Epress.am News from Armenia
Hundreds of thousands of State Department documents released by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks Sunday revealed a hidden world of backstage international diplomacy, divulging candid comments from world leaders and detailing occasional US pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea, reports Today’s Zaman.
German Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that the leaked diplomatic cables reveal that US diplomats are skeptical about Turkey’s dependability as a partner. The leadership in Ankara is depicted as divided and permeated by Islamists, the report said.
According to Der Spiegel, US diplomats have grave doubts about Turkey’s dependability. Secret or confidential cables from the US Embassy in Ankara describe Islamist tendencies in the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The US diplomats’ verdict on the NATO partner with the second biggest army in the alliance is devastating. The Turkish leadership is depicted as divided, and Erdoğan’s advisers, as well as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, are portrayed as having little understanding of politics beyond Ankara.
The Americans are also worried about Davutoğlu’s alleged neo-Ottoman visions. A high-ranking government adviser warned in discussions, quoted by the US diplomats, that Davutoğlu would use his Islamist influence on Erdoğan, describing him as “exceptionally dangerous.”
The US diplomats write that many leading figures in the AK Party were members of a Muslim fraternity and that Erdoğan had appointed Islamist bankers to influential positions. He gets his information almost exclusively from newspapers with close links to Islamists, they reported. The prime minister, the cables continue, has surrounded himself with an “iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors” and presents himself as the “Tribune of Anatolia.”
UK’s The Guardian, in leaked documents published on late Sunday said, in a tense conversation, a senior US envoy presses Turkish officials to support US-led action to convince the Iranian government that it is on the wrong course. The Turks insist their mediation efforts are the best way forward but are forced to concede that most countries in the region see Iran as a threat.
The report also said in Nov. 2009 that Davutoğlu, reportedly told US envoy Phillip Gordon that Iran cannot be bullied into compliance with western demands.
According to The Guardian, when Gordon says Ankara should send a stern public message to Tehran about the consequences of ignoring UN resolutions, Davutoğlu replies that [Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan made just such a statement during a recent visit to Tehran. “Only Turkey can speak bluntly and critically to the Iranians, Davutoğlu contended, but only because Ankara is showing public messages of friendship.”
During Assistant Secretary Gordon’s visit to Paris on September 11, he met with a number of French policy-makers including Elysee Diplomatic Advisors Jean-David Levitte, to discuss Turkey’s EU accesion, among other important topics.
According to the leaked documents, unveiled by the Guardian, Levitte informed Gordon that there had been no change in the French position advocating a “privileged partnership” between the European Union and Turkey, in lieu of EU membership. However, he emphasized that France was not preventing accession negotiations from progressing on all the EU chapters that do not pre-suppose membership. There remain plenty of chapters of the acquis to open, so if progress is not being made, the fault lies with Turkish intransigence on Greek Cyprus. Unfortunately, Ankara is not completing the required necessary reforms and progress has stalled.
Levitte noted that Paris hopes that it will be the Turks themselves who realize that their role is best played as a bridge between the two worlds of Europe and Asia, rather than anchored in Europe itself. He stated that Turkey is in a difficult position as it wants to enter the EU but has refused to accept one of the other EU member states. Levitte predicted that a worse case scenario would be if Turkey finally manages to complete the acquis and end negotiations and a public referendum is held in France which is finally opposed to their membership. Despite all of these problems, Levitte claimed that President Sarkozy is a friend of Turkey and has visited the country at least 10 times in his life.
In the leaked documents, Erdoğan was described as the glue of AK Party. The documents classified 60 deputies of AK Party as southeastern and Kurdish origin. The document claimed AK Party’s Kurdish deputies are extraordinarily passive on Kurdish issues. The second highest number of documents are from Turkey after Iraq, according to the leaked documents.