Posted on 03/09/2003 10:15:15 AM PST by knak
ISTANBUL, March 9 (AFP) - 12:11 GMT - US troops and military equipment continued to deploy through Turkey Sunday en route to its southeastern border with Iraq, triggering accusations that Washington was going beyond the bounds of approved activity to prepare for war with Baghdad.
Two convoys containing US military vehicles and materiel were spotted early Sunday leaving the Iskenderun port on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, Anatolia news agency reported.
A roll-on roll-off ship docked in the port overnight, and television channels broadcast images of its unloading under the cover of nightfall.
"The images that we see on television are extremely disturbing," Turkey's parliament speaker, Bulent Arinc, told the Sunday papers, referring to prior footage of US military moves in the country, whose parliament refused on March 1 to authorize US troop deployments.
"It makes me bristle," he said, calling the activity "de facto" deployment.
Observers have called the accelerated activity a sign of rising expectations that the Turkish parliament will make a second -- and this time successful -- attempt to pass a government motion allowing 62,000 US combat forces to deploy on Turkish soil, in anticipation of opening a northern front against Iraq.
This week, in a significant move, the powerful Turkish army threw its weight behind the US deployment, saying Ankara would otherwise lose both vital US financial aid and any say in shaping post-war Iraq.
Iskenderun is the main sea port from which the United States has been bringing in equipment since early February, when the parliament allowed US personnel to upgrade several Turkish air bases and sea ports ahead of a possible war.
Arinc, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), told fellow lawmakers that if, like him, they had "worries" about the movements, they should implement parliamentary "mechanisms of control".
Dogu Perincek, head of the small Labour party (IP) which has no lawmakers in parliament, sent a letter Sunday to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer denouncing the presence of the US military in Turkey, calling it "the beginning of the end of the Turkish state", according to Anatolia.
But the United States, armed with signs of increased support from AKP lawmakers and the key backing from the army, has intensified its military preparations as war with Iraq looms ever larger.
On Friday a convoy of 300 trucks left Iskenderun for Mardin in the southeast, less than 200 kilometers (120 miles) off Iraq's border, where US forces will reportedly set up logistical headquarters if its deployment plans are formally approved.
A spokesman for the US embassy in Ankara denied the convoy was bound for war preparations, telling AFP it was "not combat troops but personnel and military equipment deployed in conformity with the Turkish parliament's decision."
Cumhuriyet newspaper reported Sunday that 700 US soldiers had tried to leave the customs zone of the Iskenderun port a day earlier but had been disarmed and turned back by the Turkish army.
Materiel being unloaded at Iskenderun included military trucks, ambulances, earth-moving machines, containers and mobile bridge parts, NTV television reported.
"The US is keeping up its preparations as if the second vote is guaranteed," Milliyet daily wrote Friday.
The Turkish military build-up also continued in the border region.
Roughly 500 military vehicles -- part of Turkey's largest convoy to be deployed since the 1991 Gulf War -- were stationed near the border town of Habur, and Radikal newspaper reported they would move across the Iraqi border within days.
Access within 15 kilometers of Habur was off-limits to all but military personnel, however, and the vehicles' movements could not be verified.
Yeah, right.
If we don't make use of their assistance now, then we might have to fight them later. The Turks would be expected to make a move on Kurdish territory if the US did not maintain some troops in the area.
I am out of here for several hours!
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