NATO and Turkey



News Desk, Barta24.com
ছবি: সংগৃহীত

ছবি: সংগৃহীত

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According to the latest analysis of the 'Foreign Policy' journal on global situation, there was so much emerging hope in the conflicting context of the the world, particularly regarding NATO.

When Finland and Sweden officially applied for NATO membership last May, abandoning decades of neutrality in Helsinki and more than a century of nonalignment in Stockholm, U.S. and European officials celebrated the historic step as a major strategic defeat for Russia, stemming from its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The only thing NATO leaders needed to do to lock this in was get their house in order to admit them.

Cut to eight months later, and 29 of NATO’s 30 members have signed off on expanding the alliance, but there’s still one holdout blocking the whole thing: Turkey. (Hungary, the other holdout, has said it will ratify Sweden and Finland’s bids in February.)

Sweden and Finland, backed by NATO powers, have carefully tried to court Turkey to agree to greenlight NATO expansion through a painstaking, monthslong diplomatic campaign that appears to have run aground. Turkey, Finland, and Sweden signed a memorandum at the NATO summit in Madrid last June signaling there’d be an end to the impasse, but no one spoils otherwise routine NATO business better than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan has dug his heels in—amid a critical election season in Turkey—over claims that Sweden harbors militants from a separatist Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group designated as terrorists by the United States and European Union that Turkey has been fighting for more than 30 years.

In the early months of the NATO expansion process, Finland and Sweden vowed to move in lockstep with each other and coordinate entering NATO at the same time. Now, after eight months of impasse, Finland is reportedly considering going for a membership bid alone. And the prospect of expanding the alliance to 32 members—once seen as a foregone conclusion—now appears more remote than ever.

Turkey had already been stalling on a parliamentary vote needed to ratify Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership for months by the time the clock rolled around to 2023, looking for a variety of concessions—such as deportations of people from Nordic countries viewed by Erdogan as terrorists—that seemed like nonstarters.

But the prospect of Swedish membership, which was first jeopardized by the past government’s ties to Kurdish parties (which their successors distanced themselves from), now appears much more remote after a far-right politician in Sweden burned a Quran at a protest early in January, a move that directly angered Erdogan. That led to Turkey canceling a meeting to hunker down with Swedish and Finnish officials to talk about their NATO membership—indefinitely.

On Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “meaningless” to hold a trilateral meeting to clear the air this month in Stockholm.

Finland is now considering moving ahead with a solo effort for NATO membership if Turkey continues to balk at Sweden’s bid, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said on Tuesday.

But on the other hand, Turkey’s gambit may be time sensitive. Turkey’s elections are set for May 14, and Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades, faces his toughest test yet, with critics calling out the 68-year-old leader for presiding over a severe economic downturn and the erosion of democratic freedoms. (The six-party opposition group opposing Erdogan has yet to put forward a candidate.)

Months ago, when your trusty SitRep writer was in Finland reporting on NATO issues and asking how Sweden and Finland were preparing for a new era of showdowns against Russia, a Finnish official joked to him that “the Swedes are prepared to fight to the last Finn.”

A good natured joke between two neighbors, but the underlying point stands. Finland shares one of the longest borders with Russia in Europe, and friend or not, it acts as a giant, country-sized buffer between Sweden and Russia. So while many U.S. and NATO officials are quietly fuming over what they see as Turkey’s intransigence, they also concede that from a purely geopolitical or defense planning perspective, it may be better to get Finland—the “front-line” country—into NATO as soon as possible.

   

We are ashamed to look at the development of Bangladesh: Pakistan PM



International Desk, Barta24.com, Dhaka
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Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif praised the economic progress of Bangladesh and said that they are ashamed to look at the development of Bangladesh.

According to a report by Pakistan-based media Dawn on Thursday (April 25), Shahbaz Sharif said this in a view exchange meeting with business representatives at the Sindh Chief Minister's residence in Karachi on Wednesday (April 24).

He said that before independence, Bangladesh i.e. East Pakistan at that time was considered a burden to the country. But they have made tremendous progress in the growth of industrialization.

Shahbaz Sharif said, I was very young when...we were told that it was a burden on our shoulders. Today you all know where that burden has reached (in terms of economic growth). And now when we look at them, we feel ashamed.

Currently, Bangladesh is ahead of Pakistan in almost all indicators of the socio-economic sector.

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Mass arrests could not stop anti-Israel protests at American universities



International Desk, Barta24.com, Dhaka
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US universities have erupted in protest over Israel's military operation in the Palestinian-besieged Gaza. This pro-Palestinian movement is being suppressed even after mass arrests. Rather, as the days go by, the protests are spreading.

The news agency Reuters reported that police made mass arrests at Atlanta's Emory University amid protests. A graduation ceremony at the University of Southern California was canceled due to the protests.

Emory University officials said protesters not affiliated with the college entered campus grounds early Thursday morning. When they refused to leave, the police used chemical spray to disperse them.

According to CBS News, about 108 people were arrested at Emerson College in the city on Wednesday night local time. Earlier in the evening, 93 people were taken into police custody from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California.

Anti-Israel protests have spread to dozens of US universities within a week of starting at New York's Columbia University.

Meanwhile, a clash between protesters and police took place at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas. Later, authorities said that 34 people were arrested from there. These new arrests came after massive arrests of protesters at Columbia, Yale and New York universities.

Students gathered Wednesday (April 24) to protest at the University of Southern California's Alumni Park. At this time they were stopped by the riot police. Protesters were told to leave within 10 minutes by an announcement from a police helicopter. However, the students who remained at the scene were arrested for trespassing.

The protests at the University of Southern California were reportedly peaceful at first. Later the tension spread with the presence of the police. Protesters threw water bottles at the police when they tried to arrest a woman. At this time, they kept shouting slogans - 'Let him go'. Besides, they surrounded the police officers and shouted slogans like 'I want the liberation of Palestine'.

It should be noted that on October 7, the Palestinian independence organization Hamas entered Israeli territory and carried out an ambush. 1200 people were killed. Because of this, since that day, the Israeli forces continue to attack Gaza indiscriminately. 34 thousand 305 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip in the attack that lasted for more than six months. Apart from this, there is a severe humanitarian crisis due to lack of food, water and medical equipment.

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Iran is cracking down on women who don't wear Hijab



International Desk, Barta24.com
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Iran is cracking down on women and girls who don't wear Hijab. The country has started a new campaign named 'Noor' from last April 13. Since then, the implementation of the Hijab law has started to become stricter.

Iran has strict laws on wearing the Hijab. Strict action is taken against those who break this law.

Some videos of women being assaulted have gone viral on social media. In them, it is seen that women who go out without Hijab are forcibly picked up in cars by the members of the 'Morality Police'.

A video shows a mother and daughter walking through Tehran's busiest square in the capital. At that time, they were surrounded by five female and two male members of the police. When they tried to evade arrest, they were violently beaten and taken into a car.

Dina Ghalibaf, a female student at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University, wrote on the micro-blogging site X that she was barred from boarding the metro. When she insisted, she was taken to a room. She claimed that she was beaten and sexually harassed there.

The student was arrested a day after making such a post and taken to Evin prison.

British newspaper The Guardian spoke to some of those arrested. One of them told the media that eight members of the police surrounded her last Saturday. At that time, she was called "prostitute", "naked American prostitute" and insulted her. Apart from this, the young woman claimed that men also touched her during the arrest.



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Boeing incurs huge losses after door open incident



Special Correspondent, Barta24.com, Dhaka
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Boeing lost a huge amount of money due to the opening of the doors of the Boeing aircraft of Alaska Airlines in mid-air. US aircraft manufacturer Boeing reported a loss of US dollar 343 million in the first quarter of this year (January-March).

An unused door on an Alaska Airlines Boeing Max 9 collapsed moments after takeoff from Portland, Oregon last January. Although the Alaska Airlines plane was able to land safely in this incident, questions about Boeing's safety have been raised around the world.

As a result, Boeing reduced the production of the aircraft according to their target. As a result, Boeing is forced to pay huge losses in the first quarter of this year.

After the Alaska Airlines incident, the United States Aviation Agency ordered the grounding of 171 Boeing Max 737 aircraft. In the wake of the incident, Boeing's chief immediately admitted the mistake and promised to fix the problem with 100% transparency. But even this did not save the end. Boeing's CEO was eventually forced to resign.

In order not to cut the heat of this incident, a former Boeing engineer recently talked about the manufacturing defects of the Dreamliner 787. He recommended grounding all Dreamliner aircraft worldwide. In this incident, the safety of Boeing was questioned again.

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