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ICRC held a roundtable in Geneva on ‘Translating humanitarian law into military tactics’. The aim was to consider how to conduct military operations within the limits of IHL and, in particular, to ponder appropriate, effective and yet legally acceptable rules of armed engagement. The four panellists included two military legal advisors (from NATO and the United States) and a colonel. While this may seem extremely cynical, the effort to better incorporate IHL into military
: Hurst ). Mazurana , D. and Donnelly , P. ( 2017 ), Stop the Sexual Assault against Humanitarian and Development Aid Workers Feinstein International Center Somerville, MA . Médecins Sans Frontières International Movement ( 2013 ), Famine and Forced Relocations in Ethiopia 1984–1986 MSF Speaks Out . Médecins Sans Frontières International Movement ( 2014a ), Violence against Kosovar Albanians, NATO’s Intervention 1998–1999 MSF Speaks Out . Médecins Sans Frontières International Movement ( 2014b ), War Crimes and Politics
that Turkey might seek to deflect its internal troubles by provoking a quarrel with Greece. 7 The Greek horror of a communist onslaught faded in the 1960s, only to be replaced by growing fears of a potential Turkish threat, fed in part by Greece’s acute consciousness of its relative military weakness. The 1974 defeat in Cyprus, Athanassios Platias confessed, laid bare the fact that Greece had no deterrent or offensive capabilities, other than those provided by the United States and NATO. And, he pointed out, in Cyprus the latter conspicuously failed to come to
It has been said that Turkey’s participation in the Korean War in the 1950s bought it the entrance ticket into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Forty years later, in 1991, Turkey participated in the Gulf War. Not a single Turkish soldier crossed the Iraqi–Turkish border, yet the six or so Turkish divisions that were deployed along the border drew off Iraqi forces from the Kuwaiti battlefield. This was meant by Turkey’s late President, Torgut Ozal, to pave the way towards his country’s accession into the European Union (EU). Was
already deployed along the Turkish–Syrian border: “[It is] Turkey [which] now faces a growing military danger from the major build-up of arms in Syria.” Depicting that state of affairs as a threat to Turkey was, by all accounts, an exaggeration: most of the Syrian army, then numbering 50,000 men, was deployed along the Israeli border or in and around Damascus as a shield against coup d’état attempts; its equipment, albeit modern, had yet to be properly integrated. On the other hand, Turkey boasted an army of half a million men. It was NATO’s largest land force
began to purchase weapons from Moscow. The West’s reluctance to sell Turkey arms for fear that they might be used against the Kurds and its, to Turkey, irritating habit of threatening to deny Turkey weapons in order to, as Ankara sees it, blackmail it into improving its human rights performance, forced the Turks to look for other more reliable, less fastidious arms suppliers. Russia was the obvious choice, and Turkey in urgent need of arms, had few qualms in buying them from NATO’s principal ex-enemy. Moscow, in turn, desperate for money, was only happy to oblige
the Armenians, on the grounds that there is no factual evidence of a high-level Ottoman master plan for their annihilation, Porat adds: I cannot but express my suspicion – of course unsupported – that there are circles in Israel who find the thrust of Turkish policy hard to swallow. After all, this is a state whose citizens are almost all Muslim, but nevertheless maintains friendly relations with Israel, inclines towards the West, is a member of NATO, and does not share in vilifying the United States as the source of all the afflictions from
Turkey’s relations with Europe and the EU have covered a multitude of issues, in particular being heavily involved with economic, political, cultural, ethnic, social, religious, secular and excessive national issues, the democratic process and military interventions in that process, human rights, minority rights, immigration and other aspects. Turkish association with Europe was meant to be the epitome of the country’s integration in the Western civilization; membership in the relevant economic and military bodies (NATO, the EU), the chief
. They made no changes in foreign policy – neither withdrawing from NATO, nor severing ties with “the microbes of the Zionist banking system” – neither did they try to put engulfing internal Muslim reforms into effect. For example, nothing materialized from Erbakan’s promise to build a mosque at the center of Istanbul, in Taksim Square, across from the Ataturk Cultural Center, an icon of secular Turkey, or in Cankaya, the section of Ankara where the presidential palace is located. 20 A similar fate awaited the proposal to allow women government employees who wanted to
This book is based mainly on government sources, namely material from the White House, State Department, Foreign Office (FO), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Prime Minister's Office (PREM) and Cabinet (CAB). Private papers consulted include those of Harold Wilson, Foreign Secretary George Brown and Undersecretary of State George Ball. The book explores a period of the Wilson-Johnson relationship. It considers the seven weeks from Wilson's election until he went to see Lyndon B. Johnson on 7-9 December, a formative period in which Britain cultivated American financial support and which saw pre-summit diplomacy over the NATO Multilateral Force (MLF). The book covers the summit in detail, examining the diplomatic exchanges over the Vietnam War, the British commitment East of Suez and the MLF, as well as the interplay of personality between Wilson and Johnson. By exploring the relationship of the two leaders in the years 1964-1968, it seeks to examine their respective attitudes to the Anglo-American relationship. The book then assesses the significance of an alleged Anglo-American strategic-economic 'deal', Wilson's 'Commonwealth Peace Mission' to Vietnam, and another Wilson visit to Washington. It also considers why the personal relationship between Johnson and Wilson suffered such strain when the Labour government 'dissociated' the UK from the latest American measures in Vietnam. Next, the book addresses the period from August 1966-September 1967, during which Wilson launched an intense but abortive effort to initiate peace negotiations over Vietnam, and London announced plans to withdraw from military bases East of Suez.