Posted on 03/01/2003 6:06:48 PM PST by TheOtherOne
Turkish Parliament Rejects U.S. Plan to Send 62,000 Combat Troops to Turkey for Iraq War
Published: Mar 1, 2003
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The decision, which likely will strain ties with Washington, marked a setback to U.S. efforts to show Saddam Hussein that he is surrounded and his neighbors support a U.S.-led coalition.
The parliament vote was 264-250 in favor, with 19 abstentions. But speaker Bulent Arinc said the outcome fell three votes short of the simple majority required by the constitution. He then closed parliament until Tuesday.
Prime Minister Abdullah Gul hastily met with top ministers and party leaders after the vote. Before going in, a visibly shaken and angry Gul said, "We will assess all this."
Gul did not speak after that meeting. Private NTV and CNN-Turk television stations quoted unnamed officials as saying the government was not planning to resubmit the motion to parliament.
Officials were not immediately available for comment. The leaders of Gul's Justice and Development Party are expected to meet Sunday to discuss what action to take.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Pearson rushed to the Foreign Ministry after the vote.
"We had certainly hoped for a favorable decision," he said. "We will wait for further information and advice from the government of Turkey about how we should proceed."
Turkish lawmakers had faced overwhelming public opposition to basing U.S. troops on Turkish soil. Yet Washington had been so sure of winning approval from close ally and NATO member Turkey, that ships carrying U.S. tanks are waiting off Turkey's coast for deployment and the U.S. military has thousands of tons of military equipment ready to unload at the southern Turkish port of Iskenderun.
For weeks, the Bush administration had been pressing Turkey to agree to a possible northern front, which would split Saddam Hussein's army between the north and the south, likely making a war shorter and less bloody.
The motion would have empowered Turkey's government to authorize the basing of up to 62,000 troops, 255 warplanes and 65 helicopters. In exchange, Washington promised $15 billion in loans and grants to cushion the Turkish economy from the impact of war.
Besides that funding, Turkey also risks losing Washington's support which was crucial in securing billions in loans that rescued the country during an economic crisis in 2001.
The United States has also pushed Turkey's eagerly sought candidacy in the European Union. And if Turkey does not agree to host U.S. forces, it loses a say in the future of neighboring Iraq if there is a war.
That is a critical issue for Turkey, which fears that a war could lead Kurds in northern Iraq to declare an independent state and in turn inspire Turkey's own Kurdish minority.
Nonetheless, Turkey's governing party had difficulty selling the unpopular measure to the Turkish people and could not push through the motion despite its overwhelming majority in parliament.
Polls show as much as 94 percent of the Muslim-dominated Turkish public opposes a war with Iraq. Before the vote, 50,000 Turks staged an anti-war rally near parliament as 4,000 police stood guard. They chanted "No to War" and "We don't want to be America's soldiers." Some carried banners that read: "The people will stop this war."
After the speaker nullified the vote, hundreds of Turks celebrated in the streets of central Ankara, shouting anti-U.S. slogans.
"We are all Iraqis ... We will not kill, we will not die," they chanted. They also accused the Islamic-rooted Justice party of "collaborating" with Washington.
The Justice party was planning to meet Sunday, said Reha Denemec, the party's deputy chairman. "We did not expect these results, but this is a democracy," he said.
AP-ES-03-01-03 2023EST
Sadly we'll probably give them the money anyway.
latrans has the right idea here. Besides that, since when does Turkey's military take orders from its parliament? It is always possible from civilian control over the military will arise in Turkey, but I don't know that I would predict it at just this moment.
Good analysis. Hopefully everyone who is anyone in Turkey will recognize this and act accordingly.
Two problems with that -- first, the Greeks are consistently more anti-American than either the French or the Turks on their worst day -- also the Greeks are friends of the Arabs. Second, the Turks would crush the Greeks if it ever came to actual war.
Hmm, on second thought, maybe we should tell the Greeks to go ahead. A war between two non-allies (and this vote shows that Turkey is about to become a non-ally) of the US weakens them and strengthens us (similar to the Chechen fight).
Agreed. Bases in Southern Iraq would be both away from populated areas and in the perfect position to annex Saudi, some Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil fields as well as threaten Syria, Jordan, Iran and Egypt. We could set up Corp-sized NTC's in the Iraqi desert without having to worry about enviro-wackos complaints either.
There that word is again > > > TURKEY
That was exactly what I had in mind. Let them exhaust themselves and their arsenals -- and then sell 'em more for cash on the barrelhead.
Perhaps whatever orders are being issued result from the hue and cry out in the Islamic street.
The article states: Polls show as much as 94 percent of the Muslim-dominated Turkish public opposes a war with Iraq.
Turkey is simply not the place for staging the northern sector of this war--it's teeming with Islamist factions--and the Kurds in Northen Iraq are even worse.
Here's a Turkish politician's comment as this vote was cast:
"At the end of this business we'll see that America has eaten the toffee apple and left Turkey the stick," Onder Sav of the opposition Republican People's Party told parliament.
He warned that victory would be much easier than running post-war Iraq. "You can do a lot with bayonets but you can't sit on them... Don't let them reach out to seize the integrity and natural riches of a neighbor and a Muslim country."
And here's the kind of Kurdish characters running around up in northern Ira:
The leader of a Kurdish extremist group with suspected ties to al-Qaida is willing to talk to U.S. investigators, his lawyer said in a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Norway.
. . . . Ahmad is the head of Ansar al-Islam, or Supporters of Islam, an anti-American group of several hundred fighters based in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.
Washington claims Ahmad has links to Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but says it has no proof. The group's fighters are also believed to have trained with al-Qaida and U.S. officials suspect it of helping hide al-Qaida members fleeing Afghanistan.
To assume this territory would be an appropriate area for staging our troops and equipment would be a lethal mistake.
Our troopers must move into some of the other less murderous areas mentioned in replies upthread.
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