IRAQ – IS THE GAME OVER?

President Bush said of the Iraq crisis last week “The game is over.” France’s answer was quick and categorical. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who was paying an official visit to India, promptly said from New Delhi, “It is not a game. Neither is it over.” Almost at the same time, the German Foreign Minister Fischer was saying to the visiting American Defence Secretary Rumsfeld in front of the TV cameras in Berlin that he could not tell the German people that there should be a war against Iraq because he himself did not believe that the charges against that country are true. Shortly afterwards President Putin was visiting Berlin and Paris and putting Russia’s mighty military weight behind the Franco-German opposition to war. Back in Ankara PM Abdullah Gul was including President Putin in his wide circle of direct or telephone contacts with foreign statesmen in an attempt to save peace in Iraq, as well as calling President Assad to encourage him about realising the Damascus summit of the six regional countries for peace, as had been agreed upon at the foreign minister level meeting in Istanbul on January 23^rd. For the facts and motives behind these developments in Turkey’s stance and activities please read the article below.

If the Turkish and world media is any indicator about the future developments in Iraq, it is a foregone conclusion that Turkey will open the second front from the north as soon as the United States launches a massive attack from the south. The ongoing concentration of Turkish forces within northern Iraq and on the common frontier, and the permission of Parliament to the United States to modernise Turkish ports and airfields, backed up by the glut of disinformation greatly distorting the Turkish plan and intentions about this region, are the main reason for this worldwide belief. The reality, however, is far from this picture painted in the world media by the enormous American Disinformation Mechanism.

Even PM Gul is under the influence of these disinformation fallacies

It should be admitted that Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and his Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis have staged an excellent foreign policy and diplomatic skills in handling the Iraq crisis in the short time they have been in office and greatly contributed to the peace efforts in the world. However, even they prove to be under the influence of the massive disinformation campaigns in their assessments of today’s situation. PM Gul said on Monday (10^th) that if President Ozal had not been prevented in 1990 he would have gone into Iraq to save Turkey’s interests, just as his government was doing today. As a newcomer to the scene of world diplomacy, PM Gul seems to be unaware of the differences between the American efforts to get Turkey involved in an adventure over Kirkuk in 1990 and Turkey’s activities today to save Kirkuk from being a Kurdish city, indeed the capital of the independent “Kurdistan”, as part of the designs of the “Washington process” that was launched in September 1998 by discarding the Ankara process over northern Iraq.

Above all, it should be underlined that the American intention to get Turkey in great trouble over Kirkuk with an aggression against Iraq similar to the one Saddam Hussein committed against Kuwait in 1990 is nothing new, but dates back to late 1960s. On July 13^th, 1969 the Demirel Government announced, much to Washington’s strong opposition, that the American military bases in Turkey, primarily Incirlik, were for NATO purposes only and could not be used for the Middle East. It also resisted the American Defence Secretary Laird’s threats in Ankara in an attempt to use Incirlik for the forthcoming Middle East crisis in September 1970. The outcome of this policy was the uncontrollable terrorist violence in Turkey till the army took over on 12 March 1971. On these critical days for the Demirel Government, the Iranian Foreign Minister Zahedi, the Shah’s son-in-law, paid an unexpected visit to Istanbul and had a top-secret meeting with Foreign Minister Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil. The Iranian Foreign Minister’s surprise offer to Turkey was the American plan for a Turkish invasion of Iraq to take oil rich Kirkuk with Washington’s blessing. The Demirel Government categorically rejected this plan stressing that Turkey had no such aggressive intention against Iraq or any of its neighbours.

This American plan maintains that Iraq is an artificially created state composed of Arabs, Kurds and others racially and Sunnis and Shiats religiously and it should be dismantled. This plan disintegrating Iraq was later on repeatedly offered to subsequent Turkish governments, especially in the two interregnums that followed the 12 March 1971 and 12 September 1980 military takeovers, but was turned down by them all. The latest of these attempts was in President Ozal’s pocket and mind when he insisted on capturing Kirkuk during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, but Turkey’s top commander, the democracy-lover General Necip Torumtay, preferred to resign from the position of Chief TGS rather than comply with these demands. The Second Army Commander, General Kemal Yavuz, along with other rulers in charge of Turkey’s national security, also strongly objected and foiled these plans in 1990.

Today, Generals Torumtay and Yavuz, as well as the national security authorities are all in favour of the Turkish armed forces’ presence and activities in northern Iraq and the whole peace-seeking world approves these activities. It seems that only the AKP rulers are confused about the differences between these military activities of the Turkish Armed Forces in northern Iraq today and the previous attempts for an adventure over Kirkuk. PM Gul is totally wrong in his remark that what they were preparing to do now was what President Ozal had attempted to do in 1990. It must be one of the fallacies Tayyip Erdogan brought to the AKP after his contacts in Washington, which the official opposition leader Deniz Baykal describes, “secret talks at hotel lobbies”.

Today Turkey’s military plans for Iraq stem from Ataturk’s appraisals

Leaving aside this relatively trifling misjudged outlook on the part of PM Gul, he and his foreign minister Yakis have so far been most successful in handling a very delicate situation by steering the ship in a way to forestall President Bush’s war intentions over Iraq and avoiding a headlong showdown with the superpower. Instead France and Germany are in this clash with the Anglo-Americans and Russia has also come to their help. Other world powers such as China, India and possibly Japan may also side with this “peace-axis” when the time comes.

The Gul Government’s skill is in the fact that it is avoiding Washington’s fury as much as possible despite the fact that the Turkish Armed Forces are in Northern Iraq doing things that are diametrically opposed to the Americans’ war plans. The success is mostly due to the Turkish General Staff’s plans based on scientific analysis of History and the reasons for Turkey’s great losses after the 1990-91 Gulf War.

At the Lausanne conference in 1923, the chief Turkish negotiator, Ismet Inonu, said that Mosul and Kirkuk are as much Turkish as the Aegean, Anatolia and Thrace. Yet he was unable to save Mosul while the other places were registered as Turkish lands in the Lausanne Treaty. The TGS (Turkish General Staff), which has gone into the details of the Mosul affair, has taken note of Ataturk’s analysis of this question. Ataturk says in his famous Great Speech that Mosul was lost in Lausanne and later on in the League of Nations because it was not in Turkey’s hands, while Anatolia and Thrace had been purged of the enemy during the independence war. “There can be no diplomatic gain afterwards, without a powerful military gain first,” says Ataturk in his history of the Independence War. He explains in his Great Speech that the Ottoman commander, Ali Ihsan Pasha, made a mistake in November 1918 by giving into the British protest and evacuating Kirkuk and Mosul that were in Turkish forces’ hands when the Montros Armistice was signed on October 30^th, 1918.

In November 1918, the British Commander in Iraq, General Marshall, handed an ultimatum to Ali Ihsan Pasha demanding him, in contravention to the armistice provisions, to evacuate Mosul and Kirkuk within 48 hours, with a threat that he would otherwise be responsible for the bloodshed. Ali Ihsan Pasha complied with it and sought armoured cars and protection from the British for his personal safe journey to Istanbul. British military archives released years later prove that General Marshall was bluffing and that Ali Ihsan Pasha was in error by seeking his personal safety instead of challenging it, as Ataturk stressed in his Great Speech delivered in Parliament in Ankara in October 1927.

Today two Turkish army corpses assigned to the military operation in northern Iraq are working for the prevention of the recurrence of these historic mistakes in Kirkuk and Mosul and also serve peace by obstructing the disintegration of Iraq. The Turkish media claims that France, Belgium and Germany are disrupting the NATO unity and solidarity by vetoing Turkey’s application for instigating Article IV of the North Atlantic Treaty and preventing the Alliance from shipping Patriot missiles to Turkey. The former Turkish Ambassador to NATO Onur Oymen (CHP-Istanbul) told the Turkish TV that there was no Turkish application to the alliance for these weapons and that it was wrong for a third party to take such an initiative instead of Turkey. Indeed, the Americans talk of the great danger to the world from WMD that Iraq allegedly possesses, but none of Iraq’s immediate neighbours - Turkey, Iran. Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are bothered about such a threat. The Turkish Army is preventing the Kurds from having them and it is the biggest assurance of peace at the moment. uras@ada.net.tr - 12February, 2003