TURKPULSE No:91..........MARCH 16th, 2003
In regard to Turkey, the Bush Administration seems to understand the difference between parliamentary democracy and the Gulf sheikdoms or emirates, but it is doubtful that at least the Hawks of that administration have yet understood the difference between the reliable friendship of a democracy and the Victorian type “Obedient Servant”. American democracy now faces its own diplomats such as Brady Kiesling for this lack of understanding and will eventually come round to a reasonable point of a democratic practice. Certainly there is a lot to achieve for President Bush’s foreign colleagues such as PM Blair and President Sezer in helping Washington to choose the golden media in its current dynamic, indeed aggressive, foreign policy moves “for a new world” after 11 September. Last week’s developments were proof that they are trying to do their best in this regard. For the analysis of these latest developments from Turkey’s angle, please see the article below.
Neither the Churchill Government nor the British military under Marshall Montgomery were totally pleased with their dealings with the President Roosevelt Administration and American military under General Eisenhower during WWII, but they always found a way out in the end. During the purge of Europe from the Nazi occupation in the last two years of the war, Marshall Montgomery wanted to have an independent command of the British forces in Europe, but Washington weighed heavier. Eventually he sent a letter to the commander-in-chief of the allied forces, General Eisenhower, about the military operation and signed it off with the Victorian official correspondence ending of the inferior to the superior, “Your obedient servant”.
Moral strength is more important than material superiority
With today’s imminent war in Iraq, the British forces have been put under the American command in the south of the Gulf, but the Turkish Government is rightly objecting to it in the north, along with a number of other discrepancies between Ankara and Washington. This friction, which has been going on for months between these two “strategic allies”, reached the brinkmanship point last Friday (14th) with Washington ordering American warships to move from the Mediterranean off the Turkish mainland to the Red Sea and the American “flying fortresses,” i.e. the B1B heavy bombardment aircraft were deployed against Iraq for the first time.
As commented in last week’s Pulse article, experience of the last half a century proves that Turkey and the United States do eventually find a mutually satisfactory way out of their discrepancies, just as London and Washington do. The latest crisis on Friday is also bound to be solved, but not with the Victorian period understanding or in the American-Arab relations style, but within Turkey’s millenniums of experience as an independent and sovereign nation throughout the centuries. Otherwise, Turkey will certainly lose a lot, but the American losses will not be trifling even for a superpower. No high technology weapon is stronger than a dignified nation’s spirit of independence. Didn’t Mustafa Kemal, with a devastated country, win the independence war against the strongest nations of the world after WWI? Didn’t the Vietnamese nation drive a superpower using illegal chemical weapons out of their homeland? Didn’t the poverty stricken Afghan people make the Soviet invader repent for the day they were born because they attempted to occupy that country? The same fate is in store for President Bush in Iraq today no matter what an invincible armada he may be commanding at the moment, unless the Iraqi people prove to be devoid of any spirit of independence and they have so far proved to be solid and determined to fight a desperate war. But if that war prolongs with severe street fights the invader falls into the position of the desperate ones with their soldiers asking themselves “What am I doing in this Hell,” while the other side puts up with it as the innocent victim or martyr.
Turkish military presence in Northern Iraq is for peace, not invasion
The Erdogan-Gul-Arinc team is doing the right thing by hesitating to side with the stronger side in this imminent war because even though the material superiority is by far in the Americans’ favour, the exact opposite is the case for them as far as moral values and strength go. Paradoxically that is also the feeling of most of the British and American peoples.
The Turkish reluctance to be part of the aggression in the offing in Iraq is certainly reducing President Bush’s chances of a quick victory in Iraq. In return, they play the Kurdish card and say, as expressly said by the Deputy Secretary of State, Mark Grossman, over Turkish TV, that they would not allow Turkish military presence in Northern Iraq if Ankara does not side with the Americans. At the moment, this issue has become the critical key point for the Turkish military and civilian rulers.
The key point in this respect is the motive behind Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq shortly after the first Gulf War. The Turkish soldiers are there neither for land gains, nor for changing the local administration by placing a puppet to serve Ankara after the invasion. The mere reason is to prevent the ages long mass murders of the Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other elements of the Iraqi nation just as is happening in Palestine after the foundation of Israel.
During the hot war days with the PKK after the first Gulf War the Turkish Army evacuated some isolated villages and hamlets in the southeast because it was impossible to defend them against the terrorists armed to the teeth, Western media criticised Turkey at that time suspecting a population movement by replacing the Kurds with Turks in these critical areas. The accusation was wrong and Ankara had no other motive but the safety of these local people regardless of whether they say they are Turkish or Kurdish. Today the Government is extending financial assistance to these displaced people to return to their villages now that the PKK danger has been eliminated. The same is the case about the Turkish military presence in northern Iraq today. If and when peace is restored in Iraq the Turkish Army will only be too happy to return home from these foreign lands. At the moment they are fulfilling the healthy duty of preventing the Kurdish tribal chiefs, Barzani and Talabani from using their people for a war against the Arabs in the south under an American commander.
Turkey and the United States worked out three documents for the military, political and economic aspects of the potential war against Iraq. Colin Powell now says that the economic agreement is no longer on the table because Turkey is not allowing itself to be a springboard for an attack on its southern neighbour. For Turkey the most important aspects of this issue are the military and especially political agreements, which preserve Iraq’s territorial and national integrity with its natural resources belonging to the entire nation and not to a local group or race.
A new world order in the offing
The widespread feeling in the world is that President Bush’s prospective war attempt in Iraq is not an isolated event with a number of pretexts about WMD (weapons of mass destruction), but a much deeper rooted policy for creating a new world order in the Middle East, the Gulf, the Caucasus and Central Asia, to start with. As against this plan viewed as neo-colonialism by most people, Ankara’s ambition is to have access to the European Union and to implement its excellent efficiency in this part of the world by eliminating the frontiers for social, cultural, economic cooperation, indeed integration of neighbouring countries.
President Bush is inadvertently helping Ankara for the materialisation of this dream by making Bonn and Paris better understand Turkey’s importance in the current world balances. PM Tayyip Erdogan is preparing to pay his first official visit abroad to Brussels for an EU meeting on 23-24 March, after the vote of confidence, and it has the priority over Washington’s demand for a revision of the Turkish Parliament’s decision about no-war with Iraq. As PM Inonu said about the Johnson letter in June 1964, “If that is the case, the world collapses. A new world replaces it and Turkey takes its place in it.”
Is Inonu’s prophecy coming to life 40 years later? uras@ada.net.tr - March 16th, 2003