Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Turkish Public Sours on Syrian Uprising

La politica estera turca non sembra all'altezza delle ambizioni 
dell'AKP: appare troppo incostante e troppo poco al di sopra delle parti 
per rappresentare il paese come punto di riferimento di una realtà 
contraddittoria e frammentata quale è il mondo islamico in M.O.
Con l'appoggio incondizionato agli insorti siriani, e prima con il 
presenzialismo ambiguo in Libia, la Turchia ha probabilmente commesso un 
errore di comunicazione difficilmente riparabile nei confronti degli 
arabi islamici.
 
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Turkish Public Sours on Syrian Uprising
Published: September 18, 2012
 
ISTANBUL — As the war in Syria rages next door, Turks have grown 
increasingly weary of nearly daily reports of troubles at home: Iranian 
spies working with Kurdish insurgents, soldiers ambushed and killed, 
millions spent caring for a flood of refugees, lost trade and havoc in 
border villages.
 
“This is how we start our morning,” Mehment Krasuleymanoglu, a 
bookseller in a narrow alley in central Istanbul, said recently as he 
laid out several newspapers, each with a blaring headline about an 
explosion at a munitions depot that killed more than two dozen soldiers. 
The government called it an accident, but in the current environment, 
many Turks, including Mr. Krasuleymanoglu, are not so sure.
 
“What do we have to do with Syria?” he said. “The prime minister and his 
wife used to go there for tea and coffee.”
 
The Turkish government is facing a spasm of reproach from its own people 
over its policy of supporting Syria’s uprising; hosting fighters in the 
south, opposition figures in Istanbul and refugees on the border; and 
helping to ferry arms to the opposition. While many Turks at first 
supported the policy as a stand for democracy and change, many now 
believe that it is leading to instability at home, undermining Turkey’s 
own economy and security.
 
Turkey’s call for military intervention, which much of the international 
community opposes, has only added to the domestic frustration. Now, in 
the wake of the anti-American protests that have convulsed the Muslim 
world in reaction to a film that denigrated Islam, it seems less likely 
that Turkey will find partners in the West to join its call for military 
action in Syria.
 
The souring mood presents the first obvious setback for the foreign 
policy of Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ridden 
the turmoil of the Arab Spring to promote Turkey’s influence abroad and 
his standing at home.
 
Suddenly, Turkey appears vulnerable on multiple fronts.
 
“A lot of Turks are seeing this as a direct result of Turkey’s 
aggressive posture against Assad,” said Soner Cagaptay, the director of 
the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East 
Policy, referring to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
 
In the face of criticism from columnists and opposition politicians, and 
signs of rising public opposition to its Syria policy, the country is 
being compelled to reassess its overall strategy for spreading its 
influence and interests across the Middle East, including Egypt, Iraq 
and Iran. Increasingly frustrated with its efforts to join the European 
Union, Turkey turned noticeably toward regaining and elevating its 
standing in the Muslim world, especially amid the chaos and reordering 
of alliances caused by the Arab Spring.
 
“Turkey’s Syria policy has failed,” wrote Dogan Heper, a columnist for 
the newspaper Milliyet. “It has turned our neighbors into enemies. We 
have been left alone in the world.”
 
Selcuk Unal, the spokesman for Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, acknowledged 
that the Syria policy had become a domestic policy issue. Even though it 
may not be popular, he said, “that doesn’t mean it is wrong.”
 
“I don’t think we are wrong so far,” Mr. Unal said. “Turkey is on the 
right side of history on this.”
 
Before the Arab uprisings, economic and political engagement with Syria 
was a centerpiece of Turkey’s regional strategy, which some described as 
an effort to integrate the Middle East along the lines of the European 
Union. Visa restrictions were lifted and trade increased. Mr. Erdogan 
and Mr. Assad even vacationed together. Initially, Turkey urged dialogue 
and reform in Syria, but as the killing increased, Turkey turned against 
the government.
 
That shift was part of its broader regional strategy. Last year Prime 
Minister Erdogan toured Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, offering Turkey’s 
support for the democratic aspirations of the Arab world’s 
revolutionaries, and holding up Turkey’s mix of Islam, democracy and 
economic prosperity as an inspiration for those countries in turmoil.
 
Turkey, it seemed, was ascendant, and the public was largely supportive.
 
“We loved it,” said Soli Ozel, an academic and columnist. “It was like, 
we’re back. The empire is back.”
 
Perhaps causing the greatest unease for Turks these days is an increase 
in violence by Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., 
which seems emboldened by the success of Syria’s Kurds in gaining 
territory. The P.K.K. has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 
1980s in a conflict that has claimed an estimated 40,000 lives.
 
More than 700 people have died in the past 14 months, the deadliest 
level in 13 years, according to a report published last week by the 
International Crisis Group. The P.K.K. has now set up daylight 
checkpoints in villages in the southeast, carried out deadly ambushes 
against Turkish forces and kidnapped lawmakers. Recently, the Turkish 
military carried out an offensive involving F-16 fighter jets and 2,000 
soldiers, Reuters
The Assad government has effectively ceded some territory near the 
Turkish border to Syria’s Kurds, who have not joined the opposition in 
large numbers. These gains have fanned the flames of Kurds’ historical 
ambitions for an independent state that would include Kurdish areas in 
Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, analysts say.
 
“There has been a thunderbolt in the minds of people there,” said Sezgin 
Tanrikulu, a Kurdish member of Turkey’s Parliament, referring to Kurdish 
areas in southeast Turkey. P.K.K. fighters have become more visible, he 
said. “They are trying to create the idea among Kurds there that the 
authority in the area is the P.K.K.”
 
An influx of refugees — more than 100,000 Syrians have sought safety in 
Turkey — has tested government resources and raised tensions in border 
areas, prompting the Turkish government to try to relocate refugees 
further inland. The government has said it has spent $300 million 
providing for refugees and has complained of a lack of support from the 
international community.
 
According to Mr. Cagaptay of the Turkish Research Program, Turkey 
remains “the only country that is economically and politically stable in 
the region.” Turkey’s ambitious Middle East policy has been centered on 
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s much-heralded vision of “no problems” 
with neighbors. But that approach has stalled amid the hard realities of 
the region and the limits of Turkish power, most evident in its policy 
in Syria, where nearly 23,000 people have been killed and the Assad 
government clings to power. Now the joke is that there are “no neighbors 
without problems.”
 
Last year Mr. Davutoglu spoke expansively about a political, economic 
and military alliance with Egypt that could serve as a linchpin of a new 
regional order. Almost nothing has come of that, although a spokesman 
for Mr. Davutoglu said Turkey would soon begin a high-level dialogue 
with the government of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new president, who was a 
member of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
 
Now, the talk is more about a rivalry between Egypt and Turkey over 
which will become the region’s power broker.
 
“Egypt will try to restore its central role in Arab affairs, and it will 
be interesting to see Morsi and Erdogan compete for influence in the 
region,” Mr. Cagaptay said.
 
Mr. Ozel, the columnist, was more emphatic. “The fact of the matter is 
that when all is said and done, Turks are Turks and Arabs are Arabs,” he 
said. “Egypt believes it is the crown jewel of the Arab world, and it 
will not share the spotlight with anyone, including Turks.”
 
Analysts say Turkey has hardened sectarian divisions in the region by 
working with Saudi Arabia and Qatar in backing Syria’s Sunni rebels 
against Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and by 
supporting Sunnis in Iraq against the government of Prime Minister Nuri 
Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite. And tensions with Iran, the region’s largest 
Shiite power, have been heightened since Turkey agreed to allow NATO to 
place a radar station on its territory as part of a missile defense system.
 
To its credit, analysts say, Turkey will quickly shift from policies it 
deems mistaken. For example, it opposed NATO intervention in Libya and 
then swiftly changed tack.
 
But it may be too late to change course on Syria. “They are stuck in 
this conflict so deeply, there is no way out,” said Mr. Tanrikulu, the 
Kurdish lawmaker.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/world/europe/turks-weary-of-leaders-support-for-syria-uprising.html?pagewanted=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
 
-- 
Sostieni Rete ECO
 
http://rete-eco.it/it/sostienici.html
 
 

islamici.
 
o magari non ci hai capito nulla... :-) 
 


Facile dirlo, meno facile è argomentarlo. ;-)


 dell'AKP: 
 
ti ha smosciato il pisello, lo sappiamo.
 
i sogni di gloria di una Tuchia antivirgolettata sono svaniti per sempre.

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:k3dagm$cad$1...@dont-email.me...
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ti rimando ad un motore di ricerca nel quale scovare i miei numerosi 
interventi sull'argomento... :-)