Free Republic

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=9418

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/615604/posts

But, you are not saying you have never tried!

We are ALL boyscouts......
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Stanton0310.htm

Speaking of boyscouts......

http://hr-action.org/chr/ECHR01.html

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Stanton0310.htm

What do you make of this?

Professor Halil Berktay?
Halil Berktay, a history professor at Istanbul's Sabanci University, wrote in the French weekly "L'Express" last November. "For decades Turkish public opinion has been lulled to sleep by the same lullaby. And yet there are tons of documents proving the sad reality,"

God rest his soul!

http://www.firstgov.gov/fgsearch/index.jsp?nr=10&mt0=null&ms0=should&mw0=TRNC+money+laundering&in0=domain&dom0=www.state.gov+state.gov+oig.state.gov+mepi.state.gov+www.sdp.gov+ds.state.gov+aiep.state.gov+travel.state.gov+foia.state.gov+exchanges.state.gov+geography.state.gov+www.ndf.org+www.statebuy.gov+www.pmdtc.org+careers.state.gov+911exhibit.state.gov&submit=Submit&db=www&st=AS&rn=316&parsed=true

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/638830/posts

From,

http://argument.independent.co.uk/letters/story.jsp?story=517605

Cyprus, Iraq and others

03 May 2004


Diplomatic response to Cyprus vote has been disappointing

Sir: As a former mediating officer in Cyprus, may I comment on your
coverage of the referenda in the island? You report on diplomatic fury
at the Greek Cypriots. Nowhere do you suggest that, as I believe to be
the case, it is the international community that has again failed Cyprus
and that rejection stemmed from flaws in the final version of the Annan
Plan ("Annan 5").

Sadly the plan stemmed from a top-down approach and sought for a
compromise with extreme Turkish military sentiment, rather than to build
on the social consensus that does exist and on UN and EU principles. The
timing imposed by EU-accession also proved unworkable, leaving no margin
for final consideration and amendment. And the pre-voting pressures
applied by the US and UK, whose policies during the Cold War were a
principal cause of communal separation, were clearly counterproductive.

Those known to me who worked most strongly for communal reconciliation
felt betrayed by Annan 5, believed that it would ultimately perpetuate
division and with great reluctance voted against it. And, in contrast to
his current demonisation, Tassos Papadopoulos is a pragmatist who was
the leading proponent of communal reintegration under Makarios and who
always has been committed to Turkish Cypriot rights. His stand has
consistently been against the improper meddling in Cypriot affairs of
the Turkish army and other foreigners.

The knee-jerk reaction to the vote so far displayed by EU and US
diplomats is discouraging. They should remember that it was the Turkish
invasion that dismembered Cyprus and the then failure of the
international community to secure the departure of the Turkish army that
created the problem with which they are now faced. They would do well to
analyse why Annan 5 was rejected and see how a positive way forward can
be facilitated.

MARTIN PACKARD
Banbury, Oxfordshire

Yes very disappointing indeed.
Hi Turk!
Hi Shermy!
What do we do now my friends?
How are we going to change the Greek Cypriots minds?
They betrayed the entire political world spectrum and most of all, our Honorable Secretary General. Mr Annan's good services were wasted. They told him, "give us any plan, as long as it is OK with Turkey", and then, they turned around and rejected it. I hope he has more luck, when he takes over Iraq.
What a shame!
What a lost opportunity for a final closure?
Cyprus is partitioned for ever. Thirty years of partition, and now permanent.
What a shame!

http://www.truthnews.net/month/2004040091.htm

Now what happens?
The Turkish Cypriots will become EU citizens on May 5, 2004.
This is, what happens.
Some other things, also happen. Things that have nothing to do with the Turkish Cypriots or Turkey. Things that were well covered in the pile of the 9000 pages of the Annan "plan". Let's wait and see.

"The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was a senior executive of the companies active in the scheme."
Who is blackmailing Annan?
Who is going to investigate Kofi?

glass house full of cracks
Battered on many fronts, the United Nations must clean up its own act before throwing stones at the United States


RICHARD GWYN

The attacks on coalition soldiers left 80 wounded and, among citizens, the death toll reached 28, with some 900 injured. The inter-religious and inter-ethnic riots resulted in damage to 30 mosques and churches while almost 300 houses were destroyed.

All of this wasn't happening in Iraq, though. It was happening in Kosovo. And the blame for the killings and violence rests not with the United States but with those proper multilateral institutions, the United Nations and NATO.

While the Americans have been trying to get Iraq turned around in the right direction for only a year, the U.N. and Atlantic alliance have been at work in the much smaller society of Kosovo for almost five years now.

Kosovo's economy, though, is probably weaker than Iraq's despite the ongoing insurgency in the Middle Eastern country. Kosovo's only successful "industries" (not counting those working for one or other of the many international agencies there) are prostitution, drug smuggling, money-laundering, illegal immigrant smuggling and car theft.

The only alternative to a unipolar world that revolves around the U.S. is a multipolar one revolving around the U.N., with, from time to time, international organizations such as NATO working jointly with the U.N.

This multipolar world has a political legitimacy that no U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" can ever match, even remotely. It combines the efforts and talents of all kinds of national partners.

That's the theory, and it's a good one. But does it actually work in practice? Can a multipolar world, in other words, actually make the world a better place?

In all kinds of small and practical, and often unnoticed ways, the U.N. and its agencies often do good work. But often, far too often, they fail abysmally.

And, as is really disturbing, the root cause is often the defining characteristic of multilateral projects. This is, that they involve many partners so that no one is responsible nor can be blamed— in contrast to all the contemporary never-ending barrage of criticism of the U.S. and of President George W. Bush. (Not that most of that isn't merited).

For quite a while now, the U.N. has escaped criticism, not least because so many commentators were anxious to shore up its credibility as a counterweight to the overweening power of the U.S.

Suddenly, the U.N. is in the spotlight. And it isn't a pretty sight.

Kosovo: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervened in Kosovo to end ethnic cleansing. Under U.N. rule, the cleansing has continued without interruption, except that yesterday's villains and victims, Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, have changed places with the Albanians now torching Serb houses and driving them out of the province.

Oil scandal: Far and away the most serious of the U.N.'s present troubles. While U.N. sanctions were in effect on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, many commentators blamed the organization for the high death toll there because of the lack of goods and medicines.

It turns out that the cause of many of these deaths was because the food was often bad and the drugs and medical equipment substandard. This, in turn, was because the supplier companies, most of them French and Russian, were paying Saddam a commission and reducing the quality of their goods.

At least $5 billion in kickbacks was creamed off the top of the revenues Iraq received from U.N.-approved sales of its oil.

The U.N. now claims it had no idea of this year-by-year scandal. One reason is that its own officials may have been involved. The program's director, Benon Sevan, has made accusations. The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was a senior executive of the companies active in the scheme.

Insecure security: The principal cause of the terrible bomb explosion at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last year that killed 22 and forced the U.N. to leave the country, was, it turns out, the U.N. itself.

A scathing report published this week concluded that almost no security measures were implemented, not even blast-resistant film over the windows to prevent injuries caused by flying glass. Several senior U.N. officials have either resigned or been demoted.

And, this week, the U.N. was reminded of the worst single failure of its history. This was the 10th anniversary of the genocidal massacre in Rwanda that took some 800,000 lives because no U.N. peacekeepers were sent in to keep order.

This doesn't make the U.N. unfit to replace the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" to police the world or to push and pull and tug failed states toward reconstruction and even toward democracy.

But if the U.N. and others want the U.S. to do less on its own, they are going to have to do far, far better while doing it multilaterally.

---

Richard Gwyn's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. gwynR@sympatico.ca.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1080646515244&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1110534/posts

I hate Turks?
On the contrary, I love Turks. The despots and tyrants who rule as if they are pashas and viziers of the Ottomans, are the ones who hate Turks.
I merely attempt expose the truth, as it comes from the Turkish journalists and media. (It bothers you?) Goverment corruption, is something we hate, at this forum, and Turkey has been a big producer of it, for years (Erdogan, said it). I don't make up the stories.
You choose to ignore the truth. You choose to ignore the human rights violations, against your own people! Do you, happen to work for the Turkish "deep state"?
If yes, everything is clear. You are simply doing your job and I understand it. I would advise you though, to start looking for a new job soon. Turkey is becoming a real DEMOCRACY!

17 March 2004, Turkish Daily News
The witch-hunt
General Hilmi Ozkok handled a most bizarre incident in his usual gentlemanly manners when he took full responsibility "for the fault, being the chief of the army."

Turkey has always been full of believe-it-or-not stories. But the incident which caused some embarrassment for the military's liberal-minded commanders has only showed that the sky is the limit: Turkey's army has asked local authorities for intelligence on individuals linked with Ku Klux Klan! Well, believe it or not...

The story surfaced when a bizarre document from the army command was leaked to the press -- at a time when EU leaders have queued up to give Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan generous pats on the shoulder for his efforts to meet the bloc's political criteria.

The classified document asks local government offices to gather intelligence on pro-EU and pro-U.S. Turks, as well as the "social elite, members of artistic groups and children of wealthy families." And there is more.

Writers and philosophers who are working against Turkey, foreigners and ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Gypsies, Albanians, Abkhazians, Bosnians, were on the list. And so were Satanists, freemasons, sympathizers with U.S. white supremacists in the Ku Klux Klan (actually, the original document misspells the 19th century clan as 'Klu Klux Klan'), and groups that mediate or congregate on the Internet. Even necromancers or magicians who summon spirits from the dead were to be investigated.

Apparently, local authorities were required to find out the aim of these groups, their activities and political connections. Well, there is a physical difficulty here.

Various opinion polls show around 75 percent of the Turks have pro-EU thinking. Add to that, an estimated 10 percent pro-U.S. Turks, the number of individuals who must be investigated goes up to nearly 60 million. With the others in the list, the police should probably gather intelligence on about 65 million Turks. It seems only a few lucky Turks are not to be investigated!

Ironically, according to the order to spy, the police should also investigate the top brass, along with past and present presidents and premiers, who have signed several National Security Council decisions that advised governments to take every necessary step for Turkey's eventual membership in the EU - the pro-EU Turks!

Every state has the standard reflex to take action to protect itself against what it sees as an internal security threat, but the means of protection often differ from one country to another. The Turkish witch-hunt is not only unconstitutional, but also tragic-comic in its contents, reasoning and language. The officer who penned its text should be worth knowing in person, especially for a friendly chat about what makes him think that the "Klu Klux Klan" is a security threat to Turkey!

No doubt, the story is amusing in many ways. But there is much to ponder as well.

The document reflects the archaic thinking by some officers on potential security threats. It shows that "that thinking," often based on paranoia, still exists. How, otherwise, could serious men order such trivial spying? But the dominant thinking in the military, fortunately, is different. For top decision-makers, EU membership and its prerequisites are the ultimate strategic goals.

The leak to the press hints at a silent war within the state establishment, and could have been the result of a house fight between EU-skeptics and pro-EU officials. If that is the case, there must be many more leaks in the half year leading up to December, when EU leaders will decide whether to open accession talks with Turkey.

Looking at the document, one wonders how many more such texts are sitting in government vaults in Ankara with the usual "classified" stamp on their faces.