{"id":1120,"date":"2010-06-08T09:45:16","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T08:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2011-05-18T16:02:56","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T15:02:56","slug":"dear-secretary-general-of-nato-i-want-to-talk-to-you-about-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/06\/08\/dear-secretary-general-of-nato-i-want-to-talk-to-you-about-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Secretary General of NATO, I want to talk to you about Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dear Secretary General<\/p>\n

On June 1st you issued a statement about the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ in which you condemned “the acts which have led to this tragedy”.<\/p>\n

It was not clear what those acts were, but most would conclude that you were condemning Israel. You then called for an International Enquiry. This seems to represent a pattern in enquiries about Israel’s conduct; first the members of the UN’s Goldstone report accused Israel of war crimes and then made their investigation; now you are also condemning Israel before any investigation is carried out.<\/p>\n

I am also amazed that you have stood by whilst the Turkish government, a NATO member, embraces the vile Iranian regime and the dictator of Syria who is supplying arms to Hizbollah in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

The Turkish Prime Minister also claims that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n

Why have you not condemned Turkey for allowing a bunch of jihadis to board a ship in a Turkish port without passports with the intention of confronting the Israeli navy with murderous intent whilst the Israelis were legally seeking compliance with their maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip?<\/p>\n

You issued your statement on June 1st. I think you should withdraw your condemnation in\u00a0 light of overwhelming evidence of a prepared ambush on soldiers whose intent was not lethal but who found themselves in fear of their lives and resorted to lethal force as a last resort.<\/p>\n

You should at least revise your statement to reserve your condemnations until an appropriate investigation has been carried out.<\/p>\n

How can Turkey remain a member of NATO whilst its government pursues political alliances with regimes totally inimical to NATO?<\/p>\n

Surely Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, would be a worthier member.<\/p>\n

Yours respectfully<\/p>\n

Ray Cook<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Dear Secretary General On June 1st you issued a statement about the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ in which you condemned “the acts which have led to this tragedy”. It was not clear what those acts were, but most would conclude that you were condemning Israel. You then called for an International Enquiry. This seems to represent a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[506,473,1137,4,322,493],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anders-fogh-rasmussen","tag-freedom-flotilla","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-nato","tag-turkey","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1122,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}