Posted on 03/18/2003 11:19:45 PM PST by pkpjamestown
What might have sounded like the joke of a century only a year ago, is today a probability, albeit a distant one: an armed conflict between Turkey and the United States - in northern Iraq.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be keeping his pre-election promises one by one. He promised a new morning for the most unfortunate Turks at a time when dozens of Ahmets and Mustafas were either burning themselves in front of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's offices, or throwing cash tills at the building, or driving fuel trucks to block Mr Ecevit's road in protest of their plight. Today, dozens of Mehmets and Huseyins are doing so. Quite a dramatic change.
Ajay Chhibber, the World Bank representative, has every reason to call Mr Erdogan's governance "anti-poor," although, a few days after Mr Chhibber lost his patience for the first time during his stay in Ankara, the Treasury and the Bank seemed to have reached an agreement to increase direct income support to farmers struggling under agricultural reform. There is every indication that more difficult days are ahead for all the poor chaps who voted for the savior who is now the prime minister of Turkey. All the same, there are better reasons to worry.
These days, Turkey's leaders look like a weary football team playing extra times but is too reluctant to score a goal an impatient audience has been expecting from them. The referee might have already blown his final whistle by the time they send the ball into the net.
When the extra time was about to run out last week, a relaxed Mr Erdogan took his time, worked on the new cabinet for several days and left his predecessor's team of ministers almost unchanged. He must have brought the Americans in Washington and in Ankara to the verge of a nervous breakdown.
There have been all sorts of pressure. Poor Robert Pearson, the American Ambassador to Ankara, he spends more time in the corridors of grey office buildings in town than at his office. Neither a letter from President George W. Bush, nor a tense telephone call from Vice- President Dick Cheney has worked. The man who in 1980 was a leading figure in pro-Islam demonstrations has remained indifferent.
As if he was joking with an American administration already more than frustrated, Mr Erdogan said his government will not consider a second vote for U.S. troop deployments and/or for the use of Turkish airspace before it wins a vote of confidence next weekend. By then the Americans may already have launched strikes against Iraq. If Mr Erdogan does not change his often changing mind and decide to go for a vote this week, hope for an agreement on military cooperation has faded entirely.
Mr Erdogan is not dragging his foot to win the "Bravest Leader of the Third World Award." Nor is he doing so because he cares about the sentiments of his party's Islamist/conservative grassroots. He is not challenging the secularist military either. Until last week his intransigence was part of a concerted action involving the military establishment which is increasingly suspicious of American plans for post-Saddam Iraq. But it no longer is. The real issue is, once again, the Kurds.
Meanwhile in Washington, there is every sign that friends may soon become foes. The troop deployment resolution is now a lower priority for American war planners than the absolutely essential priority of winning the Turks' nod for the use of their airspace to be able to launch the first phase of the war involving heavy bombing of Iraq. Having to switch into a possible "Plan B," the Pentagon is moving about 10 Navy ships out of the Mediterranean to the Red Sea where they could launch missiles on a path to Iraq that would not go over Turkey.
It was no surprise for anyone when Washington has also withdrawn its offer to provide a multibillion dollar financial assistance package vital to shielding Turkey against the economic impact of war. Now that the Turkish vote is off the table, the American aid, linked to a certain time frame, is also off the table.
Throughout the entire episode, the Americans have handled the Turks very badly. There are very realistic reasons in Ankara for refusing to stand by Turkey's only western ally for the first time since 1974. What might have sounded like the joke of a century only a year ago, is today a probability, albeit a distant one: an armed conflict between Turkey and the United States - in northern Iraq.
Scores of Turkish tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers stand ready just a few kilometers from the Iraqi border while Kurdish forces have begun digging trenches across the frontier, this time, to resist the Turks and not their bitter enemy Saddam Hussein. In a preemptive move to kill any aspiration that might in the long-run resume Kurdish violence on Turkish soil, the Turkish army, the second biggest in NATO, has already set up stations in the region. Painted rocks on the hillside above a disused runway announce in Turkish: "We are always ready."
One would doubt, however, whether they should be ready too when the Americans tell them to leave or suffer the consequences. Who could have foreseen only a few months earlier the possibility of American warplanes bombing Turkish military units?
Because we will not have a military conflict with Turkey, and there's nothing much else we could do to stop them..
You think wrong; I guarantee that. We will not.
We will have no choice.
Yes, we will. Just wait & see...
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