THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF CHENEY’S VISIT

 

Washington’s insistence on Dick Cheney having a talk with top Turkish commanders was an embarrassment for the Ecevit Government, but it was a good opportunity to show the harmony that exists in the Turkish Administration today. It was also an occasion to make the point of the Turkish military’s outlook at today’s world in its globalisation drive. General Kivrikoglu had already announced the highlights of this outlook back in January 1999 and the recent step that the West has taken as a new threat and risk for Turkey by politicising the PKK terrorism is proof of the far sight of the Turkish military.

The U.S Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit to Ankara may yield much more important indirect results than its direct and concrete fruits for Turkey such as $228 million American financing he offered for the Turkish Armed Forces for their service in bringing peace to Afghanistan by taking over the command of ISAF from the UK at the end of April. It is not certain, however, if this deal will work because the British Foreign Minister Jack Straw has announced after talks with the Turkish Defence Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu in London following Cheney’s Middle East tour that the command of ISAF would stay with the British Forces for a while. So it is not certain yet if there has been a compromise between Turkey and the Anglo-Americans over the Afghan developments.

Another direct result of the visit was to put an end to media speculations of imminent American intervention in Iraq. As a result of PM Ecevit’s announcement after his talk with Cheney that there would be no American military intervention in Iraq ”in a foreseeable future”, the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) picked up. The ISE index went up from ten thousand to 11,792 in a week. With the expected sharp drop in the inflation rate in March, the economy may finally take a turn for an up-trend in growth. But like the first issue, this constructive development after Dick Cheney’s visit may not be long lasting and ISE may drop to its previous low ebb again in the near future.

As for the claim of the Economy Minister, Kemal Dervis, that the crisis in the Turkish economy is now over, business circles of Istanbul do not share that outlook and stress that the crisis would not end before growth began in the productive sector, the manufacturing industry, and this has not yet happened.

Cheney hears the Turkish military’s outlook from the top commander

These constructive results of the visit, therefore, were only small and marginal. The most important aspect was the Americans’ insistence for a talk between the Vice-President and General Kivrikoglu and his colleagues. Even though it was an embarrassment for Turkish rulers who are disturbed by external propaganda that there a “military democracy” in Turkey, it was also a good opportunity for Ankara to show the Americans that there is a working coordination and harmony between the civilian and military rulers in this country.    

PM Ecevit has admitted to Sedat Ergin of Hurriyet (21) that the American insistence for a Cheney-Kivrikoglu meeting did cause “sensitivity” in Ankara. “But to overcome that sensitivity we made some readjustments. Instead of Mr Cheney’s visit to the Turkish General Staff (TGS), we invited the Chief, TGS, and his colleagues to the dinner in the Prime Minister’s residence. They came together at the dinner and had a talk with also the presence of our Foreign Minister and his Under-Secretary,” he said.

Ecevit stresses that the United States is a very important ally of Turkey from the military angle and that he found it normal that the Americans took such an initiative. Asked about the possible difference of shades of meaning between the civilian and military rulers, especially on Turkey’s Iraq policy, the Prime Minister said, “There was definitely no such difference.” According to press reports, General Kivrikoglu’s answer to Cheney’s query about Turkey’s Iraq policy was very simple and to the point, “Your interlocutor on this topic is the Turkish Government.”

Ecevit said to Hurriyet, “In fact, we have appraisals of such topics between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Armed Forces. We have no differences on this point (Iraq), but full cohesion. It is also very important that this point is apparent and known by all. As a matter of fact, not only the Government and the TGS, but also all the political parties in Turkey give the same message. It is an exceedingly important point and is hard to come by in every country.”

Washington’s suspicion of rift between PM and TGS is not without reason

It is past experience that has been inducing the Americans of their suspicion about a rift between PM Ecevit and the Turkish Armed Forces on important security and foreign policy issues.

During the Cyprus landing of the Turkish Armed Forces in July 1974, it was again Bulent Ecevit who was Prime Minister, but there was almost no coordination between his Government and the TAF (Turkish Armed Forces). At the heat of the first days of the Turkish landing, the American Under-Secretary of the State Department, Sisco, visited PM Ecevit in Ankara in an attempt to persuade him to suspend the operation, pointing to the difficulties of the landing against the Greeks and Greek Cypriots who had been armed to the teeth in special caves on the Five Finger Mountains overlooking the sea between Turkey and Cyprus. Ecevit told Sisco, “We have captured the port of Kyrenia. The rest of the landing is easy.”  The American envoy’s answer was a shock to him, “There is no port in Kyrenia. There is only a small marina for yachts.”

While the Turkish Armed Forces, especially the then landing operation’s commander, Rear Admiral Nejat Tumer had spent years in measuring the soil’s tenacity on Kyrenia beach inch by inch for landing tanks there when the time came, the PM did not have a clue about what was going on in Cyprus militarily. The Americans and the Brits never forgot about this lack of coordination between Ecevit and the military even under conditions of war.

And it was not the only occasion either. In his first days in power in the early Seventies, PM Ecevit tried to push through his “New Defence Concept” despite the TGS’s strong objection. This concept based on Yugoslavia’s non-aligned ideas that countries like Turkey and Yugoslavia do not need strong and expensive armed forces, but only certain defensive weapons, was strongly objected to by the commanders who maintained that you could never finish off a war unless you have offensive attack weapons. Unable to push it through the legitimate security institutions like the TGS, the MFA and the NSC, Ecevit as a young politician set up unofficial bodies composed of leftist academicians to extract such unconstitutional resolutions.

Again in the Seventies PM Ecevit attempted twice to sue Pulse for reporting about and denouncing such nonsense, but to no avail. 

Apparently Washington’s long memory is still imbued with these old stories that it was so keen on seeking a rift during Cheney’s visit, between the military and PM Ecevit whom they suspect is pro-Saddam. But much water has since run under the bridge and today’s Ecevit has nothing to do with the Ecevit of 30 years ago.

And the change is not one sided either. The Turkish Armed Forces that have been the staunchest ally of the Americans against communist aggression and expansion of the cold war period are now complaining loudly against the West’s using terrorism as a weapon against Turkey and showing Russia as a potential strategic partner. It is not only a matter of the EU’s refusing to include Turkish terrorist organisations in their list of terrorist organisations today, but it goes much deeper.

Turkish military experts are fully aware of the fact that the PKK in its 15 years of uprising against Turkey used the most sophisticated military tactics and arts of logistics that only a fully qualified army commander of a superpower could plan and execute. “Did this man who scratches his tummy before the TV cameras do all this sophisticated uprising,” they rightly query in a rhetorical question about the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

They are also aware of the fact that it is Washington that is now trying to “politicise” the PKK by using the European Union as a tool, or by underhandedly cooperating with the Europeans.

For practical reasons, Turkish rulers and intellectuals, be they civilian or military, are still very careful in their public statements about singling out the United States from these abuses of the West, but it does not mean that there are not the United States sceptics (like Pulse) who believe that the EU cannot possibly give all this support to Turkish terrorists even today without underhandedly having the United States behind them.

The new millennium vision of the Turkish Armed Forces

The 11 September event, with its subsequent UN Security Council Resolution 1373, was definitely a turning point in world security strategies, especially concerning the use of terrorism by some superpowers. The European Union has not yet come to the point of conforming to this world resolution by giving force to Resolution 1373, but sooner or later it will have to enforce it. The recent step the PKK took for transforming itself into a political party under the instructions of the EU is a step in that direction, but these steps are bound to cause much bigger problems for the West in their dealings with Turkey.

Much before the anti-terrorist rules of Resolution 1373 became a binding compulsion for the world, however, the Turkish Armed Forces foresaw this trend and adopted a number of rules against these risks and threats to national security. General Huseyin Kivrikoglu summed up these new rules as follows in the Ulusal Strateji (National Strategy) magazine of January 1999:

“Following the formations that cropped up towards the end of the 20^th century, certain changes have appeared in Turkey, as they did in the entire world, in strategic threat apprehensions. While the threat concept used to be more apparent and massive it has now become multilateral, multi-dimensional and self-transforming, creating uncertainties. Thus the traditional threat concept now involves new threats and risks such as

·        Regional and ethnical clashes,

·        Political and economic instabilities and obscurities in the country,

·        Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles,

·        Religious Fundamentalism,

·        All sorts of narcotics and arms trafficking,

·        International terrorism.

In the new period following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, nationalist feelings especially in the Balkans and the Caucasus have been revived and this fact gave way to ethnical clashes and paved the way for the foundation of new states.

With its location in both the East-West and the North-South axes and with its existence in the middle of the Balkans, the Caucuses and the Middle East triangle where new threats and risks are intensified, Turkey both constitutes the direct target of these new threats and risks and is also situated in the transit routes of some of them. It is believed that this situation, which stems from its geo-strategic position, will not be changed in the 21^st century, as it has existed hitherto.

Existing developments show that in the 21^st century too the imminent internal threat for Turkey will be separatist terrorism that fosters ethnical secessionism and reactionary fundamentalism, which aim at the foundation of a theocratic state order in the country. Turkey is strong enough to defeat both these threats and the Turkish people have reached the level of conscientiousness for it. If both these dangers are eliminated, Turkey will attain all its aspirations by easily allaying the hurdles in its way and fulfilling all the requirements of democracy in the light of contemporary civilisation and science, without giving concessions on its unitary State structure.

As for the external threats to our country, they are the new formations concerned with the mosaic of nations that appeared in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia in the aftermath of the downfall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the importance of the energy resources of the Middle East which once again came to the forefront with the Gulf operation, and the struggle for getting a bigger share from the energy resources of the Caspian Basin. As this struggle takes place in the vicinity of Turkey it closely concerns our country.

Also, the new global security questions stemmed from the atmosphere of instability and obscurity that was caused by the disappearance of bipolar balance are gaining importance.

In this context, population increases in countries, the distribution of resources, over urbanisation and environmental pollution, technological developments, the weakening of the central government system, the increased influence of international institutions on national power factors, political and economic instabilities and indecisions, international organised crimes, religious and ethnical confrontations, and the tendency of proliferation of WMD are emerging as changed threat concepts in the world.” 

General Kivrikoglu’s above article, which dates back to January 1999, is proof of how prepared the Turkish Armed Forces were about the steps the West is taking against Turkey such as politicising the PKK. It is also the sign of the counter-steps that will be taken against the perpetrators of these threats and risks for Turkey. uras@ada.net.tr - March 26^th, 2002