by Nikitas » Sun May 30, 2010 6:17 pm
From today's 30 May 2010 Politis review of Davutoglu's book.
"Cyprus has a central position in the world land mass, since it is equidistant from Europe, Asia and Africa. Together with Crete, it is on a line which crosses the shipping lanes. Cyprus occupies a position between the Straits which separate Europe from Asia and the Suez canal, whhich separates Europe from Africa, while simultaneously forms a base, an aircraft carrier which can control the pulse of the sea lanes of Aden and Hormuz, along with the basins of the Caspian and the Gulf, the most important links of Eurasia and Africa. A nation that ignores Cyprus cannot be active in world regional politics".
With this newly published quotation from the book it is obvious that the professor of Turkish foreign policy is firmly fixed in the 19th century. China is a nation obviously ignoring Cyprus, so is Japan. Are these two nations out of world politics because they ignore Cyprus?
As for Cyprus being a base and aircraft carrier and all that crap the professor is spouting, on this point at least General George Grivas in his memoiers, published 50years ago (!!!) had a wiser approach. Grivas had the lucidity to realise that the development of modern navies with carrier groups neutralised the importance of land bases like Cyprus and Crete.
The insistence of seeing the world as mix of lines and basins is reminiscent of a child playing with his buckets at the sea side. It is apparent that this guy has not heard of cruise missiles and satellite derived intelligence. At least modern children have moved from buckets and basins to mobile phones and computers which can log into Googlearth. He ought to try Googlearth at some point in his career.
WHen the railway link between China and Europe opens up and container traffic can move faster, more cheaply and reliably between the two continents, then I wonder what Davutoglu will do with this basins and lines theory of the region.
