Georgia Today<\/p>\n
Dec 23 2010<\/p>\n
Armenian and Russian sources have seized on American embassy cables
\npublished by WikiLeaks which claim that Turkish armed forces were
\nready to occupy Adjara during the war of August 2008 in the event of
\nRussian troops coming 100 km from the Georgian-Turkish border.<\/p>\n
The leaked information suggests that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep
\nErdogan and members of the Turkish parliament flew to Moscow to inform
\nRussia’s President Dimitri Medvedev that Turkey, as a NATO member
\ncountry would have the right to bring military units to the conflict
\nzone in order to protect the territory of the neighboring country.<\/p>\n
In such a scenario, the cables claim, Turkey would have sent its
\nground units into Adjara supported by air power. There is in fact a
\nprecedent for the scenario, as in 1921 when the Red Army conquered
\nGeorgia, Turkey’s military units moved in to occupy Adjara.<\/p>\n
Is this all true?<\/p>\n
The cables claim that on March 3, 2009 the Georgian Interior Minister,
\nVano Merabishvili told Georgian journalists that if during the
\nRussian-Georgian war, the government had not been able to ensure the
\ncountry’s security, Turkey was ready to bring its armed forces in
\nthrough Adjara to protect Georgia.<\/p>\n
According to the Kars agreement, signed by Russia after the occupation
\nof Georgia in 1921, Turkey has the right under international law to
\nbring troops into the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, but it is hard
\nto believe that an armed conflict could take place between NATO-member
\nTurkey and Russia over the territory.<\/p>\n
There are several reasons for doubting that the sides would ever have
\ncome to blows: First – the Turkey would not have been able to act in
\nthe name of NATO without the consent of every NATO member state.<\/p>\n
Second – Turkey could bring troops to Adjara but not as a NATO-member
\nstate, it would only have been possible to use the Kars agreement to
\njustify a military presence in the territory, not actual conflict.<\/p>\n
Third – Ankara would have done its best not to allow military
\nconfrontation between the Turkish and Russian military units to occur
\nas such an event would cause a serious international incident.<\/p>\n
On the morning of August 11, 2008, Russian jets bombed a Georgian
\nmilitary base in Khelvachauri, Adjara as well as Sharabidzes,
\nKapandichi and Makho, villages 10 km from the Georgian-Turkish border.<\/p>\n
Russian planes flew well within the exclusion zone near the
\nGeorgian-Turkish border but no response was seen from Ankara.<\/p>\n
During the August war, a Russian commando unit entered Poti
\nand bombed several sites in the port town. One month later, a
\nRussian control-checkpoint was still located at the entrance to
\nPoti. Even though these actions took place less than 100 km from
\nthe Georgian-Turkish border (70 km), there was no serious military
\nreaction from the side of the Turkish government.<\/p>\n
These factors certainly shed doubt on the truth of the reports being
\ncirculated in the Russian and Armenian media.<\/p>\n
It cannot be ruled out that agencies of certain countries may be
\ntrying to use the WikiLeaks data to spread misinformation as it is
\nquite difficult to check the validity of the information in the vast
\nhoard of data that can be found on the website<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Georgia Today Dec 23 2010 Armenian and Russian sources have seized on American embassy cables published by WikiLeaks which claim that Turkish armed forces were ready to occupy Adjara during the war of August 2008 in the event of Russian troops coming 100 km from the Georgian-Turkish border. The leaked information suggests that Turkey’s Prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":56333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}