All signs point to Turkey entering the fray

Under almost any other circumstances, the fresh election to Parliament of Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan as MP for the province of Siirt would have been seen as an extremely significant event.

The relatively young (he is 49) Erdogan was in the 1990s the epitome of the successful, clean-living and incorruptible public official when he was mayor of Istanbul. Since he was deposed from office in 1998, Erdogan became a symbol of oppression by the Turkish regime. He was jailed and banned from public life. Nevertheless, and with extraordinary determination, Erdogan led the new party he had formed in August 2001 to power after last November’s historic general election. Soon afterward, the new AKP-dominated Turkish Parliament abrogated all the legal and constitutional measures that stood in the way of Erdogan’s assumption of a parliamentary seat.

As luck would have it, a by-election was called in Siirt, affording Erdogan with a golden opportunity to run for Parliament for the first time ever.

There is no doubt that Erdogan’s election was an extraordinary event both for him personally and for Turkey generally. As s legislator and leader of the ruling party, he can exercise his right to form a government.

Since the last election, he has been exercising the authorities that come with the premiership without being constitutionally empowered to do so. That is why almost everyone in Turkey wanted him to assume the premiership officially, if only to do away with the “duality” that has characterized the AKP government of Abdullah Gul. All decisions made by the Gul Cabinet had to be approved by Erdogan, a situation that fostered mistrust in government performance.

Erdogan’s success in Siirt provided an opportunity to correct that situation. By gaining a seat in Parliament, Erdogan, as leader of the ruling party and prime minister, would be directly accountable before the Turkish legislature, and would occupy a seat on the country’s powerful National Security Council. Because of the close relationship between Gul and Erdogan, and thanks to the competence demonstrated by the former during his tenure as premier, Erdogan appointed Gul foreign minister and deputy premier although there are voices within the AKP who prefer that he take on the portfolios of finance and the economy in order to oversee talks with the IMF, and supervise the privatization program scheduled for later this year.

In the coming phase, Erdogan will try to assert more control on the government and the AKP; the fact that 99 AKP lawmakers rebelled against him by rejecting a government bill calling for stationing US forces on Turkish soil and allowing Turkish forces to be deployed abroad would not have escaped Erdogan. He will most likely take steps to keep his party’s MPs on a shorter leash from now on.

But Turkey’s main preoccupation remains Iraq, despite the fact that it is embarking on a new era domestically. After the surprise and resounding rejection by Parliament of the government bill authorizing the deployment of US forces, and the dispatch of Turkish forces to northern Iraq, contacts accelerated considerably between Ankara and Washington with both sides insisting that the vote would not damage relations between the two allies.

Four days later, however, Turkey’s powerful chief of staff, General Hilmi Ozkok, detonated a bombshell by saying the Turkish Army must cross over into northern Iraq to minimize the damage Turkey would sustain if war breaks out. Turkey, Ozkok said, must not enter into a confrontation with the Americans.

Ozkok’s position came as a great surprise. After all, the Turkish military had indicated (before the government bill was presented to Parliament) that the measure proposed by the government was inappropriate for Turkey’s interests. So what has changed in the meantime? According to Turkish sources, a number of developments have taken place since the parliamentary vote of March 1: l Ankara has become convinced that the Iraqi Kurds with American support are preparing to declare independence or at least a federation in northern Iraq after the war is over. The fact Washington has not been forthcoming on a number of issues Turkey sees as crucial (such as disarming the Kurds) has increased Turkish concerns that the Kurds are being groomed for a central role in the coming war something Ankara is against.

l Washington’s readiness to back the Kurds to the hilt if Turkey balks at helping the American war effort. The Turks are suspicious that the Americans were behind the large anti-Turkey demonstrations that took to the streets of northern Iraq two days before Ozkok made his statement in order to force them to change their minds. l American threats that unless Turkey backs the US, then what the Turks fear (i.e. the establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq) will come to pass.

US Assistant Secretary of State Marc Grossman reiterated his country’s opposition to a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq.

These factors convinced the Turks they would be committing an error if they chose to remain outside the Iraqi equation. The American threats, they figured, were serious. Hence Ozkok’s statement, and Erdogan’s assertion that Turkey will find itself in an extremely precarious position economically, politically and militarily if it continued to refuse American requests for help.

And sure enough, the Americans did not wait for a new resolution. Their ships, already moored off the Turkish Mediterranean port of Iskenderun, began to disgorge their cargoes of vehicles and soldiers who were soon on their way to northern Iraq.

The question now is not how and when the government will present a new bill to Parliament, but how it is going to convince MPs to back such a bill. According to one Turkish minister, the mere act of presenting a new bill will ensure Parliament’s approval; otherwise the government would not take such a step.

Speaker Bulent Arinc, one of the most vehement opponents of the first bill, meanwhile described Ozkok’s statement as “marvelous.”

Mohammad Noureddine is a Beirut-based expert on Turkish affairs. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

It seems a little too late, if our imagined time-table is correct. Unless they have really already moved our stuff up to the frontier, and our people are already on their way in. I would have said that, from the day they were given the green light at the docks, they would need a week to get ready and into place, preferably two weeks. And it sounds like things are going to pop much sooner than that.

What do you think?

"Ankara has become convinced that the Iraqi Kurds - with American support - are preparing to declare independence - or at least a federation - in northern Iraq after the war is over. The fact Washington has not been forthcoming on a number of issues Turkey sees as crucial (such as disarming the Kurds) has increased Turkish concerns that the Kurds are being groomed for a central role in the coming war - something Ankara is against. "

Basically, as they are organized now, the Kurds are an infighting bunch of murderous Marxist-Leninist buffoons. Arming them, as seems to be Washington's Kurdish Policy of the Moment, is an extremely ill conceived idea which has repercussions which no sane person wishes to consider. Unfortunately, those who wish to arm the Kurds have no real concern for the problem other than momentary expediency.

Click here for why this is so: Kurds and Kurdistans

Arming the Kurds, as they are now organized, is extremely bad for Turkey, and so is a threat to NATO, a threat to the USA, and, obviously, the New Iraq, which is still yet-to-be.

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