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cyprus
Turkey Could Deploy Troops to War-Torn Libya in January, Latest Acceleration of Multi-Country Proxy War
The country's main opposition opposes the move and warned on Monday that the conflict could spread across the region.
Dec 29, 2019
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could on Thursday receive permission from his country's parliament to send military personnel and equipment to Libya to support the North African country's United Nations-recognized leader Fayez al-Serraj, who is facing an uprising.
If approved, the deployment could further inflame tensions in the region.
The Erdogan government submitted the request to parliament on Monday while Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with legislators. Opposition leader Unal Cevikoz, deputy chairman for the Republican People's Party (CHP), told reporters that he opposed the proposed deployment in the strongest of terms.
"We will never accept Turkey to be a part of the proxy war in Libya and, by siding with one of the sides of the conflict, for it to be a cause of the shedding of Muslim blood," said Cevikoz.
Erdogan is widely believed to be engaging in the conflict to further Turkish territorial aims in the Mediterranean. Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, showed how Turkey is looking to expand its footprint in the region.
"Contact with Libyan sea space allows Ankara to cut into Israeli-Egyptian-Cypriot-Greek axis boxing Turkey in eastern Mediterranean," Cagaptay tweeted.
\u201cThis map explains all you need know to answer how serious Turkey is regarding its support to Tripoli in Libya\u2019s civil war. Contact with Libyan sea space allows Ankara to cut into Israeli-Egyptian-Cypriot-Greek axis boxing Turkey in eastern Mediterranean\u201d— Soner Cagaptay (@Soner Cagaptay) 1577720778
Libya is riven by a civil war between al-Serraj, who is backed by Turkey and Italy, and rebel leader General Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Russia, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.
The U.S., despite its status as a major regional player, has been noncomittal about getting involved in the most recent phase of the war, which began in 2011 with the participation of then-President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The campaign, though brief, has had major consequences for the people of Libya and North Africa, including the reopening of slave markets for the first time in decades.
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron and Egypt's dictator President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a joint statement urging "restraint" on the part of Turkey.
Around 1,000 Russian mercenaries are reportedly helping Haftar. If Turkey joins the battle, the country's troops could be joined by Syrian fighters allied with the Erdogan government.
"The military's experience abroad will be very useful in Libya," a Turkish security official told Lebanon's The Daily Star. "However, there is the possibility of using the experience of Syrian fighters as well...and this is being evaluated."
CHP's Cevikoz said his party would try to find another solution for Turkish involvement in Libya.
"We believe diplomacy should be prioritized, rather than being a party to a proxy war," said Cevikoz. "What is being done is making preparations to worsen the current situation, and we conveyed to the minister that this is not right."
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Cyprus Votes 'No' Against Austerity and 'the People' Cheer
Plan to levy individual's bank accounts rejected
Mar 19, 2013
As protesters cheered outside, Cyprus's parliament rejected a bailout proposal from the European financial 'troika' that would have levied individual savings accounts held in the state's banks.
Though a small island country with relatively low impact on the wider European economy, the proposal put forth over the weekend caused a stir across global markets as fears of a bank run spread.
As Reuters reports:
The vote by the small state's legislature was a stunning setback for the 17-nation euro zone, after lawmakers in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy had repeatedly accepted unpopular austerity measures over the last three years to secure European aid.
The rejection, with 36 votes against, 19 abstentions and one absence, brought the east Mediterranean island, one of the smallest European states, to the brink of financial meltdown.
EU countries said before the vote that they would withhold 10 billion euros ($12.89 billion) in bailout loans unless depositors in Cyprus shared the cost of the rescue, and the European Central Bank has threatened to end emergency lending assistance for teetering Cypriot banks.
But jubilant crowds outside parliament broke into applause, chanting: "Cyprus belongs to its people."
"The voice of the people was heard," said Andreas Miltiadou, a 65-year-old pensioner among the demonstrators.
The Guardian continues its live coverage of events in Cyprus here.
Answering the question "Why Does Cyprus Matter?" The Nation's Maria Margonis explains:
One, because this is the first time the EU and IMF have decided to take money directly from people's pockets rather than through the messy process of cutting wages and pensions and putting taxes up. You could perhaps read this as a tacit acknowledgment that austerity has failed, economically as well as politically: it's messy, it's unreliable, and it makes people vote for leaders who won't play the game, like Italy's Beppe Grillo. You could certainly read it as a sign of how profoundly Europe's leaders have lost the plot. Though the market meltdown predicted over the weekend hasn't materialized, howls of derision have issued from bankers and business leaders as well as Cypriot indignados: if guarantees on bank deposits aren't worth the paper they're printed on, if people's savings can be siphoned off by fiat, then the world as we know it, or at least the banking system, will come to an end. (It's worth remembering here that before the last Greek election a Syriza economist proposed tapping private deposits to fund public investment; he was pilloried as a dangerous radical who would destroy the principle of private property.)
Two, it matters because with both ends of the economic spectrum lining up against it, the latest Band-Aid offered for the ailing Eurozone looks more and more like a crowbar to help tear it apart. The European Union, a liberal project with the twin goals of preserving peace and solidarity and facilitating commerce, always had opponents on both left and right. As the crisis deepens and peace and solidarity drop out of the equation, those voices are getting louder, not only in Greece and Italy but in Scandinavia, where far-right parties are rising, and in Britain, too. The anti-immigration UK Independence Party beat the Tories to second place in a recent by-election. Cyprus, a former colony, is home to several thousand British retirees; the front page of the Daily Mail today denounces the great eu bank robbery. The financial "contagion" from the Cyprus bailout might be containable; the political fallout will be more problematic.
Three, it matters because the plundering of ordinary people's savings to bail out the banks lays bare more starkly than before where the real power lies. What price is democracy, when the European Central Bank's Jorge Asmussen can present an elected European leader with the choice to accept the deposit tax or we will let your banks go under, and your economy too? (And yes, I know that Cyprus has a bloated banking sector; I know its people elected the governments that chose to let this happen; I know it's a center for money laundering. But so are Switzerland and Luxemburg and the City of London, not to mention--according to the Basel Institute of Governance--Germany.)
Last but not least, it matters because Cyprus matters. Always in the cross-hairs of Great Power rivalries, betrayed by its former colonial masters, pushed and pulled by the politics of its neighbors Greece and Turkey, the island has struggled for decades to shape its own destiny. When the crisis hit Greece a couple of years ago, a Cypriot friend wrote to me, "Don't bring us down with you, the way you did last time." She meant 1974, when the junta in power in Athens launched the coup in Cyprus that sparked the Turkish invasion that split the island in two. Cyprus's fall this time is due in part to its exposure to Greek bonds, which were given a short back and sides last year by the same financial wizards who have hatched this latest plan.
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Why Cyprus Matters: The Eurozone Strikes Again
The kaleidoscope spins again; the shards are rearranged; this time, the fragment at the centre is Cyprus.
Mar 19, 2013
The kaleidoscope spins again; the shards are rearranged; this time, the fragment at the centre is Cyprus. Faced with yet another country needing an urgent bailout (and with the German election looming in September), Eurozone leaders and the IMF have come up with a new wheeze: make savers pay to rescue the banks that were meant to look after their money, in exchange for a bailout of 10 billion euros.
Not unreasonable, you might say: Why should the proverbial German taxpayer cough up for Russian oligarchs and shady foreign businessmen who've stashed billions on the island? But the plan will take a cut from everybody's savings--farmers, pensioners, orphans, oligarchs and oil magnates--on a roughly graded scale. (The proposed levy on accounts under 100,000 euros--which were in theory guaranteed by the Cyprus government--will probably now be reduced from 6.7 percent to 3.5 percent, which reminds me of the sage Nasrudin Hoja's advice to the man whose house was too small.) Over the weekend Cypriots queued at cash machines; one man drove his bulldozer up to the door of the bank.
"...the plundering of ordinary people's savings to bail out the banks lays bare more starkly than before where the real power lies."
As the newly elected government of President Nicos Anastasiades postponed a vote on the plan and closed the banks until Thursday, the blame-shifting began: Was it Anastasiades who sold out the small savers to keep the Russians sweet, or the Troika heavies who showed him the brass knuckles? (Answer: it's complicated, but there were brass knuckles.) Vladimir Putin weighed in, calling the plan unfair, unprofessional and dangerous. Russia has loaned Cyprus 2.5 billion euros; the EU is hoping it will extend the terms.
Why does all this matter? One, because this is the first time the EU and IMF have decided to take money directly from people's pockets rather than through the messy process of cutting wages and pensions and putting taxes up. You could perhaps read this as a tacit acknowledgment that austerity has failed, economically as well as politically: it's messy, it's unreliable, and it makes people vote for leaders who won't play the game, like Italy's Beppe Grillo. You could certainly read it as a sign of how profoundly Europe's leaders have lost the plot. Though the market meltdown predicted over the weekend hasn't materialized, howls of derision have issued from bankers and business leaders as well as Cypriot indignados: if guarantees on bank deposits aren't worth the paper they're printed on, if people's savings can be siphoned off by fiat, then the world as we know it, or at least the banking system, will come to an end. (It's worth remembering here that before the last Greek election a Syriza economist proposed tapping private deposits to fund public investment; he was pilloried as a dangerous radical who would destroy the principle of private property.)
Two, it matters because with both ends of the economic spectrum lining up against it, the latest Band-Aid offered for the ailing Eurozone looks more and more like a crowbar to help tear it apart. The European Union, a liberal project with the twin goals of preserving peace and solidarity and facilitating commerce, always had opponents on both left and right. As the crisis deepens and peace and solidarity drop out of the equation, those voices are getting louder, not only in Greece and Italy but in Scandinavia, where far-right parties are rising, and in Britain, too. The anti-immigration UK Independence Party beat the Tories to second place in a recent by-election. Cyprus, a former colony, is home to several thousand British retirees; the front page of the Daily Mail today denounces the great eu bank robbery. The financial "contagion" from the Cyprus bailout might be containable; the political fallout will be more problematic.
Three, it matters because the plundering of ordinary people's savings to bail out the banks lays bare more starkly than before where the real power lies. What price is democracy, when the European Central Bank's Jorge Asmussen can present an elected European leader with the choice to accept the deposit tax or we will let your banks go under, and your economy too? (And yes, I know that Cyprus has a bloated banking sector; I know its people elected the governments that chose to let this happen; I know it's a center for money laundering. But so are Switzerland and Luxemburg and the City of London, not to mention--according to the Basel Institute of Governance--Germany.)
Last but not least, it matters because Cyprus matters. Always in the cross-hairs of Great Power rivalries, betrayed by its former colonial masters, pushed and pulled by the politics of its neighbors Greece and Turkey, the island has struggled for decades to shape its own destiny. When the crisis hit Greece a couple of years ago, a Cypriot friend wrote to me, "Don't bring us down with you, the way you did last time." She meant 1974, when the junta in power in Athens launched the coup in Cyprus that sparked the Turkish invasion that split the island in two. Cyprus's fall this time is due in part to its exposure to Greek bonds, which were given a short back and sides last year by the same financial wizards who have hatched this latest plan.
You might be forgiven for thinking that those wizards want the Eurozone to fall apart. But that's conspiratorial, and gives them too much credit. Like the British in Cyprus the 1950s, they're trying and failing to juggle their own contradictory interests. And as in the 1950s, it's the locals who'll get hurt first.
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