All Policy Analysis by Orhan Babaoglu

The Black Sea Naval Cooperation Task Group (BLACKSEAFOR), a regional maritime security initiative started by Turkey in 2001, was activated August 14-27. With world attention devoted to Iraq and the Middle East, important developments in the nearby Black Sea region involving energy politics, frozen conflicts, and new regional security initiatives

Last week, between January 9 and 13, surface units from the American, Turkish, and Israeli navies conducted Reliant Mermaid, a biannual humanitarian assistance exercise in the eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, a massive and real humanitarian assistance operation is being conducted mainly by the U.S. Navy to rush aid

On November 23, 2004, Gen. James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, praised Operation Active Endeavour (OAE) for its role on the war on terror. OAE is NATO's post-September 11 answer to the question of naval security in the Mediterranean Sea. With the threat of terrorism on the open