Turkey

While the world awaits the big document dump from Wikileaks, some of those leaks have already been pre-leaking. One of the most explosive of those has been that the U.S. secretly aided Turkey's longtime foe the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and conversely, that Turkey had aided al Qaeda in Iraq. If true, this would obviously put some serious strain on an already strained relationship.

Hurriyet has been doing some good reporting from the Turkish side of this story and finds that, of course, all parties involved are denying that report:

“Turkey has never given support to any terrorist organization. Fighting against terror is our priority and we don’t make differentiations between terrorist organizations. Turkey has launched many operations against al-Qaeda,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official told the Daily News.

Asked about the allegations that the U.S. helped the outlawed PKK, the same official said, “Turkey and the U.S. are carrying out an efficient cooperation in the fight against the PKK.”

And from the U.S. side:

Deborah Guido, spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Ankara, told the Daily News that the U.S. government’s policy “has never been nor will ever be in support of the PKK. Anything that implies otherwise is nonsense.”

Recalling that the United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization, Guido said: “Since 2007, our military cooperation with the Turkish government in fighting the PKK has shown results. The U.S. Treasury Department has also named top PKK figures as ‘drug kingpins’ in issuing further sanctions against the PKK.”

Most of the discussion around Turkey and the NATO missile defense system agreed upon this weekend at the Lisbon summit centered around whether or not Iran would be explicitly named as a threat, and the drama over whether Turkey would have to choose between East and West, as it was most simplistically framed.

But there are intriguing commercial angles, as well, as a good piece in Hurriyet today points out. For some time, Turkey has been shopping for a new air defense system of its own. And among the four top candidates are Russian and Chinese companies. As Hurriyet points out, the NATO system should be integrated with Turkey's own system, but that would make the Russian or Chinese systems a hard sell:

The United States and some of its Western partners are staunchly opposed to the integration of any Russian or Chinese system into the NATO missile shield. “American officials already have said that non-NATO elements would cause serious interoperability problems,” said one Turkish official.

One Ankara-based defense analyst said Western worries are related to both defense and commercial concerns: “They simply don’t want Turkey to select Russian or Chinese options, and part of their concern is commercial.”

Buying the Russian or Chinese systems seemed like a long shot from the beginning. Turkey buys most of its imported equipment from the U.S. or European companies, and the other top two candidates for the air defense system are U.S. and Italian. Hurriyet suggests that Turkey may be trying to dangle the threat of a Russian or Chinese option to get NATO financial subsidies to buy the Western systems, instead:

Is Turkey's burgeoning defense cooperation with Azerbaijan nudging Baku toward the West and away from Russia? That's the conclusion of officials and analysts in Baku, according to a report from IWPR:

Mehman Karimov, chairman of the Integration to NATO group, says an Azerbaijani delegation at an exhibition in Jordan this May laid the groundwork for extensive cooperation with the United States as well as Turkey.

“To date, Azerbaijan has struggled with defence industry cooperation with NATO countries. Prior to the launch of defence cooperation with Turkey and the United States, Azerbaijan was obliged to be satisfied with the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, chief among them Russia and Ukraine,” Karimov said.

“I believe Turkey will continue helping Azerbaijan to move to NATO standards, develop its naval security, transforming its border guards and interior ministry forces, organise frontier security and so on. To this end, purchases of military technology from Turkey will also continue,” he said.

One analyst, Ildirim Mammadov of the Baku think tank Centre for Military Analytical Investigations, said that NATO, "in the shape of Turkey," is trying to wean Azerbaijan from its dependence on Russian arms, but that Russia was not likely to take the challenge lying down.

Turkey has long been an advocate of the beleaguered Uyghur minority in China, and when ethnic violence broke out between Uyghurs and Han Chinese last year in Xinjiang, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that China's treatment of Uyghurs amounted to a "genocide." So what to make now of the news that Turkey is engaging in a second round of military exercises with China -- which a Chinese commentator says is probably designed with fighting Uyghurs in mind? I asked Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American activist and lawyer in Washington, D.C., for his thoughts.

Turkel said that Turkey has built a lot of goodwill over the years among Uyghurs, which accounts for the fact that Uyghur groups haven't said much publicly about the exercises. Privately, though, he said they are "outraged."

“When you look at Turkish-Chinese relations, Uyghurs have always been a thorny issue, but never as much as it's been since last summer, and the prime minister's provocative statements. Then, China started taking Turkey very seriously,” he said.

Chinese relations with Turkey were strong enough that Beijing's reaction to Erdogan's comments was relatively muted, Turkel said. While Chinese media criticized the statement, there was no official condemnation. “I can't even imagine what would have happened if Obama had made those comments,” he said. Nevertheless, Erdogan with that statement "elevated the Uyghur issue in Turkish-Chinese relations.” Turkel also noted that when Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu visited China recently, his first stop was the majority-Uyghur city of Kashgar, which was "very symbolic." The plight of China's Uyghurs is also a popular issue with the Turkish public.

Remember how worked up everyone got when it emerged that Turkey and China had done joint air force exercises together? Well, now China's Ministry of National Defense is saying that the two countries are conducting ground force exercises. From Xinhua:

The Chinese People's Liberation Army and Turkey's armed forces kicked off a week-long joint military training in Turkey Monday, according to China's Ministry of National Defense.

The training, attended by ground forces from both countries, includes training of basic assault skills in hilly terrains and tactics, the ministry said in a statement.

The training is aimed at enhancing mutual understanding and trust, deepening communication and cooperation between the two armies, it reads.

That's the entire story, and thus far no one in Turkey seems to have reported it.

The South China Morning Post (subscription only) quotes a Chinese security expert suggesting that China's goal with the exercises is to practice against Uyghur terrorists, which probably won't go down well among the Turkish public, which is generally sympathetic to the Uyghur cause:

Mainland security experts said it was a counter-insurgency drill. Though the scale of the exercise is small, it will send a strong political message to Uygur separatists in the restive Xinjiang Autonomous Region . Beijing has accused some Uygur groups of conducting terrorist activities in Xinjiang.

"Both sides chose to hold the exercise in mountainous terrain. That is a strong indication, as it is where terrorists usually hide," Li Wei , an anti-terrorism expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said.

Whirling dervishes perform a Sema ceremony at the Mevlana Cultural Center - built to honor Islamic religious leader Mevlâna Jelaleddin Rumî - in Konya, Turkey. The Sufi ceremony in Konya features Mevlevi Dervishes in long white robes spinning for up to 15 minutes to the rhythm of traditional Turkish musical instruments.

The annual whirling dervish festival at the Mevlana Cultural Center will take place Dec. 10-17.

Husniddin Ato is a freelance photographer based in Uzbekistan.

Azerbaijan Ministry of Defense Industry

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev opens the Alov plant, one of the country's new defense manufacturers

Turkey's relationship with Azerbaijan may be strained over the former's attempts at rapprochement with Armenia, but cooperation between the two countries' defense industries seems as strong as ever. Turkey's defense minister visited Baku last week, and the two countries signed a whole raft of agreements on setting up joint ventures in Azerbaijan to produce rockets, drones, grenade launchers, camouflage material and possibly helicopters.

Azerbaijan seems to be following the same strategy as Kazakhstan -- get foreign companies to come and bring their superior military technology so that local companies can eventually produce that equipment by themselves, in an attempt to diversify the economy beyond just oil and gas. In fact, Azerbaijan started this a while ago, setting up a Ministry of Defense Industry in 2005 and setting up its first big joint venture, to produce a South African mine-protected vehicle in late 2009. So it seems likely that Kazakhstan may be following Azerbaijan's example.

Whatever the case, assuming these agreements actually come to fruition, there are now two burgeoning defense industries on either side of the Caspian.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Sergei Lavrov in Moscow

NATO

As more of the agenda emerges for NATO summit that will take place two weeks from now in Lisbon, it's highlighting how much, two decades after the end of the Cold War, NATO is still focused on its eastern flank.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in Moscow yesterday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Few details of their talks have been released, but they did of course discuss the proposed NATO missile defense plan and what role Russia might play in it. Before the talks, Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, was skeptical:

"If it is simply a US system built on European soil with European money and without any guarantees that will not be targeted against Russia, that is unacceptable to us," he said. "We hope that some cards will be opened before the document is officially made public."

But Lavrov, after the meeting, was somewhat more optimistic:

"We are willing to take part in such a joint system and a joint analysis... Of course, on an equal basis and aimed against joint threats," Lavrov said.

While in Moscow, Rasmussen told the BBC that Russian participation in counterdrug raids in Afghanistan would continue, despite protests by the Afghanistan government.

And the Wall Street Journal reports that coalition commanders in Afghanistan are hoping to use the NATO summit to firm up European support for, and participation in, the war in Afghanistan, in particular trying to keep countries like Italy and France from pulling out altogether:

When news emerged that China had conducted air exercises with Turkey, it caused a lot of speculation in the U.S. that it was indicative of an eastward turn in Turkey's foreign policy. For example, Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation (and a EurasiaNet contributor):

By including the PLAAF in these maneuvers (known as “Anatolian Eagle”) Ankara is signaling another shift in its geopolitical orientation, as well as the emergence of a new strategic partner besides Washington: Beijing. The U.S. policymakers should pay better attention to the ongoing tectonic shifts of the geopolitical plates.

And U.S. officials more or less damned the exercises ">with faint praise, saying that at least Turkey didn't expose any sensitive U.S. technology to China:

Deborah Guido, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy here, said Oct. 15, "As we understood, the government of Turkey answered they would abide with utmost care our requirement related to their possession of U.S. and NATO technology. And we understand that F-16s were not involved in the exercises."

But inside Turkey, the analysis is a little different, and tends to play down the significance of the exercises. Defense News, reporting from Ankara:

A Turkish military official rejected claims that the military was seeking any eastern alliances.

"Each year, we are holding joint exercises with dozens of countries, and China is one of the nations with which we are developing cooperation," he said. "There is no need to seek hidden or deep motives behind this [joint exercise]."