Does Turkish Radar Feed Israel’s Iron Dome and the War on Gaza?

Christof Lehmann (nsnbc) : Israel’s bombing and ground operations in the Gaza Strip prompted Turkish PM R. Tayyip Erdogan to compare Israel with “Hitler Germany”. Meanwhile, the dispute over the U.S.-operated radar at the Kürecik base in Malatya, Turkey, will not go away. Is the radar on Turkish soil fueling Israel’s Iron Dome with data?

Erdogan_Temper_Turkey_ADIn 2010, when Israel killed nine Turkish citizens on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel Mavi Marmara, Turkey’s PM Erdogan was grandstanding and breaking all ties with Israel. Intelligence ties were never broken. Other ties were silently mended within weeks.

No mainstream media picked up on investigations which showed that the scandal involved the cooperation between Israeli and Turkish (NATO) intelligence with NATO double agent and then second in command of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Mahdi al-Harati. Very few picked up on the fact that the vessels owner, the IHH, is known for having ties to Turkey’s intelligence service MIT.

Being NATO’s most important member in the Middle East, Turkey has played pivotal roles in the subversion of Libya. Turkey continues playing pivotal roles in the wars on Syria and Iraq.

Photo:Aydinlik Daily

Photo:Aydinlik Daily

A recent investigative report resulted in a more than two-hour-long conversation with a member of the inner circle around former Lebanese PM Saad Hariri who presented evidence to support his statement that the so-called ISIS or IS in Iraq are directly supervised via the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey.

The decision to launch the ISIS campaign was made at the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Turkey in November 2013, in the presence of key members of Turkey’s AKP government.

Beyond The Grandstanding. Reports that Turkey supports Israel’s war on Palestine in Gaza are, despite Erdogan’s grandstanding, not surprising to anyone who knows that Israel and Turkey both are key partners in the implementation of regional and global NATO strategies. Among changing Turkish and Israeli governments, these facts remain constants.

It is thus not surprising that Turkey would allow the transit of stolen or smuggled Iraqi and Syrian gas and oil via pipelines across Turkish territory. Turkey’s Aydinlik newspaper reported on July 10, that jet fuel had been shipped to Israel from the ports of Iskenderun, Dörtyol, and Mersin.

Hot Potato Picked Up On Occasion for PR Purposes? With regards to the radar facility in Kürecik, the Aydinlik newspaper reports that the radar installation is part of NATO’s missile shield. The system has, among others, the function to defend Israel from Iranian missiles.

Gaza_airstrike_maan_

Image courtesy of Ma’an

Israel’s bombing and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, that has cost more than 340 Palestinian lives between July 7 and July 20, 2014, has brought another “hot potato” in Turkish – Israeli relations and cooperation back into the focus of Turkey’s parliamentary debates; the radar facility at the Kürecik base in Malatya.

The Turkish MP Idris Baluken, last week, asked the parliament whether military intelligence, gathered at the Kürecik base, is used in the defense of Israel, reports Firat News.

Baluken reportedly asked Foreign Minister Ahmed Davotoglu to respond to these allegations, stressing that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is one of the fundamental causes of the political predicament in the Middle East. Firat quotes Baluken as saying:

“While it is an obligation for the people in the Middle East to take steps in order to stop the violence and death, no positive contributions for the resolution of the problem have been made apart from condemnation of the intervention which reek of political populism. The AKP government’s approach to human tragedy is to use populism to gain votes.”

Kürecik_Turkey_radar_Iron Dome_Israel_AD

Courtesy of Aydinlik Daily

“Is there any document agreed by Turkey and Israel in the diplomatic arena? If so, what are those documents? If the state of Israel attacks the Gaza strip, is there any policy which is designed to protect the peace and unity between the communities?”

The point is that nobody in Turkey, in principle, responds to the fact that Turkey and Israel cooperate. From time to time, when Israel bombs Gaza, this cooperation gains political potential.

Turkey’s parliament went through similar procedures and polemics in 2012. None of the questions about whether data from the Kürecik radar facility help Israel’s Iron Dome intercept homemade rockets from Gaza or not has been answered since then.

Why the Radar in Kürecik is A Hot Potato? One might ask, what is it with Kürecik that has Turkish parliamentarians go through the roof as long as reports about Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians become a public embarrassment, while everybody runs away from the issue, squealing, as soon as the media start loosing interest and focus on “the next big story”?

Could it be the fact that the sister radar station in Israel’s Negev desert provides data to Turkey and that this “partnership” is so crucial for NATO’s so-called missile shield, that nobody better touch it?

Patriot anti-missile batteries

Patriot Batteries in Turkey.

Defense partnerships usually work both ways. In 2012, an article by Barbara Opall-Rome, published in Defense News, quoted a U-S. government official who visited Turkey, on condition of anonymity. Opall-Rome quotes that official as saying:

“There are some people in Turkey that did not want the radar. They argued that the reason we’re putting the radar in there is to help Israel. Well, that’s not why we’re doing it. … In fact, the opposite is really true. Our radar here in Israel helps Turkey. … Bottom line, it’s in all of our interests to have an American radar 400 kilometers from the Iranian border.”

Proving Stones for Honesty. Baluken’s question whether there is any contract between Israel and Turkey will probably have to be answered with “definitely yes”.

If it is not between Turkey and Israel directly, there will be a contract between NATO and Israel, and most probably also a parallel contract between the U.S. and Israel. Baluken’s questions to Davotoglu, whether there are any contracts which specify incidents in which Israel wages war on Palestine are, of course, valid questions.

The proving stone for”Baluken’s and the Turkish opposition’s honesty about their concerns about Palestinians will be, whether they continue demanding answers instead of silently dropping the issue when the media’s focus turns to something else, as it happened in 2012.

CH/L – nsnbc 20.07.2014

Source Article from http://nsnbc.me/2014/07/20/does-turkish-radar-feed-israels-iron-dome-and-the-war-on-gaza/

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