Posted on 02/20/2003 6:39:53 PM PST by BlackJack
‘Turkey demands control of Iraq from US’
By Owen Matthews, Sami Kohen and John Barry
ANKARA: Turkey is raising its price for allowing US forces to invade Iraq from its territory. In early negotiations with the United States, Ankara spoke of sending in Turkish troops to set up a “buffer zone” perhaps 15 miles deep along the Iraqi border. This would prevent a flood of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq, the Turks said.
But now, Newsweek has learned, Turkey is demanding that it send 60,000 to 80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq to establish “strategic positions” across a “security arc” as much as 140 to 170 miles deep in Iraq. That would take Turkish troops almost halfway to Baghdad. These troops would not be under US command, according to Turkish sources, who say Turkey has agreed only to “coordination” between US and Turkish forces.
Ankara fears the Iraqi Kurds might use Saddam’s fall to declare independence. Kurdish leaders have not yet been told of this new plan, according to Kurdish spokesmen in Washington, who say the Kurds rejected even the earlier notion of a narrow buffer zone. Farhad Barzani, the US representative of the main Kurdish party in Iraq, the KDP, says, “We have told them: American troops will come as liberators. But Turkish troops will be seen as invaders.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment; officials elsewhere in the administration played down the Turkish demands as bargaining tactics: “We told them flat out, no.” But independent diplomatic sources in Ankara and Washington with knowledge of the US-Turkey talks say that while the precise depth of the “security zone” has still to be agreed, the concept is “pretty much a done deal,” as one observer put it.
These sources add that the main US concern has been that US, not Turkish, troops occupy the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and that Turkish troops merely surround but not enter the heavily Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulemaniye. To get Turkey’s assent to this, these sources say, the United States had to “cave” on its demand that Turkish troops be under US control.
Two days of tough negotiations in Washington last week failed to settle the other part of Turkey’s price: a multibillion-dollar economic package. Turkish PM Abdullah Gul is now threatening to delay the all-important vote in the Turkish Parliament to allow US deployments in Turkey. Pentagon officials acknowledge frustration at the problems Turkey’s bargaining poses for the US military buildup.
Turkish sources say that when Turkey’s Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis met with President Bush on Friday, the president warned that the United States might open a northern front against Iraq without Turkish participation. But military sources say that would be close to impossible.
“Turkey is playing hardball,” said Michael Amitay of the Washington Kurdish Institute. “But if the US agrees to these Turkish deployments, there is a real risk that the Kurds will start a guerrilla war against the Turkish troops.” —Newsweek
Boy, those guys at work must really like, admire and respect you.
Nobody ever gave me a globe.
The terror-bombing of Hamburg during WWII was justified, because it was a reaction to the terror-bombing of London. Nobody would tell Churchill he had no right to hit Hitler back with proportional force. The only reason firebombing Hamburg was a bad idea was that it was a waste of money.
I don't look at the means of the attack--it makes no difference to me whether an F-15 or suicide bomber is used to strike a target--it matters what the target is.
I don't think guerilla resistance to genocidal violence is wrong, even if the guerillas go to the same extremes as the violators. During WWII Jews would have been justified in killing German civilians--which didn't mean they had to, or should have, but they would have not been morally tainted to any severe degree. Violence can be met with violence.
If Israel was engaging in genocidal violence against Palestinians, and refused to negotiate for peace, Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians would be justified (Israel isn't doing that, so Palestinian terrorism isn't justified).
The Turks want to control Kurdistan because it's a strategic region: sitting on two major rivers in the part of Kurdistan stolen by Turkey and a bunch of oilfields in the area stolen by Iraq.
The history of Turkey's campaign to utterly obliterate the Kurds as an independent people cannot be ignored. If they continue this campaign of extreme violence into the modern age by destroying a small, peaceful Kurdish democracy, then they deserve anything and everything they get.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a center-right radical.
The USA is very unusual in that its Grand Strategy has mostly been achieved. It may be summed up briefly, thus:
1) US military dominance of North and South America.
2) Domination of the Atlantic and Pacific to ensure that there can be no invasion of North or South America.
3) The stability of, friendship with, or military domination of those countries which line the Pacific and Atlantic.
Since the 11 September attacks, there is a new strategic component:
4) Preventing terrorist attacks on the USA by destroying governments or organizations that wish to launch terrorist attacks on the USA.
Turkey's Grand Strategy has not been achieved. As far as non-naval matters are concerned, although the Turkish military is the dominant force in Anatolia, due to the hostility of her neighbors, it is necessary that she be the dominant regional force, because developing friendly relations isn't likely for a few generations to come, at the very least. This will require Turkish domination of Northern Iraq, and the permanence of Iraq's present geopolitical borders.
In other words, these are issues which simply may not be negotiated, because they are of fundamental importance to Turkish national security.
For the life of me, I do not see how the Grand Strategy of the USA and the Grand Strategy of Turkey conflict.
If you could, to the best of your knowledge, describe Turkey's Grand Strategy as you see it, I think it may be of great help to other members of this forum in understanding Turkish regional concerns.
You're totally mental for justifying terrorism in any form or the murder of innocent Turks because you don't like them for personal reasons. Your argument is no different than Usama and his girlyman friends or Hamas, etc. They use the same logic.
What the hell is a center right radical?
I'm writing something for publication on Friday to that effect.
Then, after we control what is now Saudi oil production, we can let go of Iraq,and its oil,and let Iraq's Shiite majority and the Turks settle who controls the Kurdish areas.
In the past century, Turkey has gone from a genocidal Muslim dictatorship to a genocidal secularist "military democracy." If Turkey wasn't so intent on dominating the Middle East on the backs of the Kurds, it wouldn't be such a bad place.
It doesn't matter if they use the same logic, because they lie about facts. If you believe in the death penalty, then you probably think we had the right to execute Timothy McVeigh. If the Saudi Arabian government arrested an innocent man, claimed he was behind a terrorist attack, and wanted to execute him on that basis, they would be using the same "logic" as the American Justice Department. And it wouldn't make them right.
I like Jabotinsky's view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The two sides have incompatible claims and incompatible cultures - so its a fight to the death. The same may be true of the Turks and Kurds.
We're fighting this war because we believe the present state of affairs is intolerable - the threat to our safety, our power, and the international order is just too great. We believe we have to remake the map of the Middle East to reduce this threat.
Bit if this dispute with Turkey is any indication of what is to come the new map will be drawn with a lot more old-fashioned, brutal realpolitic and a lot less idealistic, democratic-capitalism than we've been led to believe.
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