by Ugur Akinci, Ph.D.
http://tork.blogspot.com
British Foreign Ministry's latest warning that “there can be new terror attacks against Turkey” opened up a new can of worms regarding the degree to which some Western countries are willing and able to share critical intelligence with Turkey in their supposedly “joint struggle” against international terrorism.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan put the British authorities on the spot by asking how come such intelligence was not shared with Ankara. “This is against the intelligence ethics” Erdogan reminded. Turkish press referred to a year 2000 agreement signed by Turkey and Great Britain for cooperation in such intelligence matters.
Known sometimes for his plain but forceful style, PM Erdogan reminded that if, after all that talk about “waging a joint struggle against terrorism,” certain parties still behave in a manner to hamper such efforts, then “that may create misunderstandings and might cause us to place these friendly countries into a wrong category. I think we have a communication problem here.” He said he would discuss the matter during his upcoming meeting with the British PM.
The Turkish NTV channel story that the British government sent such intelligence data to Ankara late yesterday night (Nov 26) was probably too little too late to make a dent in Ankara's disappointment.
In an interview published in The Times (of London), PM Erdogan made an excellent argument that Turkey, as a secular Muslim country, was giving the European Union an opportunity to send an affirmative message to those other countries that favor “separating religion and state matters” from one another. And to that end Erdogan invited the EU to announce a firm date on which Turkey's full-membership talks can start.
Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu expressed the same general frustration with the gap between the Western rhetoric and practice:
“There can be no sincere cooperation [against international terrorism] if another country calls 'freedom fighters' the very same groups that we declare terrorists. There are also countries which have included these groups in their list of terrorist organizations but nothing gets done about them. This is not a sincere approach. If you include a group in your terrorism list then you have to fight it. This is what we expect.”
In another related development, Ankara raised a flag regarding the UEFA decision to move the European Soccer Championship matches to a country other than Turkey for security reasons. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul met with Italian and British ambassadors to Ankara and asked for their assistance to revert the UEFA decision. “We can't stomach this blow from Europe while the terrorists are busy hitting us,” Gul said.
Europe is in a bind. Either their words will match their actions or their actions will match their words. Given the real and grave challenges that all democracies are facing around the world today, they don't seem to have any other alternative.