AI-Jane Forums

Kamil · Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 1206 Location: Bay Area, Calif

I keep reading about Turkey's interest in acquiring nuclear arms from many different sources. If it is true, I have no idea how they are planning to do it.
Currently there is no nuclear reactors in Turkey, and there is strong opposition for building any. So are they going to purchase some raw materials to build nuclear arms from another country or countries?

Here is another article about nuclear arms in Turkey:

mv · KINGFISH Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 9798

search this Stratfor's article for the word "reactor".

(Notice that it would be rather illogical for the Turks not to have this program... and not to have it quickly, given the program in Iran.)

Fredledingue · Joined: 02 Nov 2004 Posts: 1968

Gunnen4u · Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 7:14 pm Post subject:

Let Turkey have its own nukes, I do not see why they shouldn't if we're pretty much weak on letting everyone else have them. A powerful Turkey is what might be needed since the Boy and Inc. have done their best to destroy US influence in the area.
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track_snake · Joined: 17 Oct 2006 Posts: 1979 Location: Philippines

Turkey will soon be accepted as a member of EU; no doubt about that.

As long as Israel possess nuclear arms - already for probably more that 30 years - it is difficult to forbid Iran to have them.

/track_snake

John L · Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 3:03 pm Post subject:

jt · Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 4:11 pm Post subject:

I concur that Turkey has given up on joining the EU. The EU is having its economic problem and Turkey wants to be a player in the ME politics, which separates it from the EU.
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Jefferson: I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

Kamil · Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 1206 Location: Bay Area, Calif

I think it is wrong to think that Turkey is aligning itself with the ME Countries. Currently, Russia has become Turkey's largest trading partner, and soon visa requirements will be lifted between the two countries. Visa requirements have been lifted between Turkey and Serbia, and old enemies are becoming trade partners and new friends. Turkey is doing booming trade with Georgia and there is no longer visa requirements between the two countries.

Following excerpt from this week's Newsweek Magazine explains Turkish Goals much better than I can.

Palladin · Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Posts: 18380 Location: Tennessee

They are both and if Turkey can stay there and avoid serious conflicts,with all the natural assets she has,it may be Turkey exceeds some west European states in wealth in the next decade.

Maybe exceeds ours.who knows?

My wife works out with a group of ladies and a friend just got back from a vacation in Turkey as if it was Cancun or Myrtle Beach.

A UT basketball player has just gone to Turkey to play for Anatolya on the Aegean coast.

Gunnen4u · Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:42 pm Post subject:

They also make some great shotguns available to the public there.
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Kamil · Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 1206 Location: Bay Area, Calif

It seems like many sport stars are signing up with Turkish teams, especially soccer stars. Now there are so many Brazilian players with Istanbul Soccer Teams that some people are calling Istanbul as "Brazil by the Bosporus"
Just today a Real Madrid soccer star Guti signed two years contract with the Besiktas team, and over 20,000 cheering Besiktas fans attended the signing ceremony.

Gunnen4u · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 7:47 am Post subject:

I always thought it was because Turks ethnically looked white/blond/light eyes all the way to dark hair/brown skin, and everything in between just like Brazil.
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mv · KINGFISH Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 9798

Turkey's New Foreign Policy Direction

jt · Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 5:00 pm Post subject:

National Geographic magazine had an article that discusses a new railroad from Turkey through the southern Caucusus, running through Tbilisi. Turkey is funding it. It will link Turkey (and Europe) to Asia.

It appears to me that this means that Turkey is not orienting completely towards the Islamic states and that it wishes to remain a influential with many countries. It also puts Georgia in a central position. It could be a great boon to trade.

The Armenians lost out due to the old antagonism with the Turks.

LINK
_________________
Jefferson: I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

Kamil · Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 1206 Location: Bay Area, Calif

Thank you JT for posting the link to a very interesting article.
Even though I'm still undecided on Erdogan's real intentions, I'm seeing that economy in Turkey started booming, and opening to Moslem World is just a small portion of the opening Turkey has to all the other countries who are willing to cooperate with Turkey.

I know that Turkey's stand is upsetting many neoconservatives, but in the long run USA could benefit from having a strong and democratic country in the region. Turkey could be a better friend to the USA than some countries who appear to be a better friends, but possibly only to get more USA aid.

ghoullio · Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 8:46 pm Post subject:

Trust me, Kamil, you need not fear the ire of the neoconservatives. They are a useless group, who's authority is quickly fading.
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Gunnen4u · Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:24 pm Post subject:

track_snake · Joined: 17 Oct 2006 Posts: 1979 Location: Philippines

Kamil · Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 1206 Location: Bay Area, Calif

An interesting article from Newsweek, it explains current Turkey very well.
Sail the Seas and Come to the Holy City of Byzantium
by Howard Fineman
As Europe struggles to stay afloat, Turkey is booming financially and culturally. Welcome to the globe’s most central hotspot.
I’m back in Washington, D.C., after a three-week trip to Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea, and here is the news: the art in the new modern-art museum in Istanbul is far more adventurous than the art in the new modern-art museum in Rome.
It’s not the first time that the art scene is more vibrant in Byzantium or Constantinople (Istanbul’s ancient names) than in Rome. But, with all due deference to the Ottomans, that hasn’t happened since the Renaissance. In Rome the Maxxi was featuring the gnarled, nightmarish, self-referential canvases of Italian painter Dino De Dominicis—skillful, but divorced from the world, more reminiscent of Goya than Andy Warhol. In the Istanbul Modern, by contrast, the centerpiece was a vast, splashy and clever installation by the Turkish fashion designer Hussein Chalayan—who tops the charts in London—that posed sly questions about the role of women in society even as it showed off his tailoring work.
Anectodal evidence to be sure—but emblematic of the vivid impressions on my third trip to Turkey in 10 years. Once again, for the third time in three millennia (not counting Homer’s), the city we now know as Istanbul and the country we now know as Turkey are becoming pivotal places in the affairs of the world. The reason, as always, is that Istanbul is a bridge—in this case, not just between continents, but between the Judeo-Christian secular West and the resurgent, Islamic East at a moment when that face-off defines our global era.
Turkey’s Quran-honoring but still secular government, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has carefully balanced bows to mullahs with bids to mutual funds in its seven years in power. With clear legislative majorities and a touch of sultan-like assurance, Erdogan is able to cut quick—and deliverable—financial deals. Turkish businessmen I talked to grudgingly like him for that—even if many worry about his push to put Islam again (for the first time since Atatürk in the 1920s) at the center of Turkey’s secular society. “Erdogan is balancing things well,” said Sahir Erozan, a resort owner who has both Turkish and American citizenship, and who used to be a restaurateur (and Democratic fundraising activist) back in Washington.
As a result, the Turkish economy is booming, fueled in part by a new wave of investment from the Arab Middle East, but also from the West. A construction craze is underway. Streets in Istanbul are being ripped up for a new tunnel and train beneath the Bosporus; cranes dominate the skyline on the Asia side to the east, where suburban development expands daily. Turkey’s debt-to-GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the developed or developing world—lower, in fact, than most countries in the European Union, which has turned up its nose at admitting Turkey for years. Now the laugh is on the EU.
Turkey’s new relevance helps explain some recent headlines: why the Israelis joined Turkey in a U.N. investigation of the Gaza relief-ship incident; why President Obama just floated a new invitation to Iran to seek a deal on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Turkey’s needs, in both cases, figured heavily in the moves.
This month the Turkish military—which still plays a huge role in the country, and which has a history of successful (and American-supported) coups—is deciding whom to elevate to top positions. The betting is that those chosen will be willing to play ball with Erdogan. My sense is that the U.S. government doesn’t mind—indeed, that it may approve of the pro-Erdogan appointments. The U.S. doesn’t have the influence over this process it once did, in any case. Then, the focus will turn to next month’s referendum on amending the Turkish Constitution to reduce the military’s traditionally large role in society—and to further erode Atatürk’s determined secularism. Again, expect the U.S. to tread carefully, on the theory that a Turkey that inches back to Islam can be the key broker with other Muslim nations.
The question now is whether Turkey will drift too far away from secularism for its own, and for everyone else’s, good. Thus far, it hasn’t. Israel’s vibrant democracy and its deep cultural ties to America and the West make defense of the Jewish state a crucial element of America’s foreign-policy agenda. But, in strategic and now even financial and religious terms, Turkey is a key—perhaps the key—to maintaining a sense of normality and peace in the region. Barack Obama acknowledged this when he took office: his first trip outside North America as president, in March of 2009, included a two-day stop in Turkey.
But my friend Sahir Erozan knew this was coming years ago. The son of a distinguished family of poets, scientists, and politicians, he came to Washington to study in the late 1970s, and stayed for the long boom of the 1980s and 1990s. He’s something of a trend sniffer: “I can smell the early,” he says. His Washington restaurant, Cities, was a gastronomical and political fixture on the D.C. scene. But after George W. Bush won a second term in 2005, Erozan decided to return home and develop his family’s resort hotel on the Bodrum peninsula of southern Turkey. Now his Macakizi Hotel is one of the hippest and most popular in the country. His guests come from Turkey, the U.S., Europe, Israel, and, increasingly, Arab countries in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
To survey the scene at the edge of the Aegean—the music pounding, the bar crowded, the yachts bobbing at the dock, the more quiet types sitting above, sipping tea on a breezy veranda—is to be astonished. Why? Because except for some of the Scandinavians, it’s pretty much impossible to tell who is from where. And they all have iPads.

Link: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/05/sail-the-seas-and-come-to-the-holy-city-of-byzantium.html

jt · Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 6:33 pm Post subject:

Do you suppose that the Turks might be making an economic bubble, or will this expansion have legs for a long time?
_________________
Jefferson: I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.