TURKPULSE No:59..........DECEMBER 24th, 2001
PM
Ecevit’s forthcoming summit with President Bush in Washington on January
16th is expected to open a new page in Turkish-American strategic
cooperation in the light of the realities of globalisation in the economic
field and the political and military reorientation in the post-September 11th
era. Turkey has an excellent road map in assessing this strategic
cooperation by comparing it with the outcome of the strategic cooperation
that emerged from the President Clinton-PM Yilmaz summit in December 1997,
as today’s 57th Turkish Government under PM Ecevit is, in fact,
an extension of the 55th Government under PM Mesut Yilmaz four
years ago.
The last
issue of Pulse seems to be a
timely prognosis of Turkey’s latest foreign policy orientation in that it
forecast a productive strategic cooperation in the offing between Ankara and
Washington after having persistently dismissed as disinformation such
pretentious claims in Turkish-American relations for the last few decades.
Indeed,
PM Ecevit’s official visit to Washington on January 16th may
mark a genuine turning point in this “Troubled Alliance” of the post-war
period covering over half a century. There is reason to believe that the
absence of U.S. Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz from the Southeast
European Defence Ministers` meeting in Antalya on 19-20 December, and
especially from the subsequent Ankara talks is due to the reason that
Washington wants to elaborate on its plans to topple Saddam in the light of
Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s recent contacts in Northern Iraq and Ankara and
try to win Turkey over during Ecevit’s forthcoming visit. In the meantime,
developments going beyond bilateral Turkish-American relations that will
affect the course of Ecevit’s talks in Washington are taking place with or
without Washington’s machinations.
Is
Moscow too concerned with Turkish-American strategic cooperation?
A case
in point is Moscow’s revelation of the espionage event concerned with
Vicdan Sansli in 1996. This fluent Russian speaking Bulgarian Turkish woman
was apparently caught red-handed in Krasnador, the Caucasus on 28th
December 1995 trying to recruit as a spy a Russian agent, Alexander Ivanov,
to MIT, the Turkish Intelligence Service. The MIT Chief of the time,
Ambassador Sonmez Koksal, went to Moscow to bring back Vicdan Sansli after
her six months detention and cross interrogation there. There is reason to
believe that a kind of cooperation began between the two intelligence
services after this event.
The
nature and limits of this Turkish-Russian intelligence cooperation are
naturally secret, but what is quite obvious is that the Turkish commandoes
would probably not have been able to arrest Abdullah Ocalan in Nairobi in
February 1999 if it had not been for this cooperation as disinformation was
coming from NATO sources about Ocalan’s whereabouts after his aircraft
landed in Athens, following its departure from Moscow.
The
motive behind the Russian Intelligence Service’s revelation of this
espionage event is now a mystery as it is totally uncharacteristic of the
Soviet KGB or its successor today, the FSB.
One theory about Moscow’s motive in this move is that Russia is too
concerned with Turkey’s policies in Afghanistan, Central Asia and
particularly the Caucasus and it is showing this disenchantment by revealing
this espionage story. Indeed, with or without the prodding of the American
Disinformation Mechanism, the Turkish media have begun to claim that there
is a “pitched battle” in the Caucasus between Turkey and Russia. They
all point to President Shevardnadze’s remark in Washington two months ago
that Georgia is not Russia’s southward extension, but Turkey’s northward
extension.
Such
statements by the leaders of the young Caucasus republics are more
Washington instigated than true or indicative of Turkey’s foreign policy
intentions. The late President of Azerbaijan, Elchibey used to make
statements such as reuniting the two Azerbaijans with Turkey’s help, thus
fouling Ankara’s relations with Tehran, or claiming a federation or
confederation with Turkey and rousing Moscow’s suspicion of Turkey. The
result was Ankara’s subtle joining hands with Moscow and Tehran to replace
him with president Heydar Aliyev and having today’s excellent relations
between Ankara and Baku, as well as a working triangle with Moscow.
Another
possibility about the revelation of this espionage event is that the
American Disinformation Mechanism is doing it. The MIT official who
accompanied Ambassador Sonmez Koksal on this mission, Mehmet Eymur, is now
in the United States with his American wife and pushing through MIT’s
secrets on his website according to the CIA’s disinformation designs with
handsome advertisements from American companies dealing with espionage
equipment. Naturally, this claim of Pulse
is no further than conspiracy theory at this stage until Moscow
comes forward with some logical explanations about the whole affair, but
experience shows that such things should never be put past the CIA.
Whatever
the case may be, ie a misguided and clumsy Russian move or a disinformation
activity, it is taking place at a time when Turkish-American relations are
on the eve of a sincere attempt to bring about strategic cooperation after
several disappointments.
Putin’s
good relations with Bush and Blair may help US-Turkish relations
As for
Moscow’s place in this strategic cooperation in the offing, the past
practice proves that for the last 3-4 decades Turkey does not accept it to
be hostility against its big neighbour and that is the main reason why these
attempts of strategic cooperation remain abortive. The latest example is
Mesut Yilmaz’s official visit to Washington in December 1997 in his
capacity as Prime Minister of Turkey. The “strategic cooperation” worked
out and noisily heralded in the world at that time had five points in the
following order: 1) Energy, 2) Trade, investment and economic reform, 3)
Security cooperation, 4) Regional cooperation, 5) Cyprus and the Aegean.
Four
solid years have gone by since this strategic cooperation was established
and none of the above five points have come to life. One of the main reasons
for this failure has been Washington’s wish not to take steps in the
direction of the agreed principles of cooperation unless Turkey breaks off
its arrangements with the Russian Federation or two of its neighbours, Iran
and Iraq.
The
Iranian natural gas has arrived in Turkey despite all the undermining of the
Americans and the pipeline is now functioning smoothly for the last couple
of weeks. The more impressive project for natural gas imports from Russia,
Blue Stream, is expected to go into operation within the next six months,
but despite scores of agreements multilaterally signed with the United
States and the countries concerned for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, it is
nowhere in sight. The latest lollipop the Americans are offering in this
regard is Chevron’s promise to raise loans for this pipeline.
The
other four points of the December 1997 summit’s security cooperation
between Turkey and the United States have not been any more promising than
energy cooperation. On the contrary, fresh problems cropped up about
security cooperation such as ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy)
that forced Turkey to repeatedly use its veto right in NATO. The point about
regional cooperation was not any brighter. Turkey found itself closer to
Moscow and Beijing than Washington, London and Brussels on issues such as
the Caucasus cooperation and security arrangements and OSCE (Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Luckily London’s interventions
with Washington’s help and the Laeken Summit last week produced some
promising developments about ESDP and Turkey’s membership to the EU.
Furthermore,
the Bush-Ecevit summit is going to take place under more promising
conditions mostly because of President Putin’s warm relations with
President Bush and PM Blair and the September 11th developments.
This may induce Washington to skip the intention to make Turkish-American
strategic cooperation an instrument of its hostilities towards Russia or its
allies and that, for its part, would make the cooperation a workable one,
after all.
Iraq’s
future may be the top of the agenda at the Washington summit
Still,
it is common knowledge that the Saddam question will be one of the main
stumbling blocs in the way at the forthcoming Washington summit. PM Ecevit
said to a journalist close to him, “It
is understood from the American spokesmen’s words that they will bring up
the Iraq question. Naturally, we’ll also explain our views. We pay utmost
importance to preserving Iraq’s territorial integrity. That will continue
to be our stance. We will give them detailed information about the problems
to be caused by an intervention in Iraq.”
According
to Foreign Minister Cem, the Washington summit will focus on Afghanistan,
Iraq, Cyprus and the economy. “We will
definitely bring up the Cyprus issue. We have exerted a great effort on this
question and have begun to reap results. For instance, the EU has begun to
drop its commonplace remarks on this issue. Naturally one cannot claim that
their outlook has changed. I can tell, however, that they no longer view the
question as they used to. And now we will try to get the same result in
Washington. We will try to break up the hard line outlooks on the Cyprus
issue,” says FM Cem.
At the
summit the Turkish side will ask the Americans what kind of a Cyprus they
want to see as the outcome of the Denktas-Clerides dialogue and Turkey will
try to break the shell of taboos on this issue. It is expected that rather
than playing with words and insisting on confederation in Cyprus, the
Turkish side is now coming round to the United Kingdom’s flexibility and
insist on the political equality of the two nations on the island, which may
well be termed a united republic, instead of insisting on the word
“confederation”.
On the
question of Iraq, Ecevit and Cem will try to learn in Washington the
Americans’ real intentions about the outcome of their insistence on
toppling Saddam, whether or not the Arab world is agreeable to the American
intervention and how they would be able to convince the world of a coup in
Baghdad now that the solidarity of the Gulf War against Saddam no longer
exists in the world. Two other crucial questions for Turkey on this issue
are: Is Russia accepting the potential American intervention in Iraq and how
will this intervention affect Northern Iraq? The backbone of the economic
questions at the summit will be Turkey’s call for bigger trade with the
United States by its ending quota restrictions and discriminatory actions
against Turkey.
The key
at the Washington summit seems to be the Saddam question. The United States
has already pledged to observe Iraq’s territorial integrity, but its
intention to make Northern Iraq more autonomous within a federal system is
obvious and it has covered quite a lot of distance in this regard, despite
Turkey’s objection. Yet a federal state of Arabs and Kurds in Iraq is
clearly unacceptable to Ankara. May it be a tripartite federation of Arabs,
Kurds and the Turkmen is not clear yet. The Turkish side has also covered
quite some distance in the last decade in organising the Turkmen in Northern
Iraq, but for the success of these efforts on the part of both sides, the
Anglo-Americans have to stop the nonsense that the Turkmen account for only
one percent of the total population. Turkey’s principle for Afghanistan,
Iraq and other Islamic countries is a democratic and secular parliamentary
system and there is no reason why this principle should not be acceptable to
Washington especially in the light of the bitter experience of September 11th,
as it proved them how wrong they were in creating the Taiban Frankenstein.
uras@ada.net.tr
- December 24th, 2001