When a journalist remarked that PM Ecevit’s official visit to Washington at the end of September was inconclusive, the American Ambassador to Ankara, Mark Parris, said:

"…This wasn’t the kind of visit that Nixon’s visit to China was, or that Mikhail Gorbachev’s first visit to the United States was. This was a visit involving a relationship that is mature, that is multifaceted, that is viewed by both countries as one we are basically satisfied with."

PM Ecevit and his Foreign Minister, Ismail Cem, made similar appraisals of the visit. Cem noted that there was an October 4^th syndrome about Cyprus – the United States would give an ultimatum to Turkey, the UN Security Council and Koffi Annan would corner the Turkish side and Denktas would be denounced by the world for undermining a peaceful solution to Cyprus. "Where do all these claims stand now," the Foreign Minister wanted to know. He gave the answer himself by saying that they had explained well in Washington that nothing would come of the Denktas-Clerides talks as long as one side was treated by the world as a head of state and the other as a secessionist rebel leader.

There were some other achievements for the Turkish rulers during the latest Washington visit and President Clinton’s forthcoming state visit to Turkey was certainly one of them, but all in all, it could not be described as a "landscape visit", to say the least.

PM Ecevit said on Sunday (31^st) during a televised interview that the Turkish economy had already become intermingled with and interdependent on the Russian economy. When an economic crisis appeared in Russia as from August 1998 Turkey was also adversely affected, he noted. He said Turkey’s exports to Russia were $4 billion, not counting $6 billion "suitcase trade". Also, 400 Turkish companies were making investments and carrying out contracting services in Russia. When the economic crisis hit that country Turkey was also badly affected because Russia now plays a very important role in the Turkish economy. In the first five months of this year, Turkey’s exports to Russia declined by 70% because of the economic crisis, but Russian exports to Turkey only went down by 1% because Turkey continued to import natural gas from that country, he explained. Asked if the Blue Current Project would be finalised during his visit to Moscow, Ecevit said that there was nothing to finalise. It was already going on at full speed. Russia had found the necessary financing and technology from Italy for this project, he stressed.

While all these are important breakthroughs in mutual relations, Turkey’s stance on the international political and strategic aspects of the region is even more important for both Washington and Moscow. The latest developments concerning Iraq and Chechnya are cases in point at the moment.

The Iraqi opposition still held a four-day meeting in New York between October 29^th and November 1^st, but it was a total fiasco. This meeting, known as the Iraqi National Congress (INC) held for the first time in seven years, was supposed to bring together 320 delegates from all 12 major opposition groups to Saddam Hussein, including 50-60 Kurds from autonomous northern Iraq. They represent groups ranging from the Iraqi Kurds through monarchists to Shi’ite Muslim groups from the south of Iraq.

The first blow to the meeting came from Tehran. The main Shi’ite group, the Iranian based SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) was the first to announce, contrary to its initial statement, that it would not go to New York. It announced that it had "turned down US aid and is wary of US influence".

Ten other opposition groups followed suit and boycotted the session, "dismissing the INC as ineffective and too reliant on Washington".

Nevertheless, the American organisers managed to bring together about 300 delegates – half from Iraq and the rest from Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Europe, USA and Canada. A New York datelined AP dispatch (1^st) reads, "As the conference neared on end Sunday night, delegates still hadn’t debated the proposed vision for the future – which includes a new constitution with a democratic government and respects human rights."

At the time of drafting this article, the conference had not yet elected a 51-member central committee to serve as a kind of Iraqi government or a mini-parliament in exile meeting twice a year. The American co-ordinators may eventually work out a face-saving arrangement for this conference and the INC, but it is apparent that the US Administration is becoming impatient with the so-called Iraqi opposition bickering within itself rather than fighting Saddam Hussein.

Leaving the details of this phenomenon to another Pulse article, it is a fact that Washington (at least the CIA) has adopted in recent years the policy of using Islamic fundamentalism as a tool to further disintegrate the Russian Federation and win over what they call NIS (newly independent countries).

To this background Ecevit’s Moscow visit is taking place. Because Turkey is not a superpower like the United States or the USSR, this visit cannot possibly be like Nixon’s visit to China or Gorbachev’s first visit to Washington, but can it not be at least like the one PM Ecevit paid to Moscow in June 1978?

At that time Ecevit went to Moscow and extended the Turkish-Soviet co-operation from the economic field to political and strategic area by signing the Turkish-Soviet Political Co-operation document that had no secret provisions, but secret interpretations.

It called for making the Turkish-Soviet frontier a frontier of friendship and co-operation. It stipulated to co-operate for having regimes "based on the people" in this region. The first victim of these rules was the Shah of Iran. Pulse wrote at that time (in its weekly supplement, Diplomat, of July 19^th, 1978) that unless the Shah stopped following policies against his people "the unrest (in Iran) will gain a racialist and sectarian flavour and bring to an end this last emperor of the world. And this will all happen comparatively swiftly in terms of world history, within a year or so." The Shah did not last a year. Exactly six months from that article he packed up and left his country to the Islamic Revolution.

Today the situation in the region is much more serious than in 1978. Turkey and the Russian Federation, as well as Iran and the newly independent central Asian republics are greatly disturbed by Wahabi fundamentalism and they see Saudi Arabia and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan as the main tools of implementing these unhealthy policies in Afghanistan and the Fergana Valley.