TURKPULSE No:58..........DECEMBER 16th, 2001
Thanks to tendencies of basic changes recently on the part of Washington in its policies closely concerned with Turkey, Ankara is making progress in its foreign policy moves in leaps and bounds. “Strategic cooperation” is a claim frequently exploited in Turkish-American relations, but it seems that relations are really heading in that direction this time. Is it an over optimistic and premature assessment remains to be seen, in view of Ankara’s bitter experiences in its dealings with the United States in the past. The following are the fields in which there are optimistic signs in both countries’ foreign policy orientations and expectations.
Turkey
is entering the New Year with the hope of reaping the fruits of the seeds it
has sown in the foreign policy domain especially in the last weeks of the
outgoing year. They cover a vast area ranging from the EU accession and its
military side ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) to Cyprus,
Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Gulf and, of course, the Middle
East.
The
outlook on the Middle East is bleak, but the Gulf is edging towards a
consensus between Ankara and Washington
“We
are unfortunately observing a kind of collective suicide in the Middle
East,” says
Foreign Minister Ismail Cem about the recent suicide bomb outrages in Israel
by fanatical Islamic terrorist groups and Israel’s tough response of
counter violence in Palestine as well as its decision to rupture relations
with Yasser Arafat. Ankara disagrees with Israel’s decision and announces
that Arafat is a responsible leader worthy of negotiating with for finding a
peaceful solution.
FM Cem
expects that this “madness” of violence will unfortunately continue for
a while before common sense prevails and calm is restored.
Arafat
closely missed a golden opportunity to reach a reasonable agreement for the
Palestine question with the Barak Government, he believes. Turkey is now
focusing attention on activating the world, particularly Washington, to put
an end to PM Sharon’s hard line policies that confirm the rule, “violence
breeds violence”, while inducing Arafat to put a check on the
extremist activists on his territory. It was an unfortunate development that
the United States used its veto right at the UN Security Council on December
15th on the Palestine issue, but Ankara still hopes that it is
not the end of the world.
On the
Gulf issue, the biggest concern of Turkey continues to be the possibility
that the second stage of the American fight against terrorism in the
post-September 11th period may appear as military action against
Saddam in Iraq, following the solution of the Taliban and Al Qaeda problems
in Afghanistan, which proved to be much quicker and easier than had been
expected as far as the military operation goes.
Turkish
diplomats were present at the American delegation’s recent contacts in
Northern Iraq under Ambassador Ryan Crocker, deputy assistant secretary of
U.S. State Department. The Crocker delegation tried to work out an accord
between the Kurdish tribal chiefs Massoud Barzani of the KDP and Jalal
Talabani of PUK. Ankara’s main concern was to secure the Turkmen’s
legitimate minority rights in these regions, while Washington was apparently
making soundings on “finishing the unfinished task”, ie getting rid of
Saddam in Iraq, after the Taliban in Afghanistan.
By all
indications, the United States would prefer this task to be carried out with
a coordinated uprising of the anti-Saddam dissidents both in the North by
the Kurds and in the South by the Shiites and supporting them from the air
with heavy bombardment, rather than an American ground operation against
Iraq. As the Americans are aware of Turkey’s key position in their success
for any military operation in Iraq they are trying to win Ankara over with
Crocker’s assurances that “The
United States is for a united Iraq within its existing frontiers.”
Meanwhile,
Washington seems to be changing its erroneous assessments of Iraq’s
demographic structure by counting the Turkmen of Iraq as Kurds. Official
State Department figures put the rate of the Turkmen community at 1% of
Iraq’s total population, while Turkish figures range between 8% and 10%.
(Issue
No.32, page 3 of March 30th, 2001.) According to
the CIA’s July 2001 estimate for Iraq’s population, it is 23,331,985,
composed of 75-80% Arabs, 15-20% Kurds and 5% Turkmen, Assyrians or other.
Into the bargain, semi-official American institutions or Think Tanks
supported by the State Department and the CIA, such as FPIF (Foreign Policy
In Focus), FAS (Federation of American Scientists), IRC (Inter-hemispheric
Resource Center) and IPS (Institute for Policy Studies) publish on their
websites maps of Turkey showing eastern and south-eastern Anatolia as
Kurdistan. IRC has famous CIA linked writers like Noam Chomsky among its
officials.
These
unhealthy American fallacies that have been poisoning Turkish-American
relations in recent decades are tending to be revised on recent days.
Ambassador Crocker called at the Turkmen Front of Iraq in Erbil on December
12th for talks for an hour and a half and promised to visit
TFI’s Ankara office two days later. At the talks with the MFA (Ministry of
Foreign Affairs) in Ankara the American delegation had frank consultations
with its Turkish counterpart headed by the MFA’s Middle East Chief,
Turkekul Kurttekin.
What the
Turkish side says at these talks is quite obvious. About the American claim
of 1% Turkmen in Iraq, Ankara repeats the Soviet joke of the cold war days
about western double standards, “Ireland
is more populous than China if you only count redheads.” And
they point to the least tampered census of Iraq in 1957 where the official
Turkmen figure was 567,000 (8.723%) of a total population of 6.5 million.
Will the
United States stop counting the Turkmen of Iraq as Kurds and fabricating
unrealistic figures about that country’s demographic structure remains to
be seen. But if there is any consensus between Ankara and Washington in
their Gulf and Iraq policies, these American figures will have to change
drastically and the Turkmen community has to be treated as one of the three
main racial entities of that country.
These
talks will continue in Ankara after the Southeast European Defence Ministers
meeting in Antalya on 19-20 December. Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence
Secretary, will proceed to Ankara for these talks after the Antalya
conference. The Ankara talks with Wolfowitz, who is known as one of the
hardest liners against Iraq in the Bush Administration, are expected to
cover the latest world developments after the September 11th outrage,
the global initiative to combat terrorism, related common strategies,
regional security and defence, security of borders and the controlling of
weapon making and purchases, with particular attention to WMD (weapons of
mass destruction) as this last point will be the main reason for
Washington’s second stage military action in the Gulf or Africa after
Afghanistan.
Turkey’s unique position in Afghanistan, despite appearances for opposite
The
widespread feeling of most observers about Turkey’s role in the Afghan
crisis is that it has missed the train in playing a substantial role against
the Taliban Administration as the military side of the crisis was solved
before Turkish soldiers went to Afghanistan, also given the fact that
Turkey’s protégé in this affair, the Uzbek General, Rashid Dostum has
expressed opposition to the interim Afghan Government worked out in Germany.
This belief is basically wrong for several reasons.
Above
all, the Dostum forces played a very important role in the victory of the
Northern Alliance against the Taliban and the Qaeda. In the capture of the
strategic town of Mazar-e Sharif, Turkish, French, British and Jordanian
forces were going to assist the Dostum forces, but Ankara refrained from
participating in that coalition not to leave the image that it has been
siding with one of the opposition groups, according to a MFA source.
From the
outset, Turkey was reluctant to appear as a combatant force in Afghanistan
and placed the emphasis on the peacekeeping thereafter as well as
humanitarian work for the rebuilding of a new Afghanistan.
Ambassador
James Dobbins, U.S. Special Representative to the Afghan Opposition, was in
Ankara on November 14th before leaving for Pakistan. A day
before, he was present at the Ecevit-Musharraf summit in Istanbul. The
Turkish and Pakistani leaders told him of a need to launch major
humanitarian assistance for the Afghan people. The outcome of these contacts
and especially Turkey’s effort was the opening of a corridor from
Uzbekistan into Afghanistan for this relief flow from western countries.
As a
matter of fact, Turkey had long been extending assistance to the Afghans,
even when Washington frowned upon Ankara’s cooperation with the Northern
Alliance for a secular front in Central Asia against Taliban fundamentalism
before September 11th. As
a result of this historic Turkish assistance to Afghanistan dating back to
Ataturk’s time in the twenties and thirties, the best-equipped hospital of
Afghanistan today is Turkish named after Ataturk in Kabul. There is another
Turkish hospital and a Turkish school in the North. Also, 15,000 displaced
Afghans have been sheltered in Turkish facilities in the North.
Turkey
is also represented at the UN commission concerned with Afghanistan as well
as the international economic assistance mechanism, which held meetings in
New York and Tokyo to channel the relief and reconstruction materials to
that country. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem says that these activities,
although they do not remain behind the other countries, are not adequate and
they are working on a plan for more comprehensive and coordinated Turkish
social work in Afghanistan. It will be launched before long as soon as the
new Turkish Ambassador arrives in Kabul on the following days.
As the
inheritors of a big empire, the Ottoman Empire, which achieved coordination
for centuries between its Muslim people and the Christian population that
was bigger in number than the Muslims, Turkey is now working on Cohesion of
Civilisations against certain western claims of Conflict of Civilisations
concerning the September 11th terrorism and pursuing an Islamic
terrorist hunt in the West.
As for
the military side of Turkish contributions to the Afghan crisis, a Turkish
general heads this coordination with the United States at an American
headquarters in Florida. But this coordination is not found sufficient by
Ankara and the failure to work out a more practical way about the chain of
command in the field in Afghanistan was the main reason for the delay in
shipping Turkish soldiers to Afghanistan. FM Ismail Cem told Reuters in New
York on November 14th that it would not be appropriate or
productive to have Turkish soldiers doing the main peacekeeping job in Kabul
when all the political and administrative decisions were taken by the United
States and a small nucleus of other countries. Turkey will not, therefore,
send forces to that country before it has a strong say in the future shaping
of Afghanistan. That is why during his visit to Ankara a couple of weeks
ago, Colin Powell was urged to hand to Turkey the command of the
peacekeeping force in Kabul, but the latest news from London shows the
tendency that this command will be given to the UK.
Given
the fact that the UK has been the first and strongest force to respond to
the American appeals for assistance in the military operation in
Afghanistan, one cannot with any fair play object to this choice, but Turkey
being a Muslim country with deep rooted historic ties with the Afghan people
in the military field since the beginning of the Republic, the advantage of
having Muslim Turkish soldiers in command is obvious.
Furthermore,
Turkey’s contributions to the American efforts in its fight against
terrorism are much more effective than is reflected to the media. According
to American sources, as many as 4000 Turkish military personnel are involved
in conducting tasks related to the ongoing US-led operations in Afghanistan.
Of these 4000 most are undertaking tasks at eight separate bases, including
Incirlik where U.S. and British aircraft are stationed as part of Operation
North Watch Force, which conducts operations over Northern Iraq.
American
sources told NTV TV channel that Turkish soldiers were involved in various
tasks such as command-control, search-rescue and logistics.
Added to
this total are an estimated 1500 to 2000 military personnel who are expected
to form a part of the international peacekeeping force to be deployed in
Afghanistan after fighting in that country ends.
In
other words, Washington has come to appreciate Turkey’s role in these
questions such as the Middle East, the Gulf and Central Asia much better
than most others and its impact is seen in the reshaping of the strategic
cooperation in the offing. As for the fruition of this Turkish-American
cooperation in Turkey’s Cyprus policy, the ESDP and accession to the EU, a
different article will deal with them. uras@ada.net.tr,
December 16th, 2001