BY SERDAR TURGUT
AKSAM- Optimistic Pollyanna intellectuals, who see international relations like a crystal ball reading only in their own favor, won’t care for this article because they don’t like concepts like strategic interests or national security. Therefore they won’t understand it, or even if they do, they ignore anything saying ‘Cyprus is a security issue.’
You’ll see what I mean if you read other articles on Cyprus. Ninety percent of them are nothing more but repetitions of what everyone is also saying. Of course there are some exceptions. One of them is Ibrahim Karagul, a columnist for Yeni Safak, because he refuses to parrot, favoring instead a deeper approach to the issue. His piece yesterday, ‘The New Middle East, New NATO and New Cyprus’ summed up an issue which I’ve been studying for a while. Columnists in Turkey have sworn off words like security and strategy, but I’m sorry to say that the only concept the US and Britain have in mind vis-a-vis Cyprus is military strategy. The US will unveil a new strategy at June’s NATO summit in Istanbul. The Americans want to have a firm foothold in Cyprus, because from there it wants to control its Greater Middle Eastern Initiative, which is seen by optimistic intellectuals as a ‘plan to bring democracy to the region,’ but is actually a plan to form a new world by wrecking balances in the region. The world’s most secret intelligence system, ECHELON, will be coordinated from Cyprus. This system is searching the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus from its headquarters in Cyprus. It can control every electronic and radio signal and can block military, commercial and diplomatic communications. The US sees the island as a key site for the defense of the West.
The US and Britain, which both have forces in the Middle East, have great plans for Cyprus. And the sad thing is that our thinkers pretend as if none of this is important, although every serious study of the island clearly shows that the reason for their rapt interest is the island’s proximity to Israel and Ceyhan, an important site for energy policies, and Suez, which still has great importance for the military.
France and Germany also have plans for the Middle East and strategies for their own interests. That means they also have other objectives besides bringing democracy and also have a clash of interest with Washington. America’s main goal is to continue to have a divided island. At the Istanbul NATO summit, either the EU-NATO members will agree to an American-led NATO base on Cyprus or if there’s no agreement, then the US will try to establish its own base with Ankara’s consent.