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America and Turkey: A friendship on hold
The Economist ^ | March 27, 2003

Posted on 03/27/2003 5:25:20 PM PST by sarcasm

America and Turkey

A friendship on hold

Mar 27th 2003 | ANKARA
From The Economist print edition


AP
AP


Turkey's promises were always too hard to keep

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AS AMERICA and Britain keep up their war against Iraq, the finger of blame is turning towards one country for the higher risks being run by the coalition forces. By denying thousands of American troops the use of Turkish soil as a launching pad for a second northern front, Turkey stands accused of throwing Pentagon war plans into disarray and, with them, more than 50 years of strategic partnership with the United States.

“In tatters”, is how Morton Abramowitz, the American ambassador to Ankara during the 1991 Gulf war, described the strategic partnership between America and Turkey in a recent editorial. “The Turks were until last week Saddam's allies, now they are just about neutral,” says another American official, referring to Turkey's belated decision, after much wrangling, to allow coalition planes to use Turkish airspace in raids against Iraqi targets. Much of the blame is being piled on Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AK): a party new to power, whose lack of experience, critics feel, has done much to cause the current mess.

When America's deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, first sought Turkey's help in a war in December, he came away saying he had “very strong” support from all levels of government. In exchange for economic aid ($4 billion, later haggled to $6 billion), Turkey would allow as many as 90,000 American soldiers on its territory and the upgrading of at least ten air bases and two ports.

A still-secret memorandum of understanding, signed on February 8th, apparently allowed the Americans to set up at least nine logistic bases in the country's predominantly Kurdish south-east provinces. American warships, loaded with combat materiel, began docking at Turkey's south-eastern port of Iskenderun. But on March 1st the Turkish parliament refused, by three votes, to approve the troop deployment. Tayyip Erdogan, the AK leader, had underestimated the strength of opposition among his own deputies. So, too, had the country's generals.

The Americans were infuriated. Surely, they argued, had Mr Erdogan and the generals really wanted it, the bill would have passed. Maybe so; but other factors contributed to the parliament's reluctance. The Americans seemed to be asking Turkey to help with a war George Bush had not yet publicly declared he would wage, while much of the rest of the world was still scrambling to find a peaceful way out.

Besides, Turkey's and America's interests have never been so directly in conflict. The Turkish army has long feared that the removal of Saddam Hussein could encourage the Kurds of northern Iraq to declare independence, which is why they wanted to send thousands of their own troops into the Kurdish enclave to prevent this from happening. The Bush administration's natural refusal to provide written guarantees that it did not support Kurdish independence only deepened Turkish suspicions that the Americans had a secret agenda in northern Iraq, though this was, and is, unlikely. For the government, bloodying its hands in a war against fellow Muslims without UN sanction would have angered not only its many openly pious constituents but millions of other Turks who had helped it to power.

Above all, the presence of thousands of American troops in the country's troublesome Kurdish provinces was simply intolerable. Why then, did Turkey lure the Americans along? For that, both the generals and the government share blame. They should have told the Americans from the start that the best they could do was open their airspace, which is what they ended up doing, and no more than that. Allied war planners would have saved much time and, yes, perhaps British and American lives. In the event, AK leaders, and the then prime minister, Abdullah Gul, may have presumed that a northern front was indispensable to the Americans and that, by dragging their feet, they could avert war. Turkey's former foreign minister, Yasar Yakis, admitted last week that Turkey never believed that the Americans had a fallback position.

To make matters worse, when America's secretary of state, Colin Powell, at last let it be known that his government now wanted nothing more than overflight rights, to which the Turkish parliament agreed on March 20th, the government denied the Americans use of Turkish airspace, saying it wanted them to agree to the deployment of thousands of Turkish troops in northern Iraq. The Americans wisely said no, chiefly because their Kurdish allies have threatened to fight the Turks should they come in large numbers, and the government backed down.

Turkey's businessmen, who had been heavily counting on American aid, are in shock, as is the Istanbul stockmarket. The mainstream press, strongly in favour of support for the Americans, complained that the government had now achieved Turkey's complete isolation.

So is this the end of a steady friendship between Turkey and its most important ally? It cannot be, since, thanks to its geography, the country remains a strategic pivot. It is NATO's only Muslim member, a strong friend of Israel and, for all its flaws, a western-style democracy. It was no accident that President Bush this week sought congressional approval for $1 billion of aid for Turkey, which it can use to acquire loans of $8 billion or more. And on March 26th Turkey's chief of the general staff, Hilmi Ozkok, announced that he wanted Turkish troops to enter northern Iraq only in full co-ordination with the Americans. The Turks, said one American official, “still have a chance to prove that they remain our friends.”


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1 posted on 03/27/2003 5:25:20 PM PST by sarcasm
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To: sarcasm
The friendship is not on hold. It is OVER.
2 posted on 03/27/2003 5:27:57 PM PST by EternalHope (Chirac is funny, France is a joke.)
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To: EternalHope
On permanent hold? ;)
3 posted on 03/27/2003 5:31:07 PM PST by AntiGuv (™)
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To: EternalHope
The friendship is not on hold. It is OVER. ""

Yeah, we all feel the same way. But then you have to face reality.
4 posted on 03/27/2003 5:32:53 PM PST by Paraclete
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To: Paraclete
But then you have to face reality.

D'oh! Don't you hate it when that happens?

5 posted on 03/27/2003 5:34:09 PM PST by AntiGuv (™)
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To: sarcasm; a_Turk
The Turkish army has long feared that the removal of Saddam Hussein could encourage the Kurds of northern Iraq to declare independence

And that's effin' inexcusable.  To actively work against independence for others because it may create asperations among your own people is disgusting.  

6 posted on 03/27/2003 5:35:54 PM PST by gcruse (If they truly are God's laws, he can enforce them himself.)
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To: sarcasm
Going, going, gone! And Turkey goes . . . to the highest bidder!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/877291/posts
7 posted on 03/27/2003 5:36:00 PM PST by SheRebel
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To: sarcasm
The PERFECT solution to our little tiff with Turkey:

After we have liberated Iraq, let's take the northern quarter of it, and form an independent Kurdistan.

That'd fix 'em.
8 posted on 03/27/2003 5:52:42 PM PST by Illbay (Don't believe every tagline you read - including this one)
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To: gcruse
It's more than just "working against independence for others." It's allowing a brutal dictator to live and breathe for that purpose.

Kurds have DIED by the tens of thousands at the hands of Saddam.
9 posted on 03/27/2003 5:53:40 PM PST by Illbay (Don't believe every tagline you read - including this one)
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To: Illbay
I have Turkish and Armenian friends. You may know the tension that can produce. My scale of respect is sliding away from Turkey at a pretty good clip.
10 posted on 03/27/2003 5:56:02 PM PST by gcruse (If they truly are God's laws, he can enforce them himself.)
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11 posted on 03/27/2003 5:56:27 PM PST by AnnaZ
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To: gcruse
My opinion is shaped by two things: (1) Turkey caved (apparently) to France and Germany in their decision to withhold permission for our troops, and as a result the war is being extended, with our people in harm's way that much longer; and (2) The Kurds are far more deserving of a homeland than the Palestinians, for example, and we support Palestinian statehood.

Therefore, since we can make it happen, I hope we will allow the Kurds to form an independent Kurdistan.

Let the Turks stew in that.
12 posted on 03/27/2003 6:11:52 PM PST by Illbay (Don't believe every tagline you read - including this one)
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To: sarcasm
Notice that general Ozkok put the full stop on the whole foreign policy cluck cluck by stating:

"I have difficulty in understanding how those who see dangers from overseas do not find Turkey convincing when it says that the same danger is just across its border. If things get out of control one day, I hope our friends will not have to ask us to do what they oppose now."
13 posted on 03/27/2003 6:12:35 PM PST by a_Turk (After all the jacks are in their boxes, and the clowns have all gone to bed..)
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To: gcruse; Shermy; aristotleman; prairiebreeze; RCW2001; Dog Gone; alethia; AM2000; ARCADIA; ...
>> To actively work against independence for others because it may create asperations among your own people is disgusting.

Free Hawaii.. Free the Apache, the Siu..

Free the Basque.. The Irish..

Sniff..

The pipes that run below ground to serve our comfort are indeed disgusting..

Alas, this fact is part and parcel, an inescapable part, of the manifold "blessings" and comforts we enjoy..
14 posted on 03/27/2003 6:19:24 PM PST by a_Turk (After all the jacks are in their boxes, and the clowns have all gone to bed..)
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To: a_Turk
The Turkish army's desire to move into Iraq has nothing whatever to do with ending Saddam Hussein's bloody reign in Baghdad, so the general's comment has no relevance whatsoever to the current tiff with the US.

Turkey wanted to frustrate the US-UK desire to topple Saddam, and then wanted to add to the chaos by moving into Turkey to crush the Kurds and who knows even seizing the oil fields, both against the wishes of the coalition. So far they have held off, mainly because they evidently do not want a complete and irrevocable rift with the US and because they would not relish having to force Tommy Franks to send US troops up north with the express mission of repulsing the Turks.

I have said before and I will say again: The Turks have damaged us Militarily in the Iraq war even more than the French have damaged us diplomatically, and that is saying quite a lot.

15 posted on 03/27/2003 6:31:56 PM PST by UncleSamUSA (the land of the free and the home of the brave)
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To: a_Turk
Free Hawaii.. Free the Apache, the Siu..
Free the Basque.. The Irish..


We don't deny Mindinao freedom because Hawaiins might object.
We don't support a dictatorship in Spain to keep the Basques in line.
The Republic of Eire exists, haven't you noticed?  It isn't suppressed
to keep Northern Irish from demanding nationhood.   We do not
deny freedom to others for fear of what our own people might do.

I've given you the benefit of the doubt for the last time, A-Turk.  This
last response from you justifying the suppression of Iraqi kurds is
beyond the pale.
16 posted on 03/27/2003 6:36:38 PM PST by gcruse (If they truly are God's laws, he can enforce them himself.)
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To: Illbay
I am in complete agreement with you.
17 posted on 03/27/2003 6:37:22 PM PST by gcruse (If they truly are God's laws, he can enforce them himself.)
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To: UncleSamUSA; a_Turk
So far they have held off, mainly because they evidently do not want a complete and irrevocable rift with the US and because they would not relish having to force Tommy Franks to send US troops up north with the express mission of repulsing the Turks.

No, it wouldn't appear to have any great relation to either of those factors. If Turkey wished to prevent a rift with the U.S., then they would've approved the deployment to begin with. As for the second point, there's no chance we'd have a military conflict with Turkey under any foreseeable circumstance (including their incursion into northern Iraq) and so that's irrelevant.

It's the European Union tying future accession talks & monetary assistance to the Turkish military staying out of the Kurdish zones that has so far circumvented their clear desires.

18 posted on 03/27/2003 6:39:15 PM PST by AntiGuv (™)
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To: EternalHope
I wouldn't trust the perfidious turks again and would encourage a new Kurd republic on their flank. They deserve a come-down in the 21st century to match the several they have had since the old times when christian constantinople ruled the ancient world, or pagan constantinople cum istanbul ruled the desert. Lead, follow or get out of the way, Turkeys.
19 posted on 03/27/2003 6:46:18 PM PST by mathurine
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To: AntiGuv
>> the European Union tying future accession talks & monetary assistance to the Turkish military

The EU is working hard to castrate the Turkish military.. And we know it..
20 posted on 03/27/2003 6:51:24 PM PST by a_Turk (After all the jacks are in their boxes, and the clowns have all gone to bed..)
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