It's complicated :)
The *former* Turkish government - despite the near total opposition of their population to a new war... (after all, the first war and the past 8 years of blockade have cost them billions in lost trade) - was attempting to resist U.S. war plans diplomatically, but had privately assured Washington that they would be no problem with us using our two critical air bases in the south east of Turkey.
Those bases are where every flight enforcing the northern "no-fly zone" has launched from since the last war....
Ground resupply through Turkey will also be necessary if the Kurds are to be a credible cat's paw for us in the North... capable of driving on Saddam's forces.
Now, Turkey wants many things from us:
They want an end to this interminable state of blockade, which has damaged them nearly as much as it has Iraq.
They want U.S. support to help get them into the E.U. (they want us to pressure the Europeans to set a date by December for talks on letting them join... The Europeans just agreed to terms for enlargement a month ago - but left Turkey out.)
They want a guarantee that we won't permit the Kurds in Iraq to declare an independent nation (they threaten to go to war with the Kurds if they do declare). Of course, this is a promise we will make... but self-determination will come for the Kurds anyway.
The first thing the Kurds will do is take the oil fields in the north so that their new nation will have serious income... then they will likely agree to some kind of fig leaf of a U.S. negotiated "autonomy" deal with whatever weak government we install in Baghdad. Finally - on some pretext - they will declare and independent Kurdish nation, a Democracy, the first Kurdish nation in history.
We will have to keep the Turks off their back (Turkey fears the pull a Kurdish nation will have on it's own Kurds in the East of Turkey... and they also fear that Iraqi Kurds will take control of oil fields that - in their opinion - should belong in a post Saddam Iraq to the Turkmen, their ethnic kinsmen in Iraq.)
Now, the *NEWEST* complication is the just elected new government in Turkey - an Islamic party is about to take over, and, despite having to be on their toes all the time in officially secular military-dominated Turkey, if anything they are even LESS for a war against Iraq than the previous government.
Still, if we can deliver a deal on E.U. membership (Turkey is in NATO, not the E.U.) we should have their cooperation for a war... but if we can't pressure the Europeans, Turkey may not be willing to accept empty promises. |
