Turkish fighter jets, Turkish astronauts… Turkish avatars coming soon?
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php? ... 2011-01-04
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
BURAK BEKDİL
It is practically impossible to predict whether any future wave of WikiLeaks cables will reveal Turkish pressure on Hollywood to produce a film portraying the antics of a Turk Superman who does not eat pork or drink alcohol and is disguised as a journalist writing for a government-friendly newspaper. It is similarly impossible to predict whether cables will reveal a Turkish request for match-fixing at the 2010 World Basketball Championship’s final game, a threat to bomb Israel with future “made-in-Turkey” fighter jets, or an invitation to a U.S. ambassador in Turkey to convert to Islam. But surely, the cables are fun!
The latest leaks have unveiled that the king of Saudi Arabia wanted the United States president to outfit his personal jet with the same high-tech devices as Air Force One – in return for choosing Boeing’s passenger jets over those of Airbus. The Bangladeshi prime minister reportedly pressed the State Department to re-establish landing rights at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York – also in exchange for choosing Boeing over Airbus.
And President Abdullah Gül, according to the cables, wanted the Obama administration to let a Turkish astronaut sit on a NASA space flight – not too difficult to guess…for Boeing planes! After Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım conveyed the request in January 2010, then U.S. ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey called the effort to link the Boeing deal to political requests an “unwelcome, but unsurprising degree of political influence in this transaction.”
About a month after Ambassador Jeffrey cabled to Washington that “we probably cannot put a Turkish astronaut in orbit,” Turkish Airlines, or THY, placed an order for 20 Boeing planes – the Airbus chaps must have learned their lesson: in the next competition, they should propose a team of Turkish astronauts in orbit, not just one!
But I suspect President Gül could have withdrawn his request after Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu revealed to him that Turkey’s influence in world politics had reached heights unseen in history and that Muslim Turkish engineers would soon be able to launch their own spaceship and “we won’t need the Americans even for that.” Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül’s announcement last month that “Turkey has decided to design, develop and produce its own, indigenous, made-in-Turkey fighter jet” must have been the first steps toward the soon-to-be-launched indigenous, made-in-Turkey spaceship.
But why did President Gül, who has no executive authority and must be constitutionally apolitical, press the U.S. for a grand Turkish success – the astronaut! – that would appeal to the voters – probably ahead of elections this year? Because he has no executive authority? Because he is apolitical?
It is understandable that European and U.S. governments often tend to ignore the trade agreement they signed three decades ago to remove international politics from trade deals. They often do so to curb unemployment in their economies, since foreign contracts for local companies mean new jobs. But a proposed employment opportunity for one astronaut would have hardly reduced Turkey’s unemployment rate.
One tricky thing here is the fact that THY, doubtlessly one of Turkey’s most successful enterprises, is a public company listed on the stock exchange – with the government owning fewer than half the shares in the airline. Legally speaking, the THY’s board is obliged to make all managerial decisions, including new fleet acquisitions, based on the company’s – and therefore its shareholders’ – financial interests, not in view of producing government propaganda through eccentric ideas like putting a Turkish astronaut into orbit.
But that should be the concern of THY’s shareholders. All the same, the “prospective/investigative” question we journalists should ask here concerns neither the national carrier nor President Gül’s politicking. If, in the words of Ambassador Jeffrey, “that” was “the degree of political influence” in a commercial transaction involving a Turkish company listed on the bourse, what other degrees of political influence must other decisions be resonating behind closed doors, especially those involving government-to-government contracts and, more specifically, defense deals whose terms and conditions are often “secret”?
In fact, what in the world of defense business could be viewed as a kind of Boeing-Airbus rivalry concerns Turkey – and imminently! In two tenders worth several billions of dollars, U.S. and European rivals are thriving to beat each other and the Turks will choose the victors this year. What will the very important Turks request in these classified deals? Is the sky the limit? A mega-sized mosque in Rome? Frozen diplomatic ties with Israel? The first Turkish nuclear bomb? It’s too hard and boring to guess.
Instead, I have made a list of 10 Turks whom I would send into the orbit – hoping they would never come back – if the Americans (or Europeans) agreed to a future Turkish request. I appreciate that you understand I cannot reveal my list because of the serious possibility of prosecution. But go ahead and make your own list – it will be fun!
(Readers are welcome to put this columnist’s name on their lists – no prosecution will follow)
it shows they are going against jerkey! now who will help them stay in cyprus now they are slowly losing the americans
