In an act of self emasculation the Turkish government rejected the US offer.
Were there strings attatched? Yes.Turkish forces were to assist after the war.
Did the Turkish government play the USA for suckers? Yes.The final demand for access to Turkish ports and roads to North Iraq was $25 Billion.
Did the Turkish leadership make promises they could not keep? Yes.Jacking up the pot in 5 card poker with only a pair of deuces, they promised access and then turned away the 4th ID.
Are Turkish bases required by the US? No. New bases are on stream in Iraq and in Georgia.
Were the Turkish government concerned about the prospects of a Kurdish Free State? Hell,Yes.Now the Turkish government has to sit and wait. When an 11 man Turkish Special Forces assassination team crossed into Kirkuk, US Green Berets sent them home.
The Turkish government had a chance to back the US. They chose not to....how sad! Now all that Turkey has in its future is bowing its knee to the EU.
Still, they make good Gastarbeiters in Germany! Cancel the terms, wily,unscrupulous, and untrustworthy and replace them with perfidious,ignorant, and high pitched.
Let's ignore the fact that those Turks had been there long before we were and had been keeping tabs on Kurdish terrorists. I wish that they in fact had been an assassination team, but the fact is that they weren't. The fact is that ignorant and idiotic actions like the hog-tying and blindfolding of these allied troops, and even more ignorant and idiotic support for these idiotic actions, are some of the reasons why I posted the following in #7:
"Once again, countries fighting for their lives against Communism and worse are finding their hands tied by US policies which can have only one outcome: victory for the guerillas, and, like in South Vietnam, the victims are being blamed for the consequences."
This attitude can be stretched all the way back to Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Diem, and the like. With the sole exception of Reagan, the lesson of history is that, if you are a nation fighting for survival and come to depend on the USA, the odds are on that you will be left stranded on the beach, betrayed, thrown to the wolves and killed while grinning, amiable buffoons in the White House tut-tut the whole matter, and eventually describe the entire process as unfortunate, inevitable and unavoidable.
And there are always those who sit back and smile in fiendish glee at the trouble we cause. And this is supposed to be a conservative forum?