Middle Eastern affairs.

Since the religiously-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey in 2002, Islam and secularism have become particularly controversial topics.

Political and academic debates are now more often than not framed by questions such as whether a religiously-based party can seriously support a secular democratic order, or even whether Turkey might become a second Iran.

Questions about the relationship between religion and politics and the ideology of the AKP are surely important, and many AKP policies must be seriously critiqued. However, these debates do not address the key issues in Turkey’s democratization process.

The basic and most crucial problem for Turkish democracy is not political Islam, but the lack of a serious political opposition—a must for every democracy. The recent local elections on March 29 brought no substantial change to the dangerously unsettled balance of power.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the AKP, is a goal-oriented pragmatist who knows how to use religious political language to reach the masses. Islamic symbolism frames Erdogan’s politics—he abstains from alcoholic beverages at state receptions, for example.

However, Erdogan’s strength is that he has long been aware that while populist gestures win plaudits, sound policies win votes. When Erdogan was mayor of Istanbul in the mid 1990s his popular support rested not on his attempts to introduce, for example, gender-separated seating arrangements in public transit, but on his efforts to improve urban infrastructure.

Today, the AKP scores points with a neo-liberal economic approach and international-focused policies. Islam is thereby a means of communication and an articulation of specific political interests. This religious symbolic frame should not be confused with an attempt to turn Turkey in a theocracy. An Islamic state in Turkey is not a political goal in itself and therefore not something we need to worry about—at least not now.

However, the balance of political power is a major concern. The AKP has become so powerful that we must worry about the democratic culture of Turkey’s party system. Currently, the AKP holds 338 of the 545 seats in parliament. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) holds the second biggest bloc, though only 98 seats. On the local level, though the AKP lost some votes in the recent elections to the CHP and missed its target of 47 percent, it remains basically unchallenged.

Apart from the CHP, there is no one else to challenge the AKP’s predominance. But why does the main opposition party lack any real chance at unseating the reigning power? Read the rest of this entry »

Iran’s insistence on enriching uranium in defiance of three UN Security Council resolutions, combined with a bevy of antagonistic threats aimed at Israel’s existence has created an explosive recipe that may well precipitate a horrifying regional conflagration. For Iran’s own best interests, its contentious leaders would be well advised to tone down their anti-Israeli threats, which have not been taken lightly thus far, and find a diplomatic solution to Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. The recent Israeli air force exercises and American naval maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, which were countered by Iran’s test-firing of a variety of missiles, have only heightened an already tense atmosphere.

It is now critical to look at who might be in a position to defuse the tension and restore some stability to a volatile region already battered by a devastating war in Iraq. At this point, Turkey has made itself well positioned geopolitically to play such a significant role. The fact that the Bush administration has shifted policy after nearly three decades and agreed to participate in the international talks with Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva may well open the door for future direct talks to be facilitated by the Turks.
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Last week, Turkish publisher Ragip Zarakolu was convicted by a Turkish court of “insulting the state,” a crime under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code. Zarakolu was sentenced to five months in prison, which was then commuted to a fine. His crime: publishing a Turkish translation of a British book on Armenian-Turkish reconciliation that included discussion of the Armenian genocide.

Turkey not only officially denies that the early-twentieth century killings of Armenians was genocide, something most serious scholars have long acknowledged; since 2005 the government has attempted to punish those who assert that it was, including a long list of journalists, authors and publishers.

Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, now a Columbia University professor, was perhaps the most famous name to be charged under this law (the charges were ultimately dropped); Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist who was later murdered by a Turkish nationalist, had been convicted under the article, though his conviction was overturned. For Zarakolu, this was not the first time he had been prosecuted on similar charges, including “insulting or belittling” Turkish state institutions.

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