Israel responsible for WikiLeaks in anti-Turkish plot, AKP members says

[Jigs]

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
SEVİL KÜÇÜKKOŞUM
ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News



Israel could have engineered the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on WikiLeaks as a plot to corner Turkey on both domestic and foreign policy, according to a senior ruling party official.

“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these. Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents,” Hüseyin Çelik, deputy leader of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the party’s spokesperson, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.

Following initial reaction to the leaked U.S. Embassy cables, which have revealed diplomatic secrets about Turkey, Azerbaijan, its Middle Eastern neighbors, Turkish officials have started to suspect that “the main cause of these leaks was to weaken the Turkish government.”

WikiLeaks has released approximately 250,000 documents of confidential U.S. diplomatic correspondence to newspapers around the world. Around 8,000 of those documents are from the U.S. Embassy to Ankara.

The first signal came from President Abdullah Gül, who said Tuesday the leaks seemed to be a result of a systematic work with some purpose behind it.

Though government officials like Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek avoided naming Israel in their public statements Wednesday, Çelik, a close aide to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, singled out the country with his comments Wednesday.

“Documents were released and they immediately said, ‘Israel will not suffer from this.’ How did they know that?” Çelik said.

Turkey and Israel have had bitter relations since the flotilla crisis, in which Israeli commandos killed eight Turkish and one American-Turkish citizen. “Turkey, with its efficiency and foreign policy, has treaded on someone’s fields. The prime minister is known as a dominant leader not only in Turkey but also in the world,” Çelik told reporters.

Yasin Doğan, a columnist for the pro-government Yeni Şafak newspaper, also named the Israeli lobby in the U.S. as the source of the cable leaks. “Some people from the U.S. want to drive the [Barack] Obama administration in a different direction. They also want to adjust the relations of many governments with the U.S.,” he said in his article Wednesday. Doğan is the penname of Yasin Akdoğan, who is one of Erdoğan’s political advisors.

According to observers, government officials believe the cables leaked through WikiLeaks were selected as part of a comprehensive plan to corner Turkey both in terms of domestic and international politics.

The publication of allegedly baseless claims on Erdoğan’s personal assets, the highlighting of a silent rift between Gül and Erdoğan and the focusing on Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have been perceived as tools to create disturbances for the government inside the country and ahead of next year’s general elections, according to some observers.

When reminded that the cables depicted Gül and Erdoğan as political rivals, the president said “such claims could not hurt” his relations with the prime minister.

On foreign policy, the release of cables indicating that many Arab countries were in fact in favor of a military attack on Iran to scuttle Tehran’s ambitions to develop nuclear weapons were seen as moves to show that Turkey was alone in defending Iran in the region.

“This situation posits Turkey as the only advocate of Iran not only in Europe but also in the Middle East,” Murat Yetkin, Ankara representative of the daily Radikal, wrote in his column Wednesday.

Yetkin added his observation that Ankara has evaluated the cables as a psychological campaign to push Turkey to take a cooler stance on Iran.

 

[Jigs]

AKP resorts to conspiracy theroies. Not too happy when the documents exposed Erdogan i guess the logical choice is to blame Israel.

 

[Jigs]

Here is a even more funny one.


Turkish PM threatens to sue US diplomats over leaked claims

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News



In a harshly worded response to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday that he would file legal action again U.S. envoys he accused of making false claims against him.

Speaking during a municipal ceremony in Ankara, Erdoğan called on the U.S. administration to take action to discipline the diplomats who “slandered” him in the leaked State Department documents.

“This is the United States’ problem, not ours... Those who have slandered us will be crushed under these claims, will be finished and will disappear,” the prime minister said in his first comprehensive comments about the WikiLeaks release.

“My friends are working [to take action] against these diplomats in terms of national and international law. We will continue this process there. Thereafter, they [the diplomats] have to think [about the consequences],” Erdoğan said. “We have discussed these issues with the U.S. administration. They have extended their apologies, but it’s not enough. They have to take all necessary measures against these diplomats.”

One leaked cable that was signed by former U.S. envoy to Ankara Eric Edelman claimed that Erdoğan had eight secret accounts in Swiss banks, a claim the American diplomat said had been made to the U.S. Embassy by two contacts. He did not give further evidence. Other documents accused Erdoğan of reaping personal gain from a billion-dollar privatization.

In addition to criticizing the U.S. administration and its envoys, Erdoğan also slammed the Turkish media and the head of the main opposition for publicizing the allegations.

Saying he does not have a single penny in Swiss banks, Erdoğan said: “Now I tell the opposition leaders that the moment they prove otherwise, I will resign. But will they still sit in their places [if they cannot prove it]?”

Calling the opposition “opportunist” for repeating slanderous remarks made by foreign diplomats, Erdoğan accused his political rivals of being dishonorable, while also lashing out at media outlets that reported the claims.

“An honorable media [outlet] or media member should first ask the person these slanders are made against [about the claims],” he said. “If the subject is the prime minister, you should ask: ‘Esteemed prime minister, is this true?’ If the prime minister tells you, ‘No, I have nothing to do with it,’ then you should not write about it. But if you write it without asking, without investigating [the validity of the claim], with the purpose of defaming, that is immorality, worthlessness.”

Accusing Edelman and other former U.S. diplomats of expressing their personal hatred against him and his government, Erdoğan repeated his statement that the opposition’s use of these claims for political purposes was shameful. He also called on the public to wait and see what the purpose was behind the leaks as the situation was still very new.

PM recalls the past

The WikiLeaks release is not the first time he has been made the subject of such slanders, Erdoğan said, noting that a journalist who claimed the prime minister had $1 billion in personal assets was now in prison as a suspect in the ongoing Ergenekon case. The journalist Erdoğan referred to is Tuncay Özkan, who has been in prison for the last two years without being convicted. Ergenekon is the name of an alleged gang accused of plotting to overthrow the government in 2003 and 2004.

“One billion dollars... That is more than the budget of the Istanbul municipality at that time,” Erdoğan said. “And now this gentleman is in [prison]. There are still media [outlets] and columnists following the same path.”

Swift reaction from Kılıçdaroğlu

The head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, swiftly reacted to Erdoğan’s remarks, saying it was the United States, and not him, that made the allegations and that it was not right for the prime minister to direct his criticism at the opposition.

“To whom do those allegations belong? Isn’t it the United States? Why doesn’t [Erdoğan] ask his questions to them instead of asking us?” CHP chief Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu told reporters in the northwestern province of Bursa. “What did I say? I said the allegations regarding the prime minister are grave and he has to make a satisfactory explanation for them.”

Noting that other ministers had denied allegations against them via written statements, Kılıçdaroğlu said Erdoğan needed to respond in a more consistent and measured way.

“It is the United States that the prime minister should show reaction to and settle accounts with,” the CHP leader said


If he does not have the power to do that, it is another issue. It is not right to say, ‘I can’t settle accounts with the United States, so let the target be the opposition.