Will the Nobel Peace Prize come to Turkey?

The New York Times published an article this week lauding President Erdogan’s role in the Russia-Ukraine war.

In the same article, it was emphasized that French President Macron had contacted Putin for months but could not achieve any success.

This article is important for two reasons. First of all, the New York Times made eulogies about Turkey after many years. Secondly, the response of the grain deal in the Western media and public opinion was more than we thought.

Another unexpected development was the Greek Prime Minister’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where he praised Turkey for the grain agreement alongside his classical anti-Turkey sentences.

Meeting at Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Istanbul Dolmabahçe Summit, grain agreement, prisoner exchange…

Turkey has been involved in all the positive steps taken between Kyiv and Moscow since the Russia-Ukraine war.

It has already become clear that Turkey will certainly be the host and problem solver in a ceasefire to be signed and a peace agreement to be reached between the two countries.

Well, would stopping this war bring Turkey and President Erdogan the Nobel Peace Prize?

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In 1934, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Greek Prime Minister Venizelos, who came to invade our country and fought for years and dumped it into the sea in 1922.

We have been rightly proud of this nomination for years, but it did not even cross our minds to look at who was given the award that year and for what reason.

In 1934, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to British politician Arthur Henderson, who was President of the Conference on Disarmament.

The Disarmament Conference was an unsuccessful attempt, Germany had already withdrawn from the conference in 1933, and in fact, the pace towards World War II had accelerated. While this unsuccessful effort was rewarded, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the only Muslim-populated democracy in the world, respected even by his defeated enemy, was not given an award. At that time, the Mosul problem with England was resolved, and the Hatay problem with France had not yet started.

Despite all this, the Nobel Jury made a political choice and did not award an award to Turkey’s President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whom the West had little interest in except exploiting and occupying.

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There will definitely be people who say that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is a former soldier who has fought in dozens of fronts, so the Peace Prize has not been given.

In 1994, three people were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Peace Treaty.

One of them was Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Arafat’s leadership of Fatah and his involvement in the armed struggle led to discussions that “No Nobel Peace Prize cannot be awarded to someone who has fought in the armed struggle in the past”, and Norwegian Kare Kristiansen, one of the members of the Selection Committee, resigned from his post.

This discussion is important because the other two names who received the Nobel Peace Prize along with Arafat were Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

The fact that Yitzhak Rabin was a member of a paramilitary organization called the Haganah, and his command in the area where the most violent clashes took place in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was never discussed. Just like Shimon Peres’ career started in the organization called Haganah, he was the head of Israel’s armament or he was the one who founded the Dimona nuclear reactor.

In other words, the hope of a peace agreement of the names who had fought each other in the past and took up arms was deemed worthy of the award.

The fact that only Arafat was discussed is a shame on the part of the Nobel Committee.

What we need to see is that although the peace agreement reached by Turkey and Greece at that time yielded much more positive results, they could not give an award to Atatürk.

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The architect of the bloody Pinochet coup in Chile, the man who bled South America, the decision maker of the bombing of Cambodia, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize nine months after he was elected President, with a decision that surprised even himself, before he did anything else. Aung San Suu Kyi, who sent death squads against Rohingya Muslims today, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for fighting the coup administration in Mayanmar.

Other names can be added to this table. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the award in 2019, sent the army to the Tigray region. Thousands of people were killed there.

In this absurd and distorted picture, a Turkish diplomat received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the institution he headed.

Our experienced diplomat Ahmet Üzümcü was the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors chemical weapons in Syria in 2013.

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When the Russia-Ukraine war ends with Turkey’s hosting and mediation, President Erdogan’s role will rekindle the Nobel Peace Prize debate.

Even issues like the grain deal and the prisoner swap are topics that should consider those who gave the award to Obama before he even warmed up, but they won’t do in 2022 what they didn’t do in 1934.

In fact, this situation does not matter in the least. What I said above was just a need to remind people that being in the “West does what’s right” look can embarrass people.

A possible Russian-Ukrainian peace will be important for the West, not because people stop dying, but because electricity prices in Europe will fall and the Russian market will reopen.

His struggle on this issue will also give Turkey a serious prestige in the Western media and public opinion.

Do we need this, yes there is more of it right now.

photo of the week

Will the Nobel Peace Prize come to Turkey?

Pilot whales normally travel in groups of 50-100 whales. The 235 whales that washed ashore in Tasmania surprised everyone. It is not yet known whether they committed suicide or if a reverse current drove them ashore. It will not be easy to find the answer to the question, as they follow the pack leader as a species. Unfortunately, the efforts of the people in this photo taken on the shore of Macquarie Heads were not enough. Most of the whales died.

Will the Nobel Peace Prize come to Turkey?

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