 Before we get started, I would like to remind you that I have a web page. I do not charge anyone anything. It is free for you to use, and this web page is specifically designed to make my publications available for my students and for those who are interested. So please, those who have not visited so far, and I do not count clicks or numbers or visits, and there is nothing that needs promotion. It is for you to use this website. And for articles that I have published, some of them, for instance, op-eds. If you want to read some examples of op-eds, my op-eds are available here, like this one, this one, this one, and this one. There are others, these are, I think all four of them from Bitter Lemons International that I mentioned earlier. So if you just go to the original website of Bitter Lemons International, you can read many more op-eds. And these are good examples. And there are some articles here. For instance, one of your friends just during the break discussed with me, Iranian issues, and I asked her if she had a chance to read my articles on Iran. She said no, because she had never visited my website. There are basically three major articles here published in world's leading journals. And it's not an easy thing to get them published there, so please go ahead and have a look at them. Anyway, we will use much of this information in the coming weeks. So the more you read and the better for you. But if you don't read, if you don't want to learn things, this is up to you. It's your choice. There are also some articles in Turkish here for those who believe might learn things. I mean, these are pieces published in the past, late 90s, early 2000s. And there are also some interviews, lengthy interviews. I put their sort of transcripts here. Interested, there are also PowerPoints, some of which we will use here in the class, like for instance, yeah, this one, the positions of major players in the Iranian nuclear puzzle. We will talk about Turkish-Israel relations as part of the Middle East security issues and things like that. Yeah, pictures, two of them. Well, two most important pictures which reflect my standing is to where I stand in academia, arms control disarmament. Well, this is the point where the Rishima Bond was dropped, hopefully when I was not there. And, well, this is actually right next to this place. There is a big convention center. And this building that you can see at the back is one which survived that blast, well, miraculously. And this one, I mean, that was in July 2005, the 60th anniversary of the commemoration, actually, of the tragic incident. And this is, if I'm not mistaken, a sculpture which was a product of a Soviet artist, but I might be wrong. I apologize in advance if this is wrong, but that was right across the United Nations building. And if you see the nozzle here, it cannot be used, which reflects my disarmament sort of side. So I'm against all sorts of armament and all sorts of arms. What I hated during my military service was to carry and also shoot. But, of course, you have to do as part of your duties when you are in the service. All right, let's turn this off and go back to our PowerPoint here. Let's keep that way instead of having the full screen. We have seen two major developments in the Middle East, in the 70s, which had, of course, repercussions for the rest of the sort of decades, actually, well into the 1990s, as we have seen of Al-Assad to control in Syria and Saddam Hussein eventually came to power in Iraq. I mean, he was part of the power structure as early as the beginning of the 1970s, but in due course, he turned out to be the one man, actually the most powerful man in Iraq. So, of course, there are certain commonalities between Iraq and Syria in terms of leadership and the profile of leaders. One of this was, of course, a new elite coming to power, not from nobility, I mean, noble or aristocracy, noble families, nobility as a result of the dynasties or just Ottoman empires or British rule, French rule, who always sort of supported them to keep them in power in order to keep their interests alive in these countries, but with these interventions of the Mithri on both sides, Iraq and Syria, we see Saddam Hussein and Al-Assad coming to power in Iraq and Syria, respectively, and around whom there was this in their close entourage and also in the sort of hierarchy of the state structure from top to bottom, pretty much, with few exceptions, though, we see a new elite, if you're told an elite in some respects, from the rural area. And, of course, in both cases, again, because they seized power with Mithri power, I mean, they seized the political power, their political status, thanks to their Mithri power, they stood not necessarily on a large sort of popular support, on the contrary, they stood on a narrow base of popular support, which was, of course, something important, and we have seen the implications of this toward the end of their sort of rules. And in Syria, yes, the Saddam family is still in power, but there are certain things that we will be discussing in terms of the implications of this, you know, standing on a narrow, popular support. Again, the Baathist Party, the Baathist ideology, which was not necessarily something that would be fully compatible with communist or socialist ideology, it was Pan-Arab ideology, which aimed at sort of uniting the entire Arab world, it had some common denominator with socialist way of thinking, but still, Baathist regimes, we have seen in both countries not necessarily going along very well, on the contrary, they were competing with one another, so that is important here. Again, another common denominator was that they both resented the policies pursued by the United States, and therefore allied themselves with the Soviet Union, and that was more so for practical reasons rather than ideological reasons, they were not necessarily in fond of socialist ideology, they were not sort of full with communist sort of thinking, but rather they fought it practical for arming themselves, and at a time when the Soviet Union was waiting on the fence to, you know, get involved in regional politics by way of sending their advisors and also providing significant amount of arms, weapons, ammunition to the regional countries. Of course, again, even though they seem to be on the same side in terms of Arab-Israeli conflict, to some extent, but Syria was, of course, naturally was heavily concerned with the situation in the Golan Heights, and Iraq, again, naturally, because of its geographical juxtaposition, I mean, proximity was more concerned with Shia, especially after the revolution, and that is in the view of many, one of the principal reasons as to why soon after the Islamic Revolution, which took place in January, February, 1979, and soon after that, within a matter of months, within less than a year, Iraq is large and offensive against Iran with a view to taking advantage of the vulnerable situation that Iran might have been going on, sort of. Therefore, these are important things to bear in mind. This, of course, brings us, especially in the 70s, to some major developments, the war that Ibrahim just mentioned in the first hour, during which the United States had to, or was compelled to intervene. One major development whose consequences were far-reaching, as you will see right now, the consequence of the Yom Kippur War, maybe it was the way it sort of happened, also maybe it was, or it came at a moment in history that also coincided with some other developments. Because one of the most important topics in Middle East security, as, again, we have discussed yesterday, we'll be discussing in the, for instance, on Thursday this week, all this sort of, in a conference that I will be participating, I mean, nuclearization of the region, or the spread of nuclear weapons in the world, and more specifically in the Middle East. This subject has always been one of the most important issues. And within this context, Israeli nuclear weapons capability has always been discussed, debated, and came to the fore in political and sort of metering sort of discussions and the fora, et cetera, et cetera. And now they also find their way to the statements made by heads of state or government in various places. But one thing that we sort of have to say at the beginning about Israel nuclear weapons capability is that nothing is 100% certain because of Israeli deliberate policy of ambiguity. Ambiguity means lack of clarity or just lack of precision or just accuracy. And Israel deliberately does neither acknowledge, I mean, does neither accept the presence, the existence of their, of its nuclear weapons capability nor deny or, I mean, because there are some countries which, even though they may have a certain capability, may very well say, no, we don't have it. So, but in this case, Israel does neither acknowledge nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons in its arsenal. So it is therefore something that makes things rather sort of difficult with respect to when for the first time Israel may have had or acquired this weapons capability. So, of course, there are certain ways of making inferences into how and when and why or, you know, in which or manner or true what sort of action they acquired this capability. And there are certain writings, one of which I mentioned last time, a book, the title is Israel and the bomb, authored, I mean, written by Avner Cohen. I think published by Columbia University or Princeton University, I forget it. It's a thick one and the author says, Avner says it was actually thicker but the publisher asked him to cut down certain parts. And he wrote that book based on a number of documents, archival stuff, information from the primary source information whose accuracy of veracity cannot be contested and also based on a number of interviews with people who have witnessed those years. So as I mentioned briefly last time, even before the state of Israel was proclaimed as an independent state sort of in 1948, approximately a year earlier, Bangorion and Shimon Paris were few of, two of the very few people who have conquered upon the idea that Israel must have the absolute weapon. Absolute weapon or absolute power means, of course, nuclear weapons because they had anticipated that they could not survive in such a hostile environment and that the only thing that would deter their enemies would be that weapons capability. And they have done this in a truly secret way and especially if you read the book by Cohen and some other pieces he published. And I think either he's going to publish in foreign affairs next issue or must have already been published. I couldn't follow a kind of summary of that decision. Because he says this is a secret that everybody knows. I'm a worst kept secret, anyway. So what we see there is that especially the French in the first place, I mean Shimon Paris is sent to France to organize or to mobilize the Jewish French scientists as well as businessmen to contribute financially and scientifically in their capacities to the realization of Niktor Bomb project. For instance, at some point, of course, they decide to build a secret reactor in the negative desert, which is the southern part of Israel, a small reactor, which is called heavy water reactor, which produces a significant amount of plutonium in its waste. So if this small reactor, which actually cannot be very much significant in terms of generating large amounts of electricity, but rather producing significant amount of plutonium, and if this waste is repossessed, and if the plutonium in the waste of the reactor after some operation time, then if the plutonium is repossessed, it can be used directly in Niktor weapons. So both the construction as well as the operation of this reactor was done in secret, but at one point, especially during the Canada administration, we see that maybe it was on purpose or just maybe because it was by accident, one of the U-2 flights, I mean U-2 aircraft which were flying over this Sinai peninsula to control the situation with respect to the emergency, the peace between Israel and in Egypt, they detect certain construction in the desert, and of course the U.S. administration asks from the Israeli administration to provide some information. The whole story is long. I'm not going to go into detail, but eventually Israel tries or manages to keep this secret, and since then never ever acknowledged as to whether they have produced any weapons at all or how many of them or which size, I mean in terms of yield, et cetera, et cetera, but there are certain issues which I gather, I mean sort of when I think about all of them, my hunch is that they must have had this capability around the 67 war. Maybe not so much right during the war, maybe in its aftermath, but what is for sure, and we understand this from the deliberations within the Israeli cabinet, the Knesset, that because of the conduct of war itself in Yom Kippur, because it was a surprise attack on the Yom Kippur day which is a holy day, which is a sacred day for the Jews and Arab nations took advantage of this situation or wanted to take advantage of the situation, and Egyptian and Syrian combined attack put the Israelis in a very difficult situation, and they really came to the point to the brink of destruction. So this is the turning point in many respects, I mean things that you have to bear in mind, you have to remember in the coming years that in the Knesset there are records showing or suggesting that some members of the Israeli parliament propose as to when they will use their new option because Israel developed at least as they say, and there are reasons to believe to some extent, I mean maybe it is in the past, to this weapons capability as a weapon of last resort, this is the way that they identified. A weapon of last resort means you do not necessarily have the ambition or desire to use at will just in order to advance some political goals, but rather to protect your utmost sort of available assets, that is to prevent Israel from total destruction, and if they are going to be destroyed, they will resort to this weapons capability in order to prevent this, or if they cannot prevent it, of course they would like to bring or take others with them towards a destruction. So this weapon of last resort is a weapon that Israelis believe ultimately deters the enemies from attacking them, and indeed the 1973 war was the last major war between Arabs and Israelis. Well there were instances in Lebanon, in other parts, but they cannot compare to 6748 or 73 wars. So therefore maybe it was because of this anticipation or understanding or acknowledgement that Israel had that nuclear weapons capability, even though they do not accept or deny. So during the war, when things were not necessarily bright in military terms for the Israelis, and some parliamentarians are known for making references to their nuclear option, because Israelis do never use the term nuclear weapons. They always stay clear from the term weapon or nuclear weapons in this case. And of course things that have been, that were discussed in the Israeli parliament and in other circles within the state, and maybe in defense ministry, in general staff, foreign ministry, prime minister, whatever, of course they were picked up by the Soviet Union. And remember the Soviet Union was an ally of both Iraq, Syria, and had also advanced relations with Egypt. So when they picked this up, I mean when they sort of get this intelligence that Israel might be going to resort to a nuclear option that is using nuclear weapons against enemies, the Soviets send a message to Israel and warn them not to do so, not even think about it, and otherwise to be ready to suffer the consequences, which would be of course Soviet retaliation to Israel against an possible Israeli nuclear attack on Syria and Egypt. So and of course once this warning is issued by the Soviet Union, the United States could not stay aloof from this, could not stay indifferent because of this close, very, very close relations between Israel and the United States. So what the United States, of course, in case the Soviets react to Israel, then the United States must react to Soviet Union, so that will bring the two superpowers against each other, and that will lead to a confrontation between the two superpowers, meaning maybe total annihilation. So at the nuclear age, I mean in the 70s, well there was the talk of the town, but still relations were not so stable. After all, both sides had tons of tons of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and other type of delivery vehicles in their arsenals. So therefore United States feels the need or compelled to intervene and stop this from happening because they have to stop Israel or prevent Israel from destruction, so that Israel does not feel obliged to resort to nuclear weapons which would trigger the Soviet reaction, which would in turn trigger the US reaction, retaliation. So therefore this is important to bear in mind and Kissinger, who was, of course, who had some diplomatic skills, political skills, still a wise man in many respects, and he just asks from Sadat just to pause a little bit. I mean, yes, how many? You can follow where the US comes in, the picture, during the war, during the Yom Kippur war. And that's what I was just talking, Kissinger intervenes, asks for a couple of days from Egypt to halt to stop the war. The Soviet Union does not feel threatened by Israel, the Soviet Union threatens Israel. I mean, because when the Syrian and Egyptian armies advance to such an extent that Israel feels like they are going to be destroyed in the hands of these two Arab nations, there is this talk within the Israeli cabinet as well as the parliament, of course, in some circles, as to why they keep their nuclear option, because it was, I mean, nuclear weapons of Israel were at least reportedly, I mean, the way they presented to the world, produced to protect ultimate deterrent against its enemies to save Israel from destruction. And during the Yom Kippur war in the first few days, they came pretty close to the destruction in the hands of the two nations. And then people now ask, I mean, if we have this nuclear option, nuclear weapons, when are we going to use them after being destroyed? So why don't we use them against them to stop to their advance or to sort of expel them from the territories of which they so far occupy? They are Arab nations. And when the Soviet Union gets this intelligence that Israel might be willing to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, then issues that warning to Israel that they should not do that. Well, why? Because these are two allies, if not in the very sense that the alliance that we have within NATO, I mean, there was no formal meter pack between Soviet Union and Syria and Egypt, but there were two countries which were close to Soviet Union, which helped the Soviet Union to have a foothold in the region where there were too many Soviet advisors, military advisors, political advisors, and a large number of Soviet military arms, units, etc. So it was in the interest of the Soviet Union not to let Syria or Egypt back down from what they were doing. But they did not want, of course, to destroy Israel most possibly, because that was one reason why maybe they stopped Israel, France, and Britain against Egypt. Well, so these political calculations, and if you are a superpower, you have super interests. So you have to look at the world politics from a different angle, from a wider angle, and therefore the Soviet Union threatened Israel and said, if you resort to your nuclear weapons, then of course you will suffer the consequences because I will be retaliating to you. So because, as I said, Syria in the first place was an ally of the Soviet Union at the time. Is this clear now? All right, thanks. And of course, the Soviet retaliation would trigger U.S. reaction, which would, after all, as a regional issue, would therefore escalate into a global problem, or at least a problem between the two superpowers which had nuclear weapons, and you never know. And remember the crisis of the Cuban Missile Crisis back in October 62. So the United States intervened while during this two days, I guess, of break and helped fortifications, helped with Israelis, a paratroopers were landed some munitions, some other sort of stuff were delivered to the Israelis. Anyway, and a ceasefire was brokered between Arabs and Israelis. And thanks to the efforts of Kissinger and Gromyko, Gromyko was the foreign minister of the Soviet Union at the time. So the consequences, again, I mean, if you like, you can read as many books as you like about the Yom Kippur war, there are many of them around, but what is important for us for the purpose of this course is, again, not only what were the causes, but what were the consequences of the war, the Yom Kippur war. The US intervention was not at all welcomed by the Arab world, especially, for instance, Saudi Arabia held the United States responsible for this result, which actually was something that maybe on the one hand saved Israel from destruction, but also led to a peace between Arabs and Israel. Well, of course, the definition of peace must be made rather clearly as to what you understand from peace, and therefore, not only United States, but also the Netherlands, because it's a close associate in many respects, especially with respect to some overseas operations. The Netherlands has always been the foothold on the continent for the United States. Well, again, it says a large background. I'm not going to go into detail, but what is important is that this Saudi Arabia boycotted oil sales to the United States and Netherlands, and also put restrictions in the amounts that they were producing. So that was actually which eventually led to this increase in four times, five times or so, in a rather short span of time, within a year or so, the oil prices were quadrupled, increased many, many times, and one major consequence of the Yom Kippur War was OPEC emerged as a big power, which had much control on the production of oil. And that was a time when, of course, especially European nations were caught off guard, because in the 70s, I mean, late 60s or the 70s, we still see heavy industries. I mean, in Germany, for instance, in Britain, most of Europe, Western Europe, especially, which, however, were dependent on oil imports from the region, from the Middle East, mainly, not exclusively, but mainly, so the increase in oil prices affected the economies in the West, both in the United States and more so in Europe, because after all, United States, yes, of course, it was badly affected from this increase in oil prices, but United States has its own resources, in oil resources, in Texas, in other places, Alaska, offshore, et cetera, but Western Europe was not at all lucky in that sense, and therefore, the increase in oil prices affected the Western European capitals in terms of economic sort of consequences very much. And this, of course, if you look more into this, we can see, for instance, Britain, United Kingdom, searching for oil and gas reserves, so did Norway, for instance, in high seas, and one consequence of this, or one repercussion of this, was the acceleration of the negotiations in the law of the sea convention, which was being debated for decades without any tangible results, but this issue had to be concluded because these big powers or major countries in the world, in world politics, have figured out that there was too much at stake with respect to the oil reserves in high seas, and therefore, they had to resolve this issue, and one consequence of this was the law of the sea convention. Well, why am I talking about this? And if we talk about Turkish-Greek relations, we may see the implications of that because there is this issue of continental shelf, territorial waters between Turkey and Greece. Well, Greece does not see this as a problem, but still an important issue, which, of course, have to do with the results of the law of the sea convention because the Greek politicians found in themselves the right to extend the territorial waters of Greece from six to 12 miles, as has been mentioned in the text of law of the sea convention, article three, if I'm not mistaken, and this is something that may have far-reaching consequences between Turkey and Greece. Well, not nowadays, the climate is warm and getting warmer, but until recently, maybe even today, when seeing the issue and looked at the issue from the perspective of different institutions, so you see something that happened in the Middle East had far-reaching consequences for Western Europe and for Turkey and for other countries. So therefore, security of these nations or security relations within a certain region may have direct or indirect consequences for your own security. Another important consequence of the Yom Kippur War was the reconformation of the US-Israeli special relationship. Well, this is, of course, something quite obvious. I mean, when Israel felt like they were coming to the brink of destruction in the hands of Arab nations, even though they may have had that option, the nuclear weapons capability that they could deter or save them from being totally destroyed, but would still call for a possible Soviet reaction, but the United States intervened in such a period, in such a time swiftly, without losing time, and then we see the merit and the power of diplomacy. And therefore, I suggest you read Kissinger's book where, I mean, in which he sort of explains in detail, well, to the extent possible how he sort of intervened and why and what kind of sort of steps he took. Of course, another consequence which is important is that a changing course of Egyptian policy toward Israel. And as we will see, that, of course, had in turn consequences for Egypt itself. What we have seen here in the post-Yom Kippur War period after the peace that was brokered between Egypt and Arabs and Israelis, of course, the Kissinger's, I mean, that was a ceasefire, not a peace. I mean, a ceasefire is something different than peace because a ceasefire is an interim measure. It is not the ultimate measure. It is not an ultimate solution. It is, I mean, when there is a kind of stalemate in the war in the skirmishes or fights, and you see none of the parties can advance even an inch, but the conduct of war itself caused nothing but more destruction and, of course, more losses of lives. So you say you put a halt to the situation, you freeze the situation and you say, I mean, there is no need to fight anymore because we cannot advance our neither military objectives nor political objectives. And therefore, let's stop for a while and seek solutions or resolve our differences through political ways and means rather than military ways and means. A ceasefire is an interim solution, which, of course, can be based on certain conditions. And so long as the conditions are observed or are sort of upheld, then the ceasefire continues. But for instance, since 1953, for more than half a century, like 57 years, there is ceasefire in effect in where? Where is this ceasefire since 1953? I gave the date, just you should remember. What happened in 1953? 1953 was in, Suez was in 1956. 1553, this three-year war, somewhere, not in the Middle East, let me give you that much. Korean War, in 1953, there was a ceasefire because the parties have seen that they could not advance their situation, neither military nor politically, from where they were at the moment. And there was a ceasefire stopping the war, putting a halt to war, to fighting. And since then, there is a ceasefire. But of course, what is important to keep in mind with respect to ceasefire is that it's a fragile situation. Sometimes you hear ceasefires in this or that war and maybe in Africa, in South Asia or Pacific elsewhere. But the ceasefire may not even, or Latin America, may not even live for hours because one of the parties might want to take advantage of the situation. But as is the case in the Korean War, the ceasefire still persists. And it is something that depends on the political will of the parties. And it is something that is fragile, vulnerable, open to manipulation. And what if one of the parties feels more stronger than its previous position at a time that may suit to its expectations or when it may think it is more advantageous from its own perspective based on some arguments may end the ceasefire and start firing again. For instance, can you think of any such situation where a ceasefire was said to be coming to an end because of such and such thing and paved the way to another war in more recent times like the 2003 war in Iraq? The U.S. President Bush declared made a statement and in that statement or in some other statements that he made, he made to the ceasefire which I will be talking about in the coming weeks which was brokered between Iraq and the coalition forces and Kuwait, of course, in 1991 in April with the United Nations Resolution 687 in its article 33, it was indicated that it was a ceasefire between Iraq and Kuwait and the coalition force which liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. So that ceasefire lasted from 1991 to 2003 when U.S. President said, well, that's the end of it because Iraq violated the conditions of ceasefire. So it is something that is quite politically as well as militarily vulnerable, fragile and what kind of consequences it may have or implications it may have for the relations between the parties may depend heavily on the political-mitry situation in different periods. So here again, going back to the issue because of the ceasefire, I mean, there was no fighting and Kissinger and the United States wanted to take advantage of the situation that was achieved by the ceasefire and especially they targeted on Egypt and more so on Amar Sadat and he was invited to, and there was this shuttle diplomacy between Cairo and Tel Aviv and Camp David meetings started between Medahem Begin and Amar Sadat of Israel and Egypt and this sort of Camp David meeting brought peace and this time formal peace and formal recognition of Israel by Egypt. So Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed in 1979 which of course established the groundwork for further exploitation of the situation within the Middle East as a framework for peace in the Middle East. Of course, this had again within itself far reaching consequences for both for the region and more specifically for Egypt and one as you could expect, well, Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. The Arab League, remember, was founded in March, 1949 in Cairo. It's headquarters being in Cairo and the homeland of the Arab League expelled Egypt from the Arab League and of course the headquarters were moved from Cairo to Tunis and that might explain the reason why before he passed away and returned to Ramallah, Yasser Arafat spent a number of years in Tunis, in Tunisia, I mean, maybe that was the reason why he chose the place and of course not everybody opened arms and invited Arafat to stay there for a long period. Again, Egypt, the consequence for Egypt was dear, was quite significant because oil-rich countries of the Gulf were subsidizing the war in a sense by providing them either at no cost or at a very cheap price, large amounts of oil and gas. And Egypt is a heavily populated country and not necessarily a rich country in the region which depended on of course the subsidies as well as its workforce abroad because it has large population, not only that there is not enough employment in the country but there is this poverty and therefore a number of our Egyptians have fled their country and gone to different countries to work and send their revenues and which the Egyptian economy depended. But more importantly this was once these subsidies were canceled, Egyptian economy suffered the consequences which paved the way to assassination of Emerson Dada and of course coming to power of Mubarak who was still in power. Well, in the Middle East, Al-Fazil Assad was in power for nearly three decades so this is sometimes people stay in power for a few days, if not hours but sometimes for a few decades. Well, this is one of the characteristics of the Middle East. So, I think we don't have much time to continue. I'll stop here but please wait. I'll meet you on Tuesday next week. In the meantime, go over the readings. You don't have to read every single sentence if you don't have much time, if you do, so fine but at least feminize yourselves with what is in the chapters and come to class having at least gone through this PowerPoint and will speed up and will sort of discuss more contemporary issues in the coming weeks. I hope to see you on Tuesday.