TURKPULSE No:142....JULY 10th, 2005
NOTHING NEW IN TURKISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Mass circulation daily Hurriyet’s exciting news a couple of weeks ago was hardly worth the bother in that it was nothing unusual for analysts of Turkish-American relations of the post war period. The newspaper banner headlined all over the front page on Thursday (30th), “Handcuffing (to American soldiers) in Incirlik.” While the Turkish General Staff (TGS) denied that there was any handcuffing, “An American authorized person in Washington” told the reporter, Kasim Cindemir, “Yes, in that hustle at least one of our men was taken away handcuffed.” The next day, the American Embassy of Ankara joined the TGS in rebutting the handcuffing and stated that Turkish-American relations in Incirlik were continuing in perfect harmony. For an appraisal of this news within the overall context of mutual relations and its place in the heating up today’s world developments please read the article below.
According to the Hurriyet’s story, an American C-17 Globemaster cargo aircraft wanted to make an emergency landing in Incirlik in mid-May. The TGS permitted it to land in the Etimesgut military airfield near Ankara, but unheeding this instruction, the American aircraft still landed in Incirlik whereupon Turkish soldiers interned the aircraft and its crew. The American soldiers on the base attempted to resist this move causing a hustle between the two forces. Naturally the Turkish soldiers, who have the responsibility and the necessary military equipment for the security of the Incirlik base, had the upper hand in this unwarranted skirmish. There was no handcuffing and putting a sack on the heads of detainees is totally alien to Turkish practice; but the Turkish soldiers were firm enough to force some American personnel to lie face down on the ground and proved that they would go all the way in enforcing law and order, as well as security on the base. Common sense prevailed in a short time, but as military sources in Washington said to Cindemir, the Americans took it as a sign of the grudge the Turkish soldiers bear upon the “sack incident” which took place in Suleymaniye, northern Iraq, on 4 July 2003.
Misunderstandings of the two different worlds continue
This relatively trifling event was a recurrence of a much graver incident exactly 40 years ago.
In the first two decades of the post war period, the American Navy and Air Force used to have a totally free hand in the Black Sea by using Turkey as a base because Stalin’s unwise policy of threatening Turkey had forced Ankara to seek an alliance with the United States for its national security. This anti-Soviet obsession of Turkey which continued even after Stalin’s death in 1953 when Moscow dropped its claims on the Straits and in three Turkish provinces in the East, eventually reduced Turkey to the state of a voluntary satellite. Especially the Garry Power’s U-2 scandal in May 1960 and the Johnson letter in June 1964 induced Turkey to take steps to normalize relations with the Soviets. The official visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Ulvi Cemal Erkin to Moscow in November 1964 was clearly a milestone in this regard, as Turkey and the USSR decided at this visit to “be good neighbours”. As good neighbours do not peep at one another from the air or sea or disturb one another, this new policy called for the discontinuation of the U-2 flights from Incirlik or American Navy’s passages through the Straits in total violation of the Montreux Convention.
The Soviets fulfilled their part of the agreement and withdrew their reconnaissance vessel right at three miles outside the Bosporus (the territorial waters were three miles in the Black Sea at that time), but Turkey faced a tremendous difficulty in making Washington conform to these rules. Ankara had to take stringent measures to prevent the U-2 flights over Soviet airspace and faced even much bigger difficulties in making the American warships act within the provisions of the Montreux Convention. It is hard to believe, but the newly formed Demirel Government at the end of 1965 had to warn the Americans that the Turkish Air Force would have to use force against the American warships which had passed through the Dardanelles and were proceeding towards the Black Sea via the Marmara Sea, despite all objections of the Turkish Navy. The American warships eventually returned to the Mediterranean, but PM Demirel paid a high price by being toppled by the Americans from power with military coups 2-3 times during his long political career.
Compared to these tragic events of the last 4-5 decades, which went as far as an American military embargo on its ally Turkey between February 1975 and 1978, the Incirlik event two months ago was an innocent child’s game.
The important side of this latest incident is that the Americans have still not understood the difference between the Suleymaniye outrage and the Turkish Armed Forces’ determination to enforce its sovereignty rights. From what Ambassador Edelman said to the press before his departure from Ankara and the above dispatches in Hurriyet, it is understood that Washington puts down this last event to young Turkish officiers’ impulsive reaction to the Suleymaniye event, while, they believe, the 3- and 4-star Turkish generals feel differently. General Ozturk, as the head of the Turkish Armed Forces, had to go out of his way to correct this mistaken judgment and said that there was no such difference in the Turkish Armed Forces. The top brass was feeling the same way as the younger ones, but they were more patient in showing their feelings, he stressed.
As for the latest Incirlik event, it is not an “impulsive reaction” on the part of the young officers, but the enforcement of a totally legitimate sovereignty right within the latest Incirlik agreement between Turkey and the United States. If anyone in the Turkish Armed Forces acts emotionally and impulsively against the Americans over the Suleymaniye outrage, the TGS takes the necessary disciplinary action. This was evidenced by the retirement of a valuable Special Forces general who was calling names to the Turkish speaking American Military Attaché, Col. Martin over this scandal. Unless Washington understands the difference between their breach of confidence of the Turkish soldiers at the Suleymaniye outrage and the Turkish Armed Forces’ enforcing international rules and law, there will not be the required harmony in mutual relations of the two countries.
PM Blair seems to understand the situation much better than Bush
Following the clear manifestation at the latest general elections of the British people’s feelings against his tagging after President Bush in Iraq, PM Tony Blair felt the necessity of taking some realistic steps in foreign policy. They have not yet gone as far as pulling the British forces out of the Iraq quagmire, but they were big enough strides about putting heavy pressure to bear upon President Bush for considerable financial aid to Africa and observance of the Kyoto Protocol.
Under tragic terrorist actions in London on Thursday (7th) which President Bush calls “seven-seven” after the notorious nine-eleven, the G-8 summit was held in Gleneagles, Scotland for two days last week. World leaders agreed on Friday (8th) to aid packages for Africa ($50 billion) and Palestine ($3 billion) but failed to agree on stronger action to curb global warming, instead pledging a new round of talks in November.
On Thursday when PM Blair was hosting the G-8 summit in Scotland three bombs containing sophisticated explosives hit the London underground within less than a minute of each other, killing at least 49 with 25 missing and hundreds wounded. There was another explosion on a double-decker bus nearly an hour later. PM Blair praised the calm way Londoners reacted to the bombings. “My countrymen are simply not going to be terrorized by terror in this way,” he remarked.
The Londoners’ admirable coolheaded reception of this heart racking tragedy was even more praiseworthy than Blair’s moderate remarks, but they were even more admirable in showing the British people’s fair play. The BBC and some British columnists had the guts to criticize the Anglo-American aggression in Iraq by pointing out that the London outrage is a despicable terrorist action killing innocent people, but what about the Anglo-American cluster bombs and uranium depleted shells that have been committing indiscriminate murders on a much bigger number of innocent Iraqis, they demanded.
Seven-seven was also an occasion for making realistic calculations the world over about the inevitable prospective defeat of the sophisticated American war technology before the desperate moves of the people who have nothing to lose in life.
The Madrid train outrage that killed nearly 200 people last year resulted in the downfall of PM Aznar in the Spanish elections and the total withdrawal of Spain from Iraq within a few days. The intelligence reports reaching western capitals about similar terrorist crimes in Birmingham after London and the Italian cities any day induced PM Berlusconi to start in September the evacuation of the 3000 Italian soldiers in Iraq, while he had announced that Italy would not leave Iraq this year. Even the biggest partner of the United States in the Iraq war, the United Kingdom, is reportedly considering to reduce its forces in Iraq by two-thirds, but the British Defence Secretary John Reed rebutted with a clarification that it is only one of the considerations. He stressed that the UK would stay in Iraq all the way. Nevertheless, Ukraine, Poland and some other former communist countries are preparing to withdraw their symbolic forces from Iraq before long and a rapid disintegration of the “coalition forces” in Iraq is an unavoidable phenomenon in the pipeline for the following reasons.
Bush has no chance of winning the Iraq war, forecast experts
The unemployment rate in Iraq was 3% during the Saddam period. It rose to 15% between the two Gulf wars and stands at 50% today. Is it possible to arm some 150-200 thousand people as security forces out of this population of 25-28 million people in Iraq as the Americans are trying to do today with the claim of bringing peace, security and democracy there when half of the people are close to the point of starvation with no work to earn a livelihood for their families?
The answer was given by a former American intelligence officer, John Perkins, in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (EHM), published in the United States less than a year ago. Perkins, who worked in Ecuador for many years as a covert United States National Security Agency EHM and “who traveled the world –to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other strategically important countries” says, “Ecuador is typical of countries around the world that EHMs have brought into the economic-political fold. For every $100 of crude taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses – which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less then $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and potable water.
“All of those people – millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet – are potential terrorists. Not because they believe in communism or anarchism or are intrinsically evil, but simply because they are desperate.” (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, page xx)
The other day, someone was wondering over the BBC, CNN or Euro News if the suicide bombers who voluntarily die along with tens of innocent people every day in Iraq would not come to an end in that country. Would the suicide bombers possibly come to an end when millions of people in Iraq and billions around the planet are totally desperate and in belief that there is an eternal paradise waiting for them in the other world if they are “martyrs against these Godless exploiters?”
As for the international finance and banking mechanism which push these poor nations into an endless debt repayment quagmire, here is another quote from another reliable book, A Century of War – Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, by F. William Engdahl, “According to the World Bank, between 1980 and 1986, for a group of 109 debtor countries, payment of interest alone to the creditors on foreign debts totaled $326 billion. Repayment of principal on the same debts totaled another $332 billion, for a combined debt service payment of $658 billion on an original debt of $430 billion. But despite this effort, these 109 countries still owed the creditors a sum of $882 billion in 1986. It was an impossible debt vortex. Thus worked the wonders of compounded interest and floating rates.” (Page 219).
John Perkins has more up to date figures running into trillions of dollars of debts of the have-nots, but for copyright reasons I will not go into them here. I will only take the liberty of advising the American and British peoples that they should go on with their righteous fight of joining hands with the rest of the world in rebelling against this unforgivable injustice committed in the name of democracy and globalization by a handful of greedy rulers in Washington. uras@ada.net.tr – July 10th, 2005