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Ukraine today is a country with rampant nationalism, and yet Ukrainian nationalists promise the
birth of someone else's nationalism on what they consider part of their lawful territory. We
know history pretty well and we realize that two nationalisms will never get on together within
the same country. It is for this reason that no Crimean Tatar national autonomous territory was
ever set up in such a free and democratic Ukraine. There were discussions about that at the dawn
of Ukrainian statehood, but then it came home to even romantic nationalists that there couldn't
be two nationalisms within the same country, and so the idea of a Crimean Tatar national terri-
torial autonomy was driveled off the agenda.
All ethnic conflicts that have taken place in Crimea were brought in from without, which is what
the Mejlis is trying to do right now. The Mejlis is designing such conflicts in a bid to build some
political capital for itself, and that explains measures such as the blockade of Crimea and plans
such as organizing a Muslim battalion.
KerimHas
,
expert on European politics at the International
Strategic Research Organization (Turkey):
The Middle East
has once again come to play a key role in a big game
between world powers. Today's game is a clash in
which regional and extraregional forces are involved.
The Russian air operation in Syria has made clear to
the world community that Russia is determined to be
directly involved in the current processes and has en-
abled Moscow to assert its large-scale plans not only
by aerial but also by maritime means.
Naval strategy, as we know, is an inalienable part of national security. It is critical to the military
policy of maritime powers, which obviously include Russia. Russia's escalation of its military
presence within and outside its territorial waters represents a normal world-power policy of
seeking control of principal sea routes. Russia obviously won't stay on the sidelines, and so it
finds ways of fortifying its water frontiers and asserting its power outside them.
The reunification of Crimea with Russia has led to a further buildup of Russian naval power in
the Black Sea and to the modernization of Russian naval bases in Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, and
Feodosiya. Recent Russian-Armenian military exercises at the Alagyaz training center in the Ar-
menian mountains and the integration of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into extensive military
cooperation make clear that the South Caucasus is becoming one of Russia's footholds in im-
plementing its foreign policy strategy and would give the country access to vital sea routes.
Naturally, Black Sea countries that are members of NATO - Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey -
react to greater Russian military presence, and this raises the risk that extraregional forces, pri-
marily the United States, will become more active near Russian borders.
Washington has sent out a clear signal by opening a new base in Batumi and by the biggest-ever
American-Ukrainian naval exercise, Sea Breeze. But it is just as obvious that Russia needs more
resources to take part in controlling energy transportation routes in the eastern Mediterranean,
namely off the coasts of Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey, and that explains why Russia wants
to set up new bases in Syria, something that the Russian general Andrei Kartapolov spoke about
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