Turkey is home to many ethnic groups, with people who migrated to Turkey from Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania -- who define themselves as “Rumelia-Balkan immigrants” -- the second largest ethnic group after the Kurds. Speaking to Sunday´s Zaman, Rumelia-Balkan Federation President Süheyl Çobanoğlu complained that migrants from Rumelia and Balkan countries are not adequately represented in the Turkish Parliament.

“We make up one third of Turkey’s population, but the number of our representatives in Parliament hardly reaches 25,” he said. According to Çobanoğlu, his federation held frequent contacts with leaders of political parties during the run-up to the June 12 general elections, but candidates representing the Rumelia and Balkan population in Turkey have decreased since 2007. The Rumelia-Balkan Federation brings together around 2,200 associations and foundations in 32 Turkish provinces.

The June general elections are not likely to bring surprising results at all. For most, it is almost certain that the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) will receive the public support necessary to set up a single-party government for a third successive term in office. While the AK Party is expected to receive at least 45 percent of the national vote, its major rival, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), is expected to win around 25 percent of the vote, according to opinion polls carried out by different polling companies. And the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is likely to barely pass the 10 percent election threshold.

Political parties in Turkey are willing to receive the support of ethnic groups and local communities as such support usually means “mass” or “block” votes. When an ethnic group or a local community decides to support a political party usually all of its members vote for the same party, which means thousands of votes at a time. For this reason, political parties usually nominate candidates for the post of deputy from such groups or communities to draw their support in elections.

While some ethnic groups and local communities tend to announce which political party they will support in the elections beforehand, some others prefer not to make such an announcement. Some others announce which political parties they will not lend support to in elections because of their negligence to demands coming from ethnic groups and local communities.

Which ethnic group to support which party?

Kurds to support AK Party, BDP: A majority of the Kurdish population in Turkey is likely to vote for either the AK Party or independent candidates supported by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) on June 12. Fearing that it will fail to pass the election threshold if it enters the elections as a party, the BDP urged its candidates to run as independent candidates in the June polls. If the independent candidates manage to get elected and their number reaches 20 in Parliament, then they will form a parliamentary group on behalf of the BDP.

Kurdish voters seem unlikely to vote for the CHP, the MHP or other political parties in the elections. However, it is still unclear what kind of an impact the election campaign held in largely Kurdish-populated provinces such as Diyarbakır and Hakkari by the CHP will have on voters there. The MHP is scheduled to hold a campaign in Diyarbakır on June 6. The two parties had not traveled to many eastern and southeastern provinces for election rallies for about the 10 past years.

Balkan immigrants likely choose AK Party, CHP: Immigrant groups from Balkan countries mainly supported the MHP in the July 2007 general elections. However, they have decided not to support the MHP in this year’s elections after the MHP nominated Özcan Pehlivanoğlu, the former head of the Rumelia-Balkan Federation, in an area where he is unlikely to get elected. “We are sorry to see that Pehlivanoğlu was nominated for a district in İstanbul from which he has almost no chance to get elected. There is no need to force our members to vote for a candidate [and his party, namely the MHP,] who will not get elected. Our members will vote for any political party and candidate they like freely,” Çobanoğlu stated. Sunday’s Zaman has learned that Balkan immigrants are highly likely to vote for the AK Party and the CHP on June 12.

Western Thracians prefer AK Party, CHP: There is a considerable number of voters among people who migrated to Turkey from Western Thrace in Bursa, İzmit and İzmir. Western Thracians in Bursa and İzmit mainly voted for the AK Party in the last two general elections -- in 2002 and 2007 -- while the ones in İzmir voted for the CHP. They are not expected to change their voting tendencies in the June elections.

AK Party popular among Circassians: The Circassian population living in Turkey is likely to cast “mass votes.” They usually decide to vote for a political party and do so as a mass despite the fact that they may have different opinions or ideologies. The AK Party is popular among most Circassians. The AK Party is stronger than its rivals in Sakarya, Düzce and Kayseri thanks to the support of the Circassian population there. Some Circassian groups that come from a leftist ideology, however, prefer to vote for the CHP in elections. It is estimated that there are 8 million Circassians in Turkey. Three million of them are eligible to vote on June 12.

Majority of Georgians to vote for AK Party: An overwhelming majority of Georgians in Turkey are expected to vote for the AK Party in the June elections. They are mainly living in Artvin, Ordu, Amasya, Sakarya and Bursa. Their population reaches 2 million, according to official data. The AK Party is likely to sweep the majority of votes in those provinces thanks to the support of Georgian voters.

Arabs, Turkmens and Tatars divided in support for political parties: While Arabs in southeastern Turkey mainly support the AK Party in elections, Arabs in Mersin and Hatay are likely to support the CHP on June 12. Iraqi Turkmens are expected to lend support to the AK Party in this month’s general elections, but Turkmens coming from other countries will most likely support the MHP and the AK Party. Tatars, on the other hand, who are mainly based in central Eskişehir province, have traditionally voted for the CHP, and they are expected to do the same on June 12.

In an interview with Sunday´s Zaman in London, Scheuer said: “They are not going to do anything about oil, they are going to support the Israelis no matter what the Israelis do, and we´re going to continue this democracy mongering, crusading for democracy no matter who is in power, whether its Republicans or Democrats, until something happens that hurts the US so badly. I´m old and I guess cynical but I believe that nothing changes in America without a calamity.”

While 9/11 proved to be a turning point in Western social, political, economic and cultural history like no other, the role of Osama bin Laden as an individual in shifting the social balance in Europe and across the Americas has played a similar part. For Scheuer, bin Laden was a very “talented man” and as such, a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, Scheuer devoted much of his career to bin Laden: He served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004; he served as the chief of the Osama bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the formerly anonymous author of “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror” and “Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.” In an exclusive interview with Sunday’s Zaman, Scheuer discusses the very current subject of bin Laden’s death and the subsequent controversy surrounding this episode, the recent Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa and the consequences for US national interests in the region along with an array of other topics.

I understand you are giving a talk at the London School of Economics [LSE] concerning Osama bin Laden’s legacy and the role individuals play in changing the course of history. Bin Laden has certainly altered the perceptions of Muslims and Islam, particularly in the past decade. To what extent can an individual alter the course of history and how?

You alter history by forcing somebody to act in a way they didn’t want to and certainly nobody has influenced American life in society more negatively in the past 30 years than Osama bin Laden. The way Americans think about their government, the way they think about their country’s defensive abilities, the way they think about their neighbors and immigrants. Bin Laden was a history changer as far as the United States is concerned.

What does bin Laden’s death mean for US national security? Is the US safer now that bin Laden is dead or is it more susceptible to terrorist attacks?

I don’t at all want to denigrate the success of killing Osama bin Laden, I think it was very important, he was a very talented man and certainly what they’ve leaked about him showed he was still in command of the organization and it was focused on the United States. However, if you just simply take a map and look at where al-Qaeda was in 9/11, basically Afghanistan, and where they are now -- Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, North Africa, Palestine to some extent and the Levant -- it’s hard for me to understand how people base their arguments that somehow a bigger and more geographically dispersed organization can be weaker. In fact, part of the genius of bin Laden was seeing the dispersal of the organization; he made sure that his death would not be the end of the group.

So you think the death of bin Laden will not affect the strength or motivations of the group?

I think several things but most of all it depends how the succession works, I mean [Ayman] al-Zawahiri is not the most popular man in al-Qaeda. Although the information we have about him is very dated, he’s a very abrasive man who never ceases to remind people that he’s an Egyptian and they’ve been there for 4,000 years. That said, there is a talented group of people to follow bin Laden eventually; Abu Yahya in Libya is a very talented man and well-credentialed as an Islamic scholar, the leader in the Arab Peninsula. Abu Yahya is a very talented man as both a fighter and a politician, so I think it’s a mistake to assume that bin Laden’s death ends the problem. In fact, the recruiting sergeants for al-Qaeda are David Cameron, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy -- that’s the recruiting mechanism for al-Qaeda, because they stick to foreign policies that alienate so much of the Muslim world.

In essence, what has been achieved by the killing of Osama bin Laden?

I think what’s been achieved is substantively the removal of a very talented individual who was focusing his efforts on the United States and a man who articulated, whether we like to agree or not, or whether we agree with al-Qaeda’s military action, he articulated the position of what the polling shows to be 80 percent of the Muslim world. They regard Western foreign policy as an attack on their faith and on their brothers, that doesn’t mean that all of those people are going to pick up guns, but we are in such a state of denial in the West about why we are being attacked that I don’t know how this is going to end up, but I think it can only get worse.

There have been many reports that bin Laden was not armed at the time of his killing; to what extent does the US operation defy the rule of law? Why was bin Laden not given a trial in court like any other criminal, but disposed of as soon as he was found?

Let me say two things: Firstly, I think the operation was really a very professionally done one and I think the aftermath was really botched politically. They can’t get their stories straight to this day. Also, I think it displays a continuing level of ignorance about Islam at the highest levels of our government. They claim that a shrine would have been built for him; his own followers would have torn down any shrine or pilgrimage to his burial site. The Salafis are hell on wheels when it comes to shrines or saints. In Saudi Arabia, they tore down the houses they think the prophet may have been in so as to prevent them from becoming a shrine. So the aftermath was very ill-informed and to bury him at sea is another example of a gratuitous mistake. As I understand, a Muslim is buried at sea only if he dies at sea and there is a health threat, so it was really a very amateurish handling of the aftermath of it. In terms of the operation, obviously the rules of engagement had been changed. Generally, American intelligence and military people have to be shot at before they return fire and my own view is that they preferred not to bring him back.

Why?

I think they were right. We didn’t want him speaking in a courtroom, whether this was a military court, a civil court to the Muslim world, he was going to be convicted no matter what court he was in and he was going to become, in some ways, more of a martyr than he was now. Also, the United States has proven it doesn’t know how to handle prisoners of war. So, had we brought him back to this country or to America, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups on the left would have been arguing for a trial or his release. So, as we are incapable of acting as adults, they decided that was the best thing to do.

Does the discovery of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan affect US-Pakistani relations? Do you think the Pakistani government was complicit in hiding bin Laden and how do you think this affects US-Pakistan relations?

I don’t know if they were, my suspicion was that somebody in the intelligence service or the military knew where he was since 9/11, but I think what you saw in our reaction is the adolescent belief that everyone’s interests are the same as ours. It was never in Pakistan’s national interest to turn over Osama bin Laden to the US or to be responsible for killing him. We couldn’t accept that or we didn’t recognize that it was clear from the start. I don’t blame the Pakistanis, because they have helped us, they now have a civil war in their own country. In the long run, however, all of the criticism of Pakistan is just hot air. The relationship will continue because with 130,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, there is no way to supply them if the Pakistanis do not let us use Karachi Harbor and then truck the material into Afghanistan. In many ways, it’s play acting, it’s for public consumption. The Pakistanis have the weapon. No Karachi, no army. Really, the Pakistanis have the upper hand. We’ve stranded an army in Pakistan and we depend on the Pakistanis to be able to supply it.

The Arab Spring across the Middle East and North Africa has no doubt left a vacuum of power, and there is a growing worry that Islamist groups will try to fill this void. Firstly, do you think this possible and if so, is it necessarily an undesirable outcome?

Without a doubt, for 30 years, Western dominance in the Muslim world depended on the maintenance of tyranny -- for access to oil, to protect the Israelis -- and so the tyrants would clamp down on the Islamists and kill them or incarcerate them. We are now in a really odd position of watching the West cheerlead for the destruction of its policy with nothing else to go to. In common sense or history at least shows that in places where there is chaos, uncertainty, worries or just anarchy, the people with the greatest advantage are people with organization. Whether it’s the Muslim Brotherhood, whether it’s al-Qaeda or al-Nahda in Tunisia, they have organization and so they will have a part to play in the political process. Maybe a large role in some instances, in Egypt, for example, Mr. ElBaradei clearly does not have an organization, he has some supporters, he has some media but he does not have a 50-year-old organization supporting him. Chaos always favors the organized.

If so-called Islamist organizations are placed within government, how does this affect US interests within the region?

It doesn’t necessarily have to affect them negatively, but I think it is unreasonable to believe that those governments would be very close to the United States after our support of Gaddafi or Mubarak or other people. I think the question is, will the governing elite of the United States be willing to work with them, and I have my doubts because they equate Islamist with terrorist and they also say any Islamist government would be bad for Israel and Israel is our hero and bribes our congressmen. I tend to think that an Islamist government in Egypt would be far less brutal, far less fascist than Mubarak. In Saudi Arabia, if Osama bin Laden had come to power, he would have been much less brutal, bloody-minded than the Saudis were. I’ve never been one that was afraid of an Islamist government simply because it was Islamist. It doesn’t have to be your enemy. I think it will take time to be a friend because we are not trusted because of the way our policies have unfolded over the past half century.

Oil is no doubt at the core of the debate. If America was not so reliant on oil reserves from the gulf, would it care for intervention? Or is this simply a matter of interests?

Certainly on the Arab Peninsula there is nothing worth the life of an American marine, except for oil. The American Congress has been negligent to the brink of criminality. They wasted 40 years since the first embargo to do something about our dependence on oil from the Middle East. I think oil is a tremendous problem, and really America is stuck in the Middle East until it does something about oil. Until we become more self-sufficient, we have to do something about the Saudi police state and we will. We will go to war if something happens in Bahrain and the Iranians interfere. The Saudis buy billions of dollars of guns but they can’t defend themselves, we will have to fight the Iranians, which of course in some ways is what the Saudis want and so do the Israelis.

So you believe there is a possibility of an impending war between Iran and the US?

I think it depends on how the Shias are treated in Bahrain. If large numbers are slaughtered because they are demonstrating, I think Iran would have a hard time not coming to the defense of their coreligionists. If they do, the pressure on the United States to defend Bahrain in the interests of oil and not to forget, the Saudis buy a lot of our debt, I think we will go and defend them and then the Israelis will have what they want; this will be a disaster for America.

How would you explain the Obama administration’s foreign policy within the Middle East region today? Is it justifiable to have NATO and an international presence in Libya?

More or less the same. Certainly more aggressive and more dictating than Bush in terms of how Muslims should behave. Maybe for a while a bit less militarily orientated, but I have to think that the region thinks, what interests did the United States have in Libya?

If Muslims were listening to Mr. Obama this week, he sounds more Bush than Bush except he’s better spoken and he’s probably a little smarter. He called for regime change in six countries: Bahrain, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Libya and Iran. If Bush had made that speech and come to London, he would have been stoned but Obama, because he is this nice, bright, young and articulate man, was treated as a conquering hero.

 So the foreign policy of Obama in the region follows on from Bush’s?

There is no difference between the two parties in terms of foreign policy in the Middle East. They are not going to do anything about oil, they are going to support the Israelis no matter what the Israelis do, and we’re going to continue this democracy mongering, crusading for democracy no matter who is in power, whether its Republicans or Democrats, until something happens that hurts the United States so badly that the people at the grassroots level are going to say, “What are you doing?” I’m old and I guess cynical but I believe that nothing changes in America without a calamity. Something disastrous has to happen.

So is there a possibility of a future al-Qaeda attack on the US?

Sure, I think the reason they haven’t attacked is because they have the best of both worlds at the moment. They are not attacking because it would unite the American population but they’re defeating or helping to defeat two American field armies. We are going to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan but the politicians will dress it up as a victory for the American people but in the Muslim world, much of the Muslim world will say this is the second superpower that has been beaten by people who have acquired their weapons from the Korean War, how is this possible? This is going to have a galvanizing effect on the young men of this generation, just as they did when they beat the Soviets in bin Laden’s generation. It’s a very dangerous game and one thing that is never discussed is what will the perceptions of the Muslim world be when we run away from Afghanistan with no victory at all. To some extent, it will mirror what happened after the Soviets left. When you read the work of bin Laden, the one thing he was extraordinarily concerned about was a sense of defeatism in the Muslim world. I think he was surprised that the defeat of the Soviets didn’t do more. I think he clearly wanted us in Afghanistan; firstly, because we would get beaten and run away and secondly, this would be an antidote for the defeatism of the Muslim world or what he perceived as the defeatism of the Muslim world.

There has not been a major attack by al-Qaeda since 9/11, and it seems there is a possibility of one such attack. What is the role of the CIA at this crucial time?

Increasingly now, Obama and Cameron and Western leaders have cheered the destruction of the tyrannies and whether we liked it or not, Egypt, Tunisia, even Gaddafi and certainly [Ali Abdullah] Saleh in Yemen did a lot of counter-terrorism work for us. We had a common interest against bin Laden -- Mubarak, Saleh and the rest of them. It’s interesting as there doesn’t seem to be any reflection by American politicians as to their actions and what they are doing cheering the destruction of these people. I don’t think we should have supported it; we should have been quiet about it because our support for someone like ElBaradei is going to make him untouchable in Egypt. It doesn’t seem that Obama has given him much thought, or [John] McCain for that matter on the Republican side to how much more work is now being piled on the US intelligence community. The role of the agency and MI6 is that they’ve got an enormous amount of new work to do, which they are not very qualified to do. The fall of those dictators has been a disaster for the Western intelligence community.

“Sadly, struggle [for democracy] continues in some countries today. I would like to remind to rulers in Muslim Arab countries the necessity to be realistic, to perceive the world better and see that there is already no place for authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world,” Gül told “January 25 Tahrir Youth” members on Saturday, who are visiting Turkey.

But Gül also suggested that the governments that have not completed freedom in their countries must lead these kinds of revolution and reforms, adding that as long as the governments don’t make reforms, these rulers would resist but it will have no benefit at the end. He recalled bloodshed and causalities in these countries and said these incidents “indeed made us deeply sad.”

The Turkish president said to end this violence as soon as possible, rulers must first respect their own people before all and take steps in line with demands of their own people so that their countries come out of this process stronger.

“Everyone obviously is aware that I am speaking about countries such as Syria, Libya and other similar countries,” Gül stressed.

President Gül said Turkey is closely monitoring developments in Egypt, and Turkish-Egyptian relations will continue to be strong and the two countries will always benefit from each other´s experiences.

"There will be a multi-party system in Egypt from now on, and whoever the nation wants, will rule the country," Gül said.

Gül said all nations had overcome their fears, and had been struggling in order to be ruled by robust and respected administrations.

Moreover, Ibrahim Al Drawi, a representative of Egypt´s Freedom and Justice Party, said his party wanted Turkey and Egypt to cooperate regarding Palestinian dispute and requested that Turkey supported peace efforts among the Palestinians.

The Americans have named their boat “The Audacity of Hope,” lifting the title of a book by US President Barack Obama to make a point, said Leslie Cagan, a political organizer who is the coordinator of the American boat, according to the report published on Thursday by The New York Times.

Cagan told the daily that the American boat is owned by a Greek company and registered in Delaware.

“It will carry letters from Americans to Palestinians, not aid. About a quarter of the passengers are Jewish. Among the crew is a former captain in the Israeli Air Force who refused to fly missions in Gaza,” the report said.

Eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish-American were shot dead in the May 31 raid when Israeli marines stormed the Mavi Marmara, part of an international aid flotilla trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Furkan Doğan, the 19-year-old Turkish-American, killed on board of the Mavi Marmara had duel citizenship.

Meanwhile, US State Department has reiterated its concerns over the new flotilla on Wednesday, with deputy department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, describing the planned flotilla as “irresponsible and provocative.”

“We´ve raised our concerns with the Turkish government as well, and we´ve also met and said publicly as well as privately, meeting with some of these NGOs, about the risk of attempting to break this blockade,” said Toner at a daily press briefing.

“We have made clear through the past year that groups and individuals who seek to break Israel´s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking irresponsible and provocative actions that entail a risk to their safety. I think I´ve talked about this specifically,” he said, adding: “There are established and efficient mechanisms for getting humanitarian assistance through to Gaza.”

As for whether Israel plans to intervene to stop the flotilla in international waters, Toner said, “I´d have to refer you to the Israeli government as to what their actions may be if people attempt to break the blockade.”

In Turkey, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu reiterated on Friday that the government has not encouraged the flotilla organizers. “Turkey cannot order them not to go either,” Davutoğlu, however, underlined, while speaking in an interview with Kanal 24 news channel.

In a related development, Turkish daily newspaper Hürriyet reported on Friday that the US has been preparing to present a proposal to Turkey and will propose organizing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in İstanbul in exchange for stopping the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish-charity owned ship which was apart of a convoy bound for Gaza and was stormed by Israel on May 31, 2010, from sailing again to Gaza as part of the new flotilla.

The report by the mass-selling daily cited unnamed sources in its report posted from Washington.

US Embassy officials, approached by Today´s Zaman on Friday, declined to comment on the report; while Turkish diplomatic sources said that no such offer which links the Middle East peace process with the issue of aid flotilla, and in particular with the Mavi Marmara, had been conveyed to Ankara.

Israeli officials, approached by Today´s Zaman, briefly said they had not heard of such a proposal.