As noted in a recent previous post on this blog, despite their interests converging with regards to several significant issues, Turkey and the United States might not quite be in the "golden age" of relations that some folks -- in Ankara, in particular -- have claimed the two allies to be in.
Newly installed Secretary of State John Kerry's current visit to Turkey offers a good indication of the current delicate state of affairs between Ankara and Washington. The fact that Turkey is one of the first countries Kerry is visiting on his maiden voyage abroad as Secretary of State confirms that Ankara remains a crucial ally to the US. But, as Murat Yetkin points out in a column in today's Hurriyet Daily News, Kerry arrives in Turkey bearing a "heavy agenda," with critical and potentially volatile issues relating to Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey-Israel relations where Ankara and Washington are not on the same page.
In a column that appeared the other day on the website of The Hill, Bulent Aras -- a Turkish academic who now directs the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affair's in-house think tank -- and Emirhan Yorulmazlar, a Washington-based analyst, describe the current state of affairs in Turkey-US relations this way:
As the United States winds down its military presence in Afghanistan, there are growing concerns in Washington about what a limited American role in the country might mean for security and for the viability of Afghanistan's still shaky governmental institutions.
One American agency, though, sees a bright future in Afghanistan -- for energy drink companies. In a report released this month by the Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service, the USDA suggest that boom times may be ahead for foreign energy drink makers interested in entering the Afghan market. From the report:
Historically, Afghanistan has been a lightly caffeinated, tea-drinking country. Few Afghans drink coffee, but in recent years, many have developed a taste for energy drinks. Today, Afghans consume energy drinks everywhere and at all hours of the day: during the morning commute to work, in wedding halls, and at private dinners.
Energy drinks are sold everywhere – from street vendors to grocery stores to the finest restaurants. Exact sales figures and just how big the market is remains unknown. However, it is clear that the market for energy drinks is growing rapidly, and that a large number of new brands are competing for customers.
In a fascinating article from last December, RFE/RL offers more on the subject of how Afghanistan went from a "lightly caffeinated" society to a very heavily caffeinated one, reporting that even Taliban fighters are getting into the habit, imbibing energy drinks in order help them on the battlefield. But, as RFE/RL reports, some are calling for a ban on the drinks, both on religious and food safety grounds:
While Europe continues to reel from the ever-widening horsemeat-in-the-food-supply scandal that has gripped the continent for the last several weeks, attention is now also being paid to those places in the world where eating the meat is the norm.
Among those places, of course, is Kazakhstan, the world's number two producer of horsemeat and probably one of the few countries whose national dish -- beshparmak -- is made using horsemeat. The topic of Kazakhs' fondness for horsemeat has frequently entered Borat territory, more the butt of jokes than the subject of serious discussion, but a new article published by Steppe magazine offers what is a refreshingly sober and unsqueamish look at this culinary tradition. From the article, by author Robert Chenciner:
So, what does horsemeat taste like? The extremely lean cuts are rich, dark and deep-red, slightly sweet, redolent of venison but much more tender. Because the horses are steppe reared, in what must be an original source of the term ‘free range’, there is little fat. In the great intestinal sausage the fat tastes like the richest butter.
At the rear of the market in Stepnogorsk, arranged in rows of wooden stalls, was the covered, refrigerated meat section. Through plastic cold doors there were about 40 stalls in a clean and chilly room. Only one sold horsemeat (and beef). The others sold beef, chicken, and mutton.
As the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Turkey's southeast region appears to be rich with water resources. But a new study indicates that the reality might be quite different. From a release about the study, issued by NASA and the University of California, Irvine:
Scientists at the University of California, Irvine; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.
The findings, to be published Friday, Feb. 15, in the journal Water Resources Research, are the result of one of the first comprehensive hydrological assessments of the entire Tigris-Euphrates-Western Iran region. Because obtaining ground-based data in the area is difficult, satellite data, such as those from NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, are essential. GRACE is providing a global picture of water storage trends and is invaluable when hydrologic observations are not routinely collected or shared beyond political boundaries.
In previous posts, this blog has taken a look at the effort some vintners are making to revive Armenia's historic but troubled wine industry. Armenia, of course, is best known for its cognac and the country's latest alcoholic beverages production figures show what an uphill battle Armenian winemakers are fighting. While cognac production grew by 20 percent last year, the amount of wine produced dropped by some seven percent, despite the recent moves to revive the wine industry.
In a recent article, the Hetq.am website took a look at what ails the Armenian wine industry, offering answers that ranged from the technical to the historical. From the article:
Globally, 10 billion bottles of wine are sold every year. Armenia sells around 600,000 bottles per year, some in the Russian market, where 1.2 billion are sold yearly. Russia also consumes 93% of Armenian cognac.
Only 5% of the Armenian cognac sold in Russia is purchased by the wealthy elite. That’s because most of it is sold for 25-300 roubles; the price of Russian wine. There are a few Armenian cognac varieties that go for 1000 roubles.
All these numbers concern Avag Haroutyunyan, President of Armenia’s Wine Growers Union. He says that cognac production and exports have risen 10% over last year and are 30% higher than the record years back in the Soviet era.
“Armenian cognac is fairly well known throughout the world. But Armenian wine is another story,” says Haroutyunyan. He believes that wine growing in Armenia is losing out to cognac because that’s where the investment is being directed. Armenian wines also aren’t well represented on the international market.
One of the more impressive success stories of the last decade has been the growth of the Turkish Cooperation and
Coordination Agency (TIKA), Turkey's foreign aid agency. From being a country that frequently received international assistance, Turkey has gone on to become a quite interesting and dynamic player in the foreign aid field. As academic Saban Kardas points out in a very interesting report for the German Marshall Fund, TIKA's development assistance funds shot up 27 fold over the last decade, today standing at some $2.3 billion, with Turkey now playing a leading development role in a number of countries, particularly in Afghanistan and Somalia.
More interesting, as Kardas writes, is the mix of humanitarian and foreign policy goals that lie behind Turkey's growing foreign aid program. From his analysis:
While in some cases, Turkey’s assistance is motivated by
purely global humanitarian considerations and takes the
form of technical assistance or development credits, in other
cases, Turkey supports cultural projects and works toward the
goal of reconnecting with the countries with which it shares
a common, cultural, and historic heritage. The emphasis
that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu places on Turkey’s
historic responsibility towards civilizational kin has provided
added impetus for channeling aid to specific regions.
In addition to carrying out technical assistance projects
that are intended to bolster ties with the countries in
the Ottoman-Turkish cultural zone by contributing to
their economic and political development, some projects
supported by Turkey focused on the discovery or restoration
of historic artifacts or monuments in a geography
stretching from Mongolia to the Balkans. Similarly, Turkey
[UPDATE: According to Today's Zaman, Turkish Airlines is denying it has changed its policy regarding serving alcoholic beverages on domestic flights.]
It looks like Turkish Airlines (THY) is cutting off one of the main perks of flying the carrier's domestic business class: free booze. As the Hurriyet Daily News reports today, THY planes will no longer be serving alcohol on domestic flights, except when traveling to six apparently boozy destinations (the airline, though, will continue to free alcoholic drinks on most of its international flights). From HDN's article:
After surveying the preferences of passengers over the last year, Turkish Airlines has decided to remove alcoholic drinks from the service menu except during flights to İstanbul, İzmir, Bodrum, Dalaman, Antalya and Ankara.
Alcoholic beverages used to be served to business class passengers aboard domestic flights up until last week. Planes flying domestic routes will now not stock alcoholic beverages on board as part of austerity measures regarding service goods.
Recently, THY aroused public criticism with several passengers having reported that when they asked for alcoholic drinks the cabin crew denied their requests, saying that alcohol had been forgotten to be loaded with the plane’s cargo.
This has not been a great week for Francis Ricciardone, the American ambassador in Turkey. Last Friday his embassy was attacked by a leftist suicide bomber, resulting in the death of a Turkish guard. The event should have brought Turkey and the United States closer, but only a few days after the attack, Ricciardone found himself being harshly criticized by government officials and summoned to the foreign ministry after he delivered comments questioning the fairness of Turkey's judicial system and the country's record on freedom of expression.
But the dustup over the ambassador's remarks is actually only one of several issues that are now threatening what is supposed to be yet another "golden age" in Turkey-US relations. While a few years ago the two countries didn't see eye-to-eye on a host of problems, particularly regarding Iran's nuclear program and Turkey's deteriorating relations with Israel, cooperation on dealing with the crisis in Syria, Ankara's distancing itself from Iran and an American push to forge a strong personal relationship between President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have all helped bring Turkey-US ties to a renewed high point.
One of the interesting questions brought up by the recent elections held in Israel is if the new government that's being created there can somehow help improve the country's still extremely strained relations with Turkey. Although Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu will again be prime minister of the new government, the emergence of the centrist Yesh Atid ("There is a future") party, which will play a key role in whatever coalition Netanyahu puts together, puts forward the possibility that Israel's foreign policy could stop the rightward drift that it took under former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, something which could have a positive impact on relations with Turkey.
Writing in the Hurriyet Daily News, Tel Aviv University-based researcher Gallia Lindenstrauss takes a look at the possible Yesh Atid effect:
Yesh Atid followed the growing trend in Israel of having journalists as key party members (in comparison, there was a sharp decline in ex-army personnel who were elected). In addition to the party chair, Yair Lapid, who was a columnist and television anchorman before entering politics, another new Yesh Atid member of Parliament is the newspaper and television commentator Ofer Shelah. Shelah is notable since he helped draft the platform for security-related issues in the Yesh Atid party’s program. While these issues were not the main focus of the party’s campaign (and in general were not the key issue of the elections) they are likely to reemerge both in discussions surrounding forming a coalition government and later on.
Human Rights Watch has just released its annual World Report and its chapter on Turkey contains some very strong criticism of Ankara's efforts at human rights reform. “Despite some moves for reform, the efforts have been patchy, incomplete, and the new human rights mechanisms are under government control and lack independence,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, HRW's senior researcher in Turkey. “If the government is serious about its latest moves to address the Kurdish issue in Turkey, freeing the thousands of detained peaceful Kurdish political activists, journalists, human rights defenders, trade unionists, and students would be a good first step,” she said. “Turkey needs to make human rights a priority in its approach to all of its citizens.”
In Turkey, the cross-party work on a new constitution during 2012 was a positive development, Human Rights Watch said. But tight government control of appointments to the national human rights institution created in March and the ombudsman office established in June undermined confidence in potentially important oversight mechanisms. There are serious concerns about how independent or effective either institution will be in practice.
Turkey’s restrictions on freedom of expression are evident both in its laws and in the pattern of prosecutions and convictions under these laws, Human Rights Watch said. Judicial reform packages passed by the parliament, most recently in June, suspended prosecutions and convictions for some speech offenses, amended penalties for various terrorism laws, and attempted to curb excessive detention on remand, but have not yet had a significant impact. Politicians’ intolerance of dissenting voices – extending as far as criticizing television soap operas – and their willingness to sue for defamation perpetuates a chilling climate for free speech.
