Turkish Prime Minsister Erdogan’s agitation show no signs of letting up.
He’s back to threats of military confrontation with Israel:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Israel could not do whatever it wanted in the eastern Mediterranean and that Turkish warships could be there at any moment.
And it’s not just about the Gaza flotilla, Turkey is trying to disrupt Israeli natural gas drilling with Cyprus:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unprecedented threat to send the Turkish navy into the eastern Mediterranean to challenge Israel is primarily aimed at torpedoing efforts by the Jewish state and Greek Cypriots to develop rich offshore natural gas fields….
Greece is Turkey’s historical rival and Ankara doesn’t want to see the Greek Cypriots, who rule the southern sector of the war-divided island, joining with Israel to exploit the natural gas fields while cutting out the Turkish Cypriots.
And Turkey also is pulling more stupid diplomatic tricks:
In an apparent protest of Israel, with whom Turkey recently downgraded diplomatic ties over last year’s flotilla incident, Turkey’s European Union Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış walked out of an international conference in Ukraine on Friday when Israeli President Shimon Peres was about to take the stage for a speech.
Bağış, who is in Ukraine to attend the eighth annual Yalta gathering with the theme of “Ukraine and the World: Common Challenges, Common Future,” left the meeting hall shortly before Peres began addressing the participants. The meeting at the historical Livadia Palace started with opening remarks by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Bağış listened to Yanukovych, but left the conference hall when Peres was invited to the stage and refused to listen to his speech.
Bağış’s move is a reminiscent of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s conflict with Peres in 2009 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos.
Here’s Erdogan back in 2009 at the Davos conference, long before the Gaza flotilla incident:
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Turkey’s goose is cooked if they’re not careful.
“Turkey warned Thursday it will declare a border on the continental shelf if the island of Cyprus proceeds with offshore oil and gas drilling activities.
The Foreign Ministry’s announcement came a day after Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias announced that U.S. firm Noble Energy will soon begin exploratory drilling to confirm deposits beneath the sea bed off Cyprus’ southern coast despite Turkey’s attempts to prevent such a move.”
“Russia has sent two nuclear-powered submarines to patrol Eastern Mediterranean waters around Cyprus and enforce the island’s right to explore for undersea oil and gas in its territorial seas, according to information from Defencenet.gr, citing a Russian FM spokesman.
Alexander Lukashevich said that Russia supports Cyprus and guarantees its security if it is threatened: “Under the UN Convention on International Law, among 162 other signatory states, including Cyprus, each state has sovereign rights in its EEZ for exploring, exploiting and protecting both live and non-living natural resources, including water, the seabed and subsoil,” said Lukashevich in comments made on August 19th and reported by Defencenet.gr (in Greek).”
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/09/eastern-mediterranean-sea-is-starting.html
Instant obsolescence of the Turkish model
By Spengler (David P. Goldman)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH10Ak01.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Goldman
Erdogan defanged the Turkish military to protect himself from it. That may or may not have weakened its ability to make war against others. The Turkish Army has traditionally been the most respected institution in the country by the Turkish people. If Erdogan gets the military into a conflict against a stronger opponent and it ends up in a humiliating defeat, Erdogan will live to regret his present blustering.