TURKPULSE No:149..........DECEMBER 23rd, 2005
With this timely announcement by the TGS, General Ozturk has helped eliminate the upheavals ahead in Turkey about the prospective top level “change of guards” in the Turkish Armed Forces and also eased speculations about the new President in 18 months, as the announcement has also included a categorical statement that General Ozturk was not interested in replacing President Sezer upon the latter’s retirement in May 2007.
At the moment the Turkish media is full of speculation over the possibility of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeeding President Sezer, but it is almost impossible as things stand today and the prime minister is fully aware of it.
As a matter of fact, Erdogan has no reason to wish to be the president as he is occupying the more important prime minister’s seat now and has ambitious plans to put this opportunity to good use for Turkey. He has so far done a good job in his just over three years in office, but needs another five years in power to complete the work at the end of his current 5-year term stretching to November 2007.
Furthermore, he knows that at this point no one can come to Cankaya as president with the ugly headscarf his wife is wearing and during a TV interview he said that he would not make an issue of it during President Sezer’s replacement in May 2007.
Still, no matter how determined Erdogan may be in avoiding disturbances over the headscarf issue at the presidential election ahead, some influential people in his party, namely the speaker of Parliament Bulent Arinc, seem to be equally determined to have a showdown with the prime minister over this sensitive issue. Erdogan is sitting firmly in the saddle, however, and there is no challenge to his choice in this or similar issues in the foreseeable future.
The real challenge to Erdogan is over foreign policy
It is because the foreign policy and security arrangements of the Erdogan-Gul team are being received with an ever-intensified frowning in Washington and experience shows that, in the long run, it doesn’t pay for a Turkish politician to be the American Disinformation Mechanism’s chief target. On the other hand, the United States is appreciating that it is paying too dear a price for its unwarranted interferences in Turkey’s domestic affairs as nothing much changes in Turkey’s “State policy” on main world affairs by the change of power no matter how drastic the change may be, as it was in the November 2003 elections.
A case in point is the aftermath of the Iraq war.
General Ozturk is regarded by Washington and its supporters in Turkey as a moderate and pro-American military leader. Yet it was in his time that the United States suffered the 1 March 2003 blow to their plans with the Turkish Parliament’s refusal to be a springboard for the invasion of Iraq. It was the General Ozturk team that Paul Wolfowitz bitterly complained about having failed to demonstrate “the necessary leadership” over the Turkish Parliament’s rebuttal.
U.S. Defence Secretary Rumsfeld keeps on repeating of late that they failed to establish law and order in Iraq during the occupation because Turkey did not allow the 4th U.S. Infantry Division to move into Iraq from the north and this gained time for the Saddam forces to reorganize in the “Sunni Triangle” for the current “insurgency” as the West calls it and for the “national resistance against the invasion forces,” as the Arabs see it.
Be it “terrorism-insurgence” or “national resistance” the armed struggle in Iraq may be drawing to an end as it proves to be too costly for both sides, particularly for the United States, as the insurgents do not have much to lose in this world with nearly half of the Iraqi people being unemployed with no social security since the American invasion.
Elections and “democracy” are only convenient tools in the hands of the Americans for their BME (Broader Middle East) policy and especially in Iraq today. This year, the Iraqi people went to the polls three times – on 30 January for the interim government, on 15 October for a constitutional referendum and on 15 December for the general elections. PM Erdogan questioned the legitimacy of the 30 January 2005 elections even before they were held and the Turkmen community of Iraq showered thousands of complaints about election frauds especially by the Kurds in Kirkuk and elsewhere. The Turkish opposition to the 15 October referendum was milder and less loud after Ankara obtained some safeguards about amending the Iraqi constitution by the new government after the 15 December elections in order to ward off excessive favour to the Kurds. Finally, the 15 December general elections could only be held thanks to Turkey’s key role in inducing the Sunnis, at several contacts in Baghdad and Turkey, to take part in the elections. The finishing touches to these Turkish efforts were given in Istanbul on 4 December when Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul came together with the American Ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, and a powerful Iraqi Sunni delegation led by Tariq Al Hashimi. They concluded an eight-point agreement for the safe and honest conduct of the elections and the outcome of this “Istanbul initiative” will be crucial in shaping the future formation of Iraq and the Gulf area.
Iraqi elections will determine the future of Turkish-American relations
Just like the 11-point 19 March 2003 Ankara agreement between Turkey and the United States with the participation of the then “Iraqi opposition” gave the green light to the American invasion of Iraq within the terms acceptable to Ankara as from the following day, so does the latest “Istanbul initiative” enable President Bush today to boast of “bringing democracy to Iraq with free elections”.
But is democracy really coming to Iraq with these elections or is it a part of the American game to use democracy as a tool in its BME policy as it has done in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and failed to do elsewhere when the role of the so called “Soros funds” and other election tricks of the Americans were understood by the other side?
The answer to this question is more important for Turkey than any other power because the allies of the Americans in Iraq, the Kurds, particularly the Barzani and Talabani tribes, have begun to play with the basic treaties that put an end to the Ottoman Empire and established the Republic of Turkey, i.e. the Treaties of Lausanne and Sevres.
It is common knowledge that Washington’s federal policy since the beginning of the last century has been the creation of a big Armenia covering most of Turkey’s present lands in Eastern Anatolia and an even bigger Kurdistan south of it, again including most of the Turkish Republic’s southeastern provinces today. Wilson’s 14 points and the Treaty of Sevres dictated to the Ottoman Empire on August 10th, 1920 as well as the American foreign policy performance in the Middle East and the Gulf throughout the century are proof enough to refute the claims of the conspiracy theory about it.
This American policy of creating big Armenian and Kurdish States in the region at the expense of Turkey by reviving a dead letter, the Treaty of Sevres, is continuing in all severity today and even though their disinformation agents in the Turkish media attempt to mock what they call the “Sevres paranoia”, Turkey’s security authorities have too many sound documents on it and they are now coming to daylight one by one.
While Turkey’s security forces regard it as a fact that this historic anti-Turkish policy still exists in Washington, they are also aware of the fact that the American rulers are not so daft as not to appreciate that it is impossible to revive the Treaty of Sevres today. The Americans are using these issues as bargaining chips to get concessions from Turkey for their national interests in the Gulf and Turkey is trying to coordinate its basic security goals with those of the Americans under today’s realities, without budging an inch on the basic security principles based on Ataturk’s reforms and principles. These mutual efforts have gone as far as Ankara’s changing Turkey’s “Red Line” in Iraq announced during the previous Ecevit Government’s time.
The realities behind changing the “Red Line” in northern Iraq
The Erdogan Government’s more flexible policies than the previous government on the Cyprus and Iraq questions were put into force thanks to General Ozturk’s more patient outlook than his colleagues led by the Ground Forces Commander General Yasar Buyukanit. That is why Washington is apprehensive that this policy may revert to the previous “lines” when General Buyukanit replaces General Ozturk in eight months.
The main characteristic of the Turkish changes concerns dealing with the federated Kurdish Administration under Mesoud Barzani in the North for solving some thorny questions between Turkey and Iraq such as the PKK terrorism and other security, trade and frontier issues, as the present American policy calls for.
The American apprehension about Turkey’s going back on this policy with the prospective top level change in the Turkish Armed Forces is as unfounded as the fear of most people in Turkey that the change in the Red Line has gone as far as Ankara’s acceptance of the Kurds’ proclamation of a UDI, tomorrow if not today. It is because the Turkish Armed Forces never alters its basic security policies and the occasional readjustments to the details of the policy never go as far as changing the main direction based on sound information and documents.
As for the sound information and documents in the case of Iraq, they show that Barzani is playing with fire and Turkey gives the benefit of the doubt to Washington that the United States is not behind it. Meanwhile, measures are being taken for the defeat of the adventurers if the Americans are really in this dangerous game and these measures result in the American intelligence and security chiefs rushing to Ankara as will be explained below. The outcome of the present elections in Iraq will be one of the main measuring yardsticks for Turkey in making up its mind for sure.
Certain official documents of the Barzani Administration and in particular “The Draft Constitution for the Kurdish Region” drawn up by Barzani with Washington’s blessing calls for Kirkuk as the capital of “Kurdistan” after the UDI and goes further and makes reference to the Treaty of Sevres.
Section III of this stillborn international document with its articles 62-63 and 64 creates an independent Kurdistan step by step just as most Turks believe the Americans are trying to do in northern Iraq today, through Barzani and Talabani.
Article 62 establishes a “commission sitting at Constantinople and composed of three members” from the UK, France and Italy, “to prepare a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates…” Article 63 reads, “The Turkish Government agrees to accept and execute the decisions of the Commission mentioned in Article 62 within three months from their communication to the said government.” And Article 64 gives the finishing touches to these activities carried out in accordance with point 12 of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The said article stipulates that “if the population of these areas desires independence from Turkey…Turkey herewith agrees to execute such a recommendation and to renounce all rights and title over these areas.”
The Americans may not be naïve enough to bring to life this dead letter today, but their Kurdish allies in Iraq, namely Barzani and Talabani, are and what they are doing under the protection of the occupation forces intensely annoy the Turkish people and authorities. The Turkish media and the Turkmen TV in Kirkuk print and broadcast the photographs of PKK and “Democratic Confederation” flags flying in Kirkuk under the noses of the American troops. The “Democratic Confederation” is an invention put forward last Nevrouz, March 21st, by the PKK Chief Abdullah Ocalan from his prison cell in Imrali about a confederation between Turkey and the Great Kurdistan State. This federation or confederation is not only his dream about the Republic of Turkey, but also that of the Iraqi Kurds for a big Kurdistan to be founded on the lands it will detach from Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Barzani talks of retaining the self determination right for a UDI when the time comes.
On the other hand, the Turkish Ambassador to Baghdad between 2002 and 2004, Osman Alifeyyaz Paksut, who is now a Constitutional Court justice, told Milliyet (18th) last week that under international law the Kurds have now lost the right of self-determination or independence from Iraq by actively and willingly taking part in all the elections and referendum in Iraq this year. Paksut said, “The right to independence is only possible if all the parties in the country agree to it with the provisions of the constitution permitting it. That is what happened in Czechoslovakia and the Czeck and Slovac peoples were separated. But there can be no independence with the wish of a minority group.” He also noted that the UN Charter safeguards the territorial integrity of countries. Everyone had to observe these legal terms. “The Kurds can only separate from Iraq with violence and clashes, but they would then have to put up with its consequences,” warned Paksut.
American intelligence rushes to Ankara over Turkey’s measures about Iraq
The new American Ambassador, Ross L. Wilson, arrived in Ankara with a promising pledge that he would know how to “keep my mouth shut” and inform Washington about what the Turkish community think by listening to them. President Sezer promptly gave him the audience for presenting his credentials in less than a week from his arrival.
Pulse wishes the Ambassador success in his term of office with a reminder that it is not so easy for the American Ambassador to be successful in Ankara unless there is a basic change of policy on the part the United States, given the fact that the patience of the Turkish nation and security forces are clearly coming to an end in view of Washington’s a century of “Sevres-Treaty-based” policies towards Turkey.
This fact was the main reason for the American intelligence chiefs’ rush to Ankara in recent days along with their side forces (such as the Israeli Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Den Haluz and the NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) because they have sensed certain facts about the measures Turkey has been taking against these wrong policies. While the FBI Director Robert Mueller and the CIA Director Porter Goss paid visits to Ankara one after the other with short intervals; Australia, the USA’s Intelligence Cooperation partner like the UK and Israel, announced its insertion of the PKK on its terrorist organizations list after PM Erdogan’s recent visit there. It is possible that some sophisticated intelligence devices the United States have been denying to supply to Turkey may come through Australia as a result of these contacts. As for certain press claims about intelligence cooperation between Turkey and the United States, it is simply balderdash. Far from it, the Americans have begun to complain that Al Qaeda has begun to set up secret terrorist cells in Turkey.
On the other hand, Turkey had long been complaining that PKK terrorists equipped with sophisticated C-3, C-4 plastic mines and explosives have been infiltrating into Turkey from northern Iraq. Even though a good number of them have been captured by the Turkish security forces and their attempts to infiltrate into the eastern Black Sea region were promptly frustrated, there may still be some terrorists disbursed throughout the country waiting for instructions for action. The Turkish side blames Washington for all this and the American side keeps on promising to come to grips with the PKK. General Buyukanit, who was in Washington last week while the CIA chief was in Ankara, revealed during his American visit the unbelievable news that NATO was not including the PKK on its terrorist list. It was news to even Deputy Chairman of the CHP, Onur Oymen, who was the Turkish Ambassador to NATO up until 3-4 years ago.
The military presses to make up for the lost years of Turkey’s security
Reflecting the views of the military, the former First Army Commander, General Hursit Tolon, who retired from the Army only three months ago, said at a panel discussion in Antalya on 25 November that Northern Iraq would become Turkey’s Vietnam if the necessary action was not taken in time. The 1990s were a lost time for Turkey, he said. “In that decade big powers restructured themselves in the scientific, political and economic fields and adopted new strategic targets. In this context, the United States launched the new world order and the Broader Middle East projects and Europe put into force the greater Europe idea within the Copenhagen criteria. Russia, China and Japan started work in the same direction. Turkey failed to put the 1990s to good use for such a strategic restructuring within new strategic targets.”
General Tolon further said, “Time is working against Turkey. If Turkey does not take the necessary measures, stands by and watches events and leaves the initiative to its enemies it will be too late when they deliver their final blows.” He urged that Turkey should eliminate uncertainties over foreign policy questions and other issues with the EU and continue on its path for accession only after such clarity is obtained. If Turkey achieved that, and even if the talks eventually broke down with the EU, “What Turkey would lose would be its beard and not its arm,” he concluded.
General Tolon’s finishing remark was a reference to Turkey’s famous Prime Minister Sokollu Mehmet Pasha of the 17th century. He said to the ambassadors of European powers which had burnt the Ottoman Navy in an ambush, “By conquering Crete we cut off your right arm. By burning our warships you shaved off our beard which will grow again and stronger.” uras@ada.net.tr – December 23rd, 2005
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all readers – Pulse