Saturday Contribution To Britain's Anti-Terror Campaign

This person clearly doesn't support the Policing Pledge. They should have their home raided, their family threatened with being shot, and then be followed by a police helicopter for two weeks.

The Evaluation of the Local Elections in Turkey: Towards a More Cooperative Government?

The Turkish local elections took place last Sunday. Before jumping into evaluations and the possible implications for Turkish domestic and foreign policies voiced by experts, we should have a look at the percentages obtained by the leading party, the Justice and Development Party, and by opposition parties in this recent election;  we should also compare the results with the previous general election.

The overall JDP votes slightly diminished compared with the previous general election. PM Erdogan's party obtained only 40% of the vote whereas this percentage was 47 in 2007. Votes for the right-wing party, the Nationalist Movement Party remained the same at 14%; the secularist party in the opposition, the Republican People's Party increased its share from 20 to 28%. While the overall votes of the JDP decreased, it was still successful in winning in Istanbul and Ankara. In addition to these, although the Democratic Turkey Party obtained the same percentage of 5 in this election, it was successful in increasing its number of mayoralties from 5 to 8 in the south-eastern part of Turkey towards which the first reaction came after days from the General Staff. The Brigadier General who is the head of the Communication Department of the General Staff stated that it was not possible to make an evaluation regarding the consequences of the election, yet added that this situation was not an obstacle to think about the causes of the consequences of this election, especially in the south-eastern part of Anatolia.

There has been much commentary on the elections this week. Some were arguing consequences of the decrease of the JDP votes and some were pointing out the increasing effects of the Democratic Turkey Party in Turkish politics. However, for me, the most significant point was the incomprehensible coolness of the representatives who were responsible from the elections when there were some speculations that many votes of the opposition parties were stolen and buried during elections. Even during on election day, many stamped voting papers were found discarded around various neighbourhoods in many cities. We cannot blame anyone for having planned and financed this as we have no clue about who were behind it but I believe that these kind of things are serious enough to immediately rerun the elections, regardless of who would gain and who would lose.

PM Erdogan has stated that the result did not satisfy him as he had been expecting more than the overall votes he obtained in the previous general election, but some experts believe that this may change the unilateral attitudes of the JDP towards a more respectful dialogue with opposition parties and the public, especially in the media. In light of this, there are still question marks in terms of the JDP's next decisions on critical points such as: the ongoing surveillance operations in respect of the continuing Ergenekon case; the Kurdish thaw, especially in terms of its relations with the Democratic Turkey Party (as Erdogan has been accusing the Democratic Turkey Party of being the political arm of the terrorist/separatist group, PKK); its dialogue with critical media organizations and with the army;  and so on... As for Turkey's foreign policy, I do agree with many scholars that this result is going to shake the 'trouble-making guy' image of PM Erdogan after his Davos walkout and the government is going to feel more pressure to pay attention to the EU engagement process. Ironically however, PM Erdogan can also strengthen his 'hero' image after the Davos Summit by playing his cards right due to his indirect involvement in the Syrian-Israeli dialogue process. While serious diplomatic efforts have been coming from the US President on the Iranian issue, and while the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is stuck for the time being, the international consensus is warming towards a possible Syrian-Israeli peace negotiation, with Turkey in a mediation role. This is also supported by the US. On the other hand, PM Erdogan is expected to normalize and balance his relations with the various parties in the Middle East. State policy as applied by his predecessors has included harsher warnings against Hamas and the strengthening of the Israeli-Turkish relations.

It looks likely that the election will bring more pluralist policies both in the domestic and in the foreign policies. While the 'heroic' walkout in Davos does not seem to have helped Erdogan increase his votes in the recent election, at least not to the extent he may have expected; his new foreign and domestic policies are likely to be stable and based on more tolerant approaches towards opposition parties and on the less controversial EU-engagement track (without ignoring the opportunities of the Syrian-Israeli dialogue process), before core topics regarding foreign policy, security and domestic politics will have been opened in prior to the next general elections.

Palinwatch: Scientology, van Susteren Harming 2012 Hopes

A series of connections between Sarah Palin, Fox News reporter Greta van Susteren, and van Susteren's Democrat husband and former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign aide John Coale has found itself in the spotlight this week, and the complex triangle may have serious implications for Palin's 2012 Presidential hopes. On Monday a Politico article pointed to a "state of confusion" between Palin's advisors in Alaska and the team at her PAC in Washington, DC, and claimed that GOP insiders are unhappy with Coales- a "major Democratic donor"- becoming involved with Palin's campaign. The story also has implications for van Susteren, whose fawning coverage of Palin both before and after the 2008 election now seems decidedly influenced by her husband's connection to the VP candidate.

Van Susteren, writing on her Fox News blog, hit back (weird fact- her piece appears to have been published the day before Politico's (unless someone at Politico has changed the date)), calling Politico's argument "fanciful and silly":

As for my husband, everyone in the media sure has gotten themselves going with all sorts of wild imagination. We are laughing at it at home because with each story it gets wilder and wilder. You would think from the stories that my husband ran her VP campaign.  Yes, he advised her - after the election -  how to set up a PAC (big deal - it is common - routine - for politicians to set up a PAC - virtually every politician has one set up and there is nothing wrong with them.. and incidentally, the PAC was created to pay travel bills she had accumulated and would accumulate in the future and to contribute to other candidates …and the Pac was not to be her chief political advisers which is what the article accuses.)  And yes, he thought it wrong the way she was attacked in the media.  As a matter of fact, so did I think she was treated unfairly by the media (I don’t like gratuitous attacks…issues, yes….but not gratuitous attacks) and I am not the only one who thought that in the media. [Formatting van Susteren's]

All would be well and good but for this from Geoffrey Dunn in the Huffington Post:

But what Van Susteren does acknowledge in her "brief" on the subject is equally troubling:

1. She acknowledges that her husband, John Coale, has been advising Palin, that they are in weekly contact, and that he played a central role in the formation of her national political action committee, SarahPAC--all while she has been covering Palin for Fox News.

2. She acknowledges that her husband met Palin through Van Susteren's media contacts with the governor. In short, he used his wife's journalistic access to Palin to gain his own political access.

There are some serious journalistic conflicts of interest taking place here, and Van Susteren is either being duplicitous or disingenuous to characterize them as "silly."

Point 2 here is strained- I'm struggling to find any evidence of this in van Susteren's post. But point 1 remains very valid indeed- while van Susteren was in Alaska kowtowing to the Palins her husband was in Washington helping set up SarahPAC. Yet van Susteren sees no conflict of interest here. Dunn adds a series of bizarre footnotes, including connections with a Scientology-linked Ponzi scheme, and Coale's attempts to set up a PAC based upon Scientology's teachings. He also alleges that the couple are as pally with the Clintons as they are with the Palins. Something ain't right.

Petraeus V Obama: It Ain't Over

In January/February, we paid close attention to a running battle between General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, with his President over Obama's plans in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It appeared, however, that the compromise over the Iraq withdrawal and last week's Obama announcement of the Pakistan-Afghanistan strategy established consensus. Indeed, Petraeus had won a quiet victory. The headlines said Obama had approved an extra 17,000 troops; in fact, if you include support forces, the boost was 30,000, the amount that military commanders had been seeking. No wonder Petraeus even went alongside Obama envoy Richard Holbrooke on the Sunday talk shows to promote the plan.

All right then?

No.

On Wednesday Petraeus was back to his My Way approach on the US military approach in Afghanistan: "American commanders have requested the deployment of an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, [although] the request awaits a final decision by President Obama this fall."

Dave couldn't have been clearer: if you want his plan in Afghanistan (which his spin machine is assuring you is the case), then give him more soldiers: "The ratio of coalition and Afghan security forces to the population is projected through 2011 to be significantly lower than the 20 troops per 1,000 people prescribed by the Army counterinsurgency manual he helped write."

How brazen, even defiant, is this? Consider that on Sunday the President tried to hold the line against precisely this "bit more, bit more, OK, a bit more" demand. He said he had "resourced properly" the strategy and pre-emptively warned his generals, "What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always result in an improved situation ... There may be a point of diminishing returns."

Michele Flournoy, the Undersecretary of Defense, tried to maintain this position in the Congressional hearing. She insisted that the US plan was to concentrate forces in "the insurgency belt in the south and east," rather than (Petraeus' preference) throughout Afghanistan. "Troops would arrive, as planned, in 2010."

The "comprehensive strategy" announced last Friday means different things to the President and Petraeus. For Obama, the troop increase has to be integrated with the non-military measures. If those measures, then the military approach also has to be reconsidered, not necessarily for another "surge" but for an "exit strategy".

For Petraeus, "comprehensive" means military-first. And, if the violence continues and even increases, then that will be his rationale for yet more soldiers into the conflict.

Lace up your boots, folks. There may be a war brewing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but there is also one underway in Washington, D.C.

NATO Summit: The Latest From Strasbourg

The NATO summit is due to begin, with France set to rejoin the NATO fold. Here's what we're hearing so far:

• US-French relations appear to be strong- Obama says he did not have to drag France "kicking and screaming" back into NATO; Sarkozy evokes France's sense of unity with America post-9/11, and suggests that France may accept a Guantánamo detainee.


• Obama, under cover of praising French involvement in Afghanistan, has said that, "it is probably more likely that al-Qaeda would be able to launch a serious terrorist attack in Europe than in the United States because of proximity. This is not an American mission, this is a Nato mission, this is an international mission."


• We reported earlier that the UK was unlikely to send more troops to Afghanistan. Gordon Brown has now said that troops may be sent in a temporary security role for the upcoming Afghan presidential elections- but that they will number in the hundreds rather than thousands.


• The press is having a field day over the Michelle Obama-Carla Bruni 'glam-off'. (The Guardian has a dedicated live-blog.)

UPDATE (10pm): talks have closed for the night with no decision reached on a new secretary general.