Islamization NATO Turkey

Daniel Pipes: Should Turkey be Removed From NATO……?

All signs point to yes

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: They’re undoing all of my achievements

The useful stooges and apologists will of course point to the night clubs, Western tourism and the Euro song contest as proof that Turkey belongs with Europe, but all signs are pointing in the opposite direction, as Europe’s most staunchest pillar of Western democracy, NATO, succumbs to Turkish Islamic fundamentalist influence and wimps out.

As Daniel Pipes correctly points out: “The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara’s support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing, dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment:

As secretary general of NATO, I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure cooperation and intensify dialogue with the Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world.”

With the West being led by a increasingly subservient US administration vis-a-vis the Islamic world, is it any wonder that the bulwark of democracy during the Cold War, NATO, is now undergoing a similar change as well? Mustafa Kemal Atatürk must be spinning in his grave, and not just over the direction his once modern state is taking, but also over the West’s complicit behaviour in the Islamization project.

I believe that D.Pipes lays the ground work for the issue of Turkey’s continued presence in NATO to be both discussed and debated in full, thereby forcing our policy makers, on both the EU and NATO level, to face some very uncomfortable truths about the regime in Ankara.

Either Turkey changes direction from the current path it’s taking, and embrace Kemalism, which means shelving its flirtation with Islamic fundamentalism, or face being evicted from NATO and shelving once and for all, any hope, whatsoever, of obtaining membership to the European Union. Personally, I don’t believe that Ankara is up to it, but then again, neither is the West in demanding Turkey to refrain from its disastrous path. KGS

H/T: Sheik Yer Mami

Does Turkey Still Belong in NATO?

Smack on its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem – that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.

Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest number of troops in the alliance.

With the end of the Cold War, NATO’s mission changed and some saw Islamism as the new strategic enemy. Already in 1995, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes compared Islamism to the historic foe: “Fundamentalism is at least as dangerous as communism was.” With the Cold War over, he added, “Islamic militancy has emerged as perhaps the single gravest threat to the NATO alliance and to Western security.”

Indeed, NATO first invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on “collective self-defense,” to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, responding to the 9/11 attacks launched from that country.

More recently, former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar argues that “Islamist terrorism is a new shared threat of a global nature that places the very existence of NATO’s members at risk” and advocates that the alliance focus on combating “Islamic jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” He calls for “placing the war against Islamic jihadism at the center of the Allied strategy.”

Claes and Aznar are right; but their vision is now in jeopardy, for Islamists have penetrated the 28-state alliance, as was dramatically illustrated in recent days.

As the term of Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer concludes in July, a consensus had emerged to make Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, his successor. But Fogh Rasmussen was in office in early 2006, when the Muhammad cartoon crisis erupted and he insisted that as prime minister he had no authority to tell a private newspaper what not to publish. This position won him much criticism from Muslims, including Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who instructed Fogh Rasmussen at the time that “Freedoms have limits, what is sacred should be respected.”

When Fogh Rasmussen came up for the NATO post, Erdogan continued his grudge, saying that his government looks “negatively” on Fogh Rasmussen’s candidacy because, Erdogan explained, “I asked for a meeting of Islamic leaders in his country to explain what is going on and he refrained from doing that. So how can I expect him to contribute to peace?”

Eventually, Fogh Rasmussen was selected as the consensus candidate, but at a steep price. The Dane won the job only after engaging in intensive negotiations with Turkish president Abdullah Gül hosted by Barack Obama. Fogh Rasmussen promised to appoint at least two Turks and publicly to address Muslim concerns about his response to the cartoons. More broadly, Erdogan announced. Obama “gave us guarantees” concerning Turkish reservations about Fogh Rasmussen.

The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara’s support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing, dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment: “As secretary general of NATO, I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure cooperation and intensify dialogue with the Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world.”

We appear to be witnessing the emergence not of a robust NATO following the Claes-Aznar model, one leading the fight against radical Islam, but an institution hobbled from within, incapable of standing up to the main strategic threat for fear of offending a member government.

Nor is Islamism NATO’s only problem with Turkey. In what is emerging as a Middle Eastern cold war, with Tehran leading one faction and Riyadh the other, Ankara has repeatedly sided with the former – hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, advocating for Iran’s nuclear program, developing an Iranian oil field, transferring Iranian arms to Hezbollah, openly supporting Hamas, viciously condemning Israel, and turning Turkish public opinion against the United States.

Noting these changes, columnist Caroline Glick urges Washington to “float the notion of removing Turkey from NATO.” The Obama administration is not about to do that; but before Ankara renders NATO toothless, dispassionate observers should carefully think this argument through.

UDATE: Baron Bodissey sends the TT the following that validates D.Pipes thesis that not all is well with Turkey, especially if it wants to be taken seriously as a potential member of the European Union. The TT must admit though to being amused by Olli Rehn’s forceful use of language to the Turks concerning its demands made upon NATO, due to the Mohamed cartoon hysteria. It was Olli Rehn, as I remember, who was one of the laudest EU critics of the cartoons.

EU-TURKEY: NO CONFIRMATION OF NATO-ADHESION FROM BRUSSELS

(ANSAmed) – BRUSSELS, APRIL 6In exchange for the go ahead to the appointment of the Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Secretary General of NATO, Turkey has allegedly been promised the acceleration of the two chapters which are currently being negotiated for the EU adhesion process. The news, reported today by the International Herald Tribune, was not confirmed by the EU Commission.

According to diplomatic sources at the NATO summit which on Saturday saw the appointment of Rasmussen with the consensus of Turkey, which had previously opposed the appointment, Ankara had received confirmation of six posts within the Alliance, the most important being the post of deputy to the Vice Secretary General, which was carried out today by Italy. Other sources quoted by the Herald Tribune added that an unblocking of two EU adhesion chapters were amongst the elements which led to the agreement.

“The European Union and NATO are two very distinct organisations and there is no connection between the EU adhesion process and NATO agreements,” Christiane Hohmann stated, not confirming the news. Speaking from Helsinki last Saturday, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn commented unfavourably on Turkey’s veto of Rasmussen, which was motivated by the Danish PM’s failure to censor anti-Islamic cartoon strips. Rehn said that the motivation did not bode well for Turkey’s adhesion.

“This does not bring anything good on a European front, given that the freedom of expression is one of the Union’s fundamental values, at a time when Turkey is hoping to join the EU”, Rehn said.

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