TURKPULSE No:104..........SEPTEMBER 4th, 2003
The only way out for Turkey is to dissociate itself from America in Iraq
No matter who may have committed this terrible crime, in the eyes of the local people the fault squarely has gone to the United States, according to the BBC and the CNN broadcasts from Baghdad, because the responsibility for security rests with the occupation forces and they fail to fulfil that duty. Two Turkish parliamentarians who have contacted all walks of people in every part of Iraq for more than a week have presented a report to the Prime Minister and said to the press that the American forces in Iraq had already disappeared from the trouble spots and most of the cities. Also, events are proving to the world that not only are the Americans failing to secure security in Iraq, but also fail to get the oil system working, let alone governing the country smoothly. The Kirkuk-Iskenderun pipeline was supposed to start working on 3 or 4 September after energetic repair work for months, but another big blast blew it up once again straight after the assassination of Ayatollah Al Hakim.
A former Prime Minister Ferit Melen’s brother, as a retired colonel, was in charge of the security system of the Turkey part of the Kirkuk-Iskenderun pipeline at its construction 3-4 decades ago. Asked if the ASALA, PKK or other externally supported terrorists could not blow it up as a juicy target for Turkey’s and Turkish-Iraqi cooperation’s enemies he told me, “No, it is not possible. We have taken every security measure against it and can instantly extinguish any fire caused by accident or sabotage as we monitor the hundreds of miles of pipeline day and night from the panels in the security room in Iskenderun. There are centrally adjusted automatic valves and watch towers for that.”
The 30 odd years that have gone by since Colonel Melen said these words prove what a good job he has done for the country as neither ASALA nor the PKK has been able to inflict any serious damage to the pipeline despite several sabotage attempts all of which were stopped in no time. Today, the Turkish part of the pipeline still remains secure, but the Superpower occupation force which spends a billion dollars a week in Iraq is incapable of running the oil or pipeline system, even though it was the only place guarded by the American forces while all the other places including the offices and museums were left to be plundered by the people under the occupation force’s nose.
Even the hawks in Washington such as Rumsfeld and Wolfofitz who are responsible for the Iraq war have come round to admit that they had made mistakes in their calculations and management of Iraq. They are planning to evacuate the cities to hand the security over to the local militia forces patterned after the “village guards” that Turkey had during the 15 years of PKK uprising in eastern Anatolia, according to the New York Times.
This news, which confirms the two AKP parliamentarians’ observations on the spot, is the sign of another big potential mistake on the part of the American rulers, because there are no similarities between the conditions that gave way to the creation of the Turkish village guards and the plight that exists in Iraq today.
In the Turkish case, externally financed, armed and backed PKK terrorists were raiding defenceless, remote villages and hamlets in eastern Turkey and brutally and indiscriminately killing the local people - mostly children, women and the aged. As they were all Kurds, the Kurdish PKK was killing the Kurds. Turkish or Kurdish by race, for Ankara they were all Turkish citizens and the Government tried every way to stop this massacre. The attempts to relocate the inmates of these indefensible hamlets in bigger towns and cities gave way to untrue and unfair western propaganda that Turkey was working for a population change in the “Kurdish” regions. Today, now that the PKK has been defeated, Ankara is encouraging and financing these displaced people to return to their villages both from within the country and from the PKK/KADEK ranks in northern Iraq and this in itself proves how unjustified the criticisms were that Turkey was carrying out a forced population exchange in eastern Anatolia.
As this propaganda became effective in time, Ankara stopped this resettlement policy for the people’s security and eventually invented the “village guards” system which boils down to arming the responsible local people according to their records when they did their military service and providing them with mobile telephones or wireless sets so that they could defend themselves until the Turkish army came to their help against external terrorist attacks. The system did work because it was done in justice and fair play and it seems it has set an example for the Americans today for a totally different situation. What is the point in arming the unknown civilian people while there are already the Iraqi armed and security forces, whatever is left from them today. The claim that they were Saddam’s loyal people is not very plausible. If that is the case, Saddam means Iraq and it is not true.
The real problem with the American administration in Iraq is that they have left millions of people without any livelihood with the belief that they belong to Saddam’s former Baath Party and should be punished. With that mentality they created a quagmire breeding ruthless terrorists effectively fighting against the occupation forces as people who have nothing to lose in life. The latest situation in Israel and Palestine is also the same and neither of these cases can possibly result in victory for those who try to solve economic and social problems by force of arms. And that is the biggest deterrent for Turkey in sending troops to Iraq. That is why efforts are focused on persuading the local Iraqi people that the potential Turkish forces will not be the extension of the occupation forces.
Alternative to sending forces to Iraq is a power struggle with the USA
The Commander in chief of the American forces in Europe, General Jones, is currently in Ankara discussing Turkish-American military relations with particular attention to Iraq. There are several reasons why the American commander in Europe is discussing the situation in Iraq with Turkey while there is another four-star American general for Iraq and this region. The main reason seems to concern Incirlik from where the American flights to northern Iraq were stopped by Ankara following the commencement of the war on 20 March on the grounds that these flights were to monitor the cease-fire arranged after the First Gulf War.
The Incirlik question therefore emerged as the main problem between Turkey and the United States especially after the 1 March rebuff. On 28 June the Government passed a decree for Incirlik and American logistics activities from there and other parts of Turkey, but despite all the insistence of the CHP in parliament and Gul’s initial promise to do so the Government has so far kept it as a secret decree.
The United States announced to pay Turkey $1 billion “with no strings attached”. Even though the American Deputy Treasury Secretary Taylor later said that it was subject to Turkey’s sending troops to Iraq, the new American ambassador to Ankara denied it the next day.
It is obvious, however, that the $1 billion grand or $8.5 billion loan to Turkey is concerned with American logistics activities for Iraq and other parts of the Gulf from the Incirlik base and that the Turkish force deployment in Iraq is only an indirect part of these arrangements.
In other words, either Turkey and the United States will reach an overall agreement for Iraq and the Gulf including such issues as the PKK terrorism, the status of the Incirlik base, the Kurdish and Turkman communities of Iraq, Turkish force shipment to Iraq and so on, or they will engage in a power struggle in the region with the United States trying to found an independent Kurdish State with an air base to replace Incirlik and Turkey doing its best to put a spoke in the wheel. Both sides are determined to avoid such an undesirable struggle and General Jones’s current talks in Ankara and Istanbul may contribute to avoid such an occurrence by working out the details of the new arrangements.
American attempts to flout Iraq’s international agreements also need Turkey
Many countries, not the least the Turkish Government, do not seem to understand what Washington means when it vaguely talks of MFN in regard to Saddam period in Iraq.
MFN is short for the Most Favoured Nation Clause which is a basic rule of international trade and economic relations since the pre-WW II period. It was modified several times under the United Nations system set up after the war.
To put it in a nutshell the most-favoured-nation clause is “non-discrimination in international trade and economic life.”
Here are some excerpts from international law experts on MFN:
“The MFN clause forbids Members of a trade agreement to discriminate between trading partners. It is typically seen as one of the main features of the multilateral trading system, and appears in several of the agreements in the World Trade Organization.”
“A most favoured nation clause (MFN) is a clause in a trade agreement between two nations providing that each will extend to the other any trading privileges it extends to third nations. MFN clauses are generally subject to exceptions for free trade areas and customs unions. One of the basic principles of the WTO is that each party extends to all other parties MFN status.”
Several UN resolutions deal with “the effect of an unconditional m-f-n clause and of an m-f-n clause conditional on material reciprocity, the observance of the laws and regulations of the granting State.”
To this background and in view of the fact that the American sources’ frequently talk of the Most Favoured Nation clause in regard to the Saddam regime, is it being a conspiracy theory monger to suspect that as soon as it feels secure enough in Iraq the United States will try to throw into the dust bin all the economic and trade agreements signed with other countries by the Saddam regime?
It closely and directly concerns Turkey in two regards. One is that Turkey has also signed such agreements with Saddam about exploiting and marketing the Iraqi natural gas.
Equally important is the fact that it is a vital issue for the Schengen countries, particularly for France and Germany, plus the Russian Federation. Turkey’s key position in solving the Iraqi crisis and its stance in this strife in the pipeline about MFN will be a determining factor in shaping its relations with the Anglo-Americans, the Russian bloc and the European Union.
That is why PM Tayyip Erdogan and his right hand man FM Abdullah Gul are now in Berlin and Vienna discussing Turkey’s accession to the EU and these contacts with the European countries will continue. How the balance will be struck between these three super power blocs and Turkey remains to be seen. The tendency today is to work out a consensus around a new United Nations resolution before deciding about sending troops to Iraq. uras@ada.net.tr – September 4th, 2003