Turkish-US tensions cast dark clouds
By K Gajendra Singh
Expressions of regret over the "wrong" action by the United States after a joint inquiry by Turkish General Koksal Karabay and General John Silvester of NATO into the July 4 arrest and imprisonment of 11 Turkish commandos in Kurdish northern Iraq, has for the time being calmed the twitchy nerves of the two old allies.
And while the outgoing General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command did not bid his farewells in Turkey, his successor, General John Abizaid, visited Ankara on July 20 in an effort to pacify Turkey. After this visit, and the earlier one of General James Jones, the two sides reached agreement on four points:
The Turkish Kurdish terrorist organization Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)-Kadek will be eradicated in northern Iraq
The US will allow the dispatch of three Turkish brigades to Iraq
Channels will be set up between Turkey and the US to prevent events such as the detention of the 11 Turkish soldiers
Turkey will take part in the rebuilding of Iraq.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was due to leave for Washington on Tuesday to follow up on this agreement.
The latest crisis in Turkey's relations with the US - which have been lukewarm ever since Ankara denied Washington use of its soil to send troops into northern Iraq - is a reflection of the fast deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq.
According to Turkish media, a few US soldiers entered a Turkish liaison office in Sulaimaniya, and after having tea drew their guns. About 100 US troops then barged into the building and handcuffed three Turkish officers and eight non-commissioned officers, covered their heads with sacks like prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and took them to Baghdad. They also took away many dossiers.
Despite the subsequent furor, the soldiers were only released after 60 hours. From Turkish President Ahemt Sezer downwards, political parties and leaders, the media and the man in the street, there were expressions of horror, public statements seething with anger and protest marches in many Turkish cities against the humiliation inflicted on Turkey's highly respected armed forces.
The US action really hurt the sensitivities of a proud nation, which threatened retaliation if there were a repetition. Now, a letter dated July 14 from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayep Erdogan, only partially disclosed, but apparently justifying the US action, might keep the crisis simmering.
The US's relations with Turkey (and others) seems to have become a function of the ground situation in Iraq and the undiplomatic and sometimes abrasive interventions by Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. Then it is left to the State Department and the Turkish Foreign Ministry to clean up the mess, ease tempers and repair the ruffled alliance.
The Chief of General Staff, General Hilmi Ozkok, was shown on Turkish TV haranguing US ambassador Robert Pearson over the detention of the Turkish soldiers. He said, "Unfortunately, this incident created the biggest crisis of confidence between the two countries." Believing that it was not US policy, Ozkok added that the US administration had much to do to repair the honor of the Turkish armed forces and Turkish national pride, which were as important as Turkish-American relations. He hoped that the problem would be resolved and "our national pride" assuaged.
Justice minister and government spokesman Cemil Cicek said that Turkish troops would not withdraw from northern Iraq. "Iraq is still unstable and a land of baseless accusations, lies and provocations and the only way to end this chaos is cooperation and constant dialogue between allied countries. There is still an authority vacuum in Iraq," Cicek added.
An agitated Erdogan, who spoke to US Vice President Dick Cheney, was told that the latter was sorry, according to the Turkish press. Gul and others called for an apology. "It was the United States that lost in the Iraq incident, not Turkey," Gul told the Turkish parliament, referring to the harm done to the US's image in a traditionally pro-US Muslim country.
The Milliyet's respected and pro-US veteran columnist Sami Kohen commented that the "Rambo-like action" had inflicted a deep wound on the Turkish-US relationship. "The behavior of the Rambos has caused great indignation not only in the ranks of the Turkish army but in the general public as well," he added. "This grave incident between two allied countries was unprecedented in the history of NATO; and the alliance should draw conclusions from it."
On the other hand, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a daily press briefing that the US military had acted on reports about possible illegal activities in Sulaimaniya. Boucher added that the US had information that raised serious concerns about the activities of Turkish forces in the area. But he declined to give any details. "We have discussed these matters with the Turkish side and the US and Turkish military and civilian officials will be undertaking a joint investigation to look into all the facts of the mater." It appears that the action had been cleared with Pentagon, which has closely watched the Turkish military presence in northern Iraq.
Washington's justifications were vague, and according to unconfirmed Iraqi Kurdish intelligence claims, the 11 soldiers taken into US custody were part of a plot to assassinate the new Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, which the governor himself described as improbable and Turks as "absolute nonsense".
Even before the pre-war controversy over US troops using Turkey as a launching pad, US-Turkish relations had been tested by the overwhelming victory in November of Erdogan's Justice and Development party (AKP) , which has Islamic antecedents. The inexperienced party leadership has also been in constant conflict with Turkey's secular elite, led by its powerful and autonomous armed forces.
The AKP claims to be a moderate and centrist party, but its Islamist roots make it suspect, certainly in US eyes. Erdogan was initially barred from becoming a member of parliament and prime minister because of a previous conviction for reciting an Islamic poem that included the lines, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Only after a constitutional change was rammed through parliament with a two-thirds majority was he able to take charge.
The strained relationship erupted into a full blown crisis on March 1 when the Turkish parliament rejected a government resolution to allow the US to use Turkish territory as a base to open a second front in north Iraq. Matters were made worse by what the Turks felt was American bullying during negotiations over the terms of the proposed deal and its patronizing and sometimes scurrilous coverage in the US media. Washington had offered an aid package of US$15 billion, which could have been leveraged into loans worth $26 billion. But the terms and conditions of the proposed agreement were unclear and the US attitude was brash.
The US took Turkey for granted, unlike the 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war, when then president George Bush Sr pampered Turkish president Turgut Ozal with telephone calls and an invitation to the White House. But most of the verbal promises made to Turkey were forgotten after the war.
In any case, the parliament vote was simply a reflection of strong public opposition to the war in Turkey. Polls showed that 90 percent of Turks were opposed to a war against Muslim Iraq, perhaps the only traditional friend among neighbors. The ruling AKP made intense but futile efforts to avoid a war. No wonder, then, that the parliament failed to adopt the resolution, but by three votes only. The US was very much miffed. Later, in March, parliament did vote for a resolution to allow coalition aircraft to carry troops into Iraq and to use Turkish air space to reach Iraqi targets or for humanitarian and other causes. As a contingency measure, the Bush administration did provide in its budget a $1 billion aid package for Turkey.
Soon after the sudden collapse of Iraqi resistance at the gates of Baghdad on April 9, neo-conservatives embedded in the Pentagon and elsewhere came down heavily on Turkey for its March refusal. They recalled that US ships waiting to unload military hardware at the Turkish Mediterranean port of Iskendrun had to be re-routed to the Red Sea and the Gulf, a delay that had then appeared critical. When US land forces became bogged down on the way to Baghdad, neo-conservatives faced the flak back home, with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz getting most of it.
Not surprisingly, then, the first tongue lashing after the war's end came from Wolfowitz, who asked Turkey to admit to its mistake and take remedial measures. He was harsh on the Turkish armed forces, berating them for not pressurizing parliament harder to vote for the resolution and not "playing the strong leadership role that we would expect".
In a CNN-Turk television interview, Wolfowitz said that turning a new page in relations depended on Turkey's close cooperation in Iraq as well as towards Iran and Syria, which the US accused of sponsoring terrorism, and with whom the Turkish government was improving relations. "Let's have a Turkey that steps up and says, 'We made a mistake, we should have known how bad things were in Iraq, but we know now. Let's figure out how we can be as helpful as possible to the Americans.' I'd like to see a different sort of attitude than I have yet detected." Others in Washington conveyed the same message, albeit a bit more politely.
Turkish leaders rebuffed Wolfowitz's criticism. "Turkey, from the very beginning, never made any mistakes, and has taken all the necessary steps in all sincerity," said Erdogan. Government spokesman Cemil Cicek said that the US should have admitted its mistakes because Washington had not fully kept its promises to Turkey, which cost it tens of billions in US dollars, in return for its cooperation in the 1991 Gulf War.
Deniz Baykal, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party (RPP) in parliament, said, "Turkey is a democratic country and everybody who appreciates the functioning of true democracy should respect this."
Now, with the almost mission impossible in living up to its pre-war promises to the people of Iraq, and with US soldiers being killed on a daily basis, the US administration has sobered up somewhat and there has been some rethinking. As such, there have been conciliatory statements from both sides. Those from the Turkish side have come from Gul, secular political party leaders, the establishment and the media, but not from the armed forces.
Brief history of the alliance
Turkey, which was forged by Kemal Ataturk out of the ashes of the Ottoman empire, which had sided with Germany in World War I, remained neutral during World War II. After the war, the Soviet Union laid claim to Turkey's two provinces in the northeast and wanted a revision of the Montreux convention regime for the Bosporus straits. Turkey then sought shelter under the US umbrella. It began with the Truman Doctrine in 1947, which promised protection for Turkey and other countries threatened by the Soviet Union. Turkey sent troops to fight along with US troops in the Korean war, and formally joined NATO in 1952.
During the Cold War, Turkey, with its well-trained armed forces of nearly a million, acted as NATO's aircraft carrier against the USSR-led communist bloc and provided bases for flights and a direct defense line against hostile states such as Bulgaria ,Georgia, Armenia and Romania. Incirlik air base in the south of Turkey, important for the US and NATO war planes throughout the Cold War, after the 1991 Gulf War provided a platform for US and British planes to patrol the "safe haven" for the Kurds in northern Iraq and save them from the excesses of Saddam Hussein's rule.
Even after the fall of the Berlin wall, Turkey remained geostrategically important for the US and Europe. It borders Greece, Bulgaria and Romania in southeastern Europe and is lapped by the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Mediterranean in Asian Anatolia. It is at the crossroads of Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and the Caspian basin, the Arab world and Iran. Although 99 percent Muslim, it is a secular democratic republic and a buffer between Europe and a Middle East in turmoil.
Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, during his June visit on July 8, Turkey's Undersecretary for foreign affairs, Ugur Ziyal, stressed that his country and the US shared a common strategic vision in "fighting terrorism, settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, reforming the Middle East, uniting Europe, ending conflicts in the Caucasus, consolidating the independence of Central Asian republics and stabilizing the Balkans".
In June, NATO designated the NATO base at Izmir on Turkey's Mediterranean coast as the command center of its new south wing air operations.
North Iraq and Turkey's Kurdish problem
Turkey has serious problems with its own Kurds, who form 20 percent of the population. A rebellion since 1984 against the Turkish state led by Abdullah Ocalan of the Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has cost over 35,000 lives, including 5,000 soldiers. To control and neutralize the rebellion, thousands of Kurdish villages have been bombed, destroyed, abandoned or relocated; millions of Kurds have been moved to shanty towns in the south and east or migrated westwards. The economy of the region lies shattered. With a third of the Turkish army tied up in the southeast, the cost of countering the insurgency at its height amounted to between $6 billion to $8 billion a year. The rebellion has died down after the arrest and trial of Ocalan, in 1999, but not eradicated. After a court in Turkey in 2002 commuted to life imprisonment the death sentence passed on Ocalan and parliament granted rights for the use of the Kurdish language, some of the root causes of the Kurdish rebellion have been removed.
But clashes still occur, and the PKK - now also called Kadek - has shifted almost 4,000 of its cadres to northern Iraq. They have refused to lay down arms as required by a new "repentance law", now under discussion in the Turkish parliament. They have also ensconced themselves on the border between Iraq and Iran. The US's priority to disarm PKK cadres has not been very high. In fact, the US wants to reward Iraqi Kurds, who have remained peaceful while the rest of the country has not.
But Henri Barkey, a Kurdish expert at Lehigh University in the US, feels the urgent need for close cooperation between Turkey and the US. "On its own, even a liberal amnesty is unlikely to be enough to break up the diehards," he says. "It must be backed up by the threat of force, US force." Barkey adds that "Centcom's harsh treatment of the Turkish soldiers shows just how angry it is". "This is not an atmosphere conducive to sympathy for Turkey's very real military concerns. The message here is very clear: 'We'll deal with your PKK, but only when it is convenient for us'." But the attack and death of two US soldiers on July 20 in the to date safe and peaceful north Iraq is a bad omen and could lead to some rethinking.
Iraqi Kurds have been ambivalent to the PKK, helping them at times. Ankara has entered north Iraq from time to time - despite protests - to attack PKK bases and its cadres, and it keeps between 5,000 to 10,000 troops in the region. Ankara has also said that it would regard an independent Kurdish entity as a cause for war. It is opposed to the Kurds seizing the oil centers of Kirkuk or Mosul, which would give them financial autonomy, and this would also constitute a reason for entry into north Iraq. However, neither has happened so far, and after the quick collapse of Saddam's forces, the Turks have muted their talk of such "red lines", that is, seizure of oil fields or autonomy.
The roots of the Kurdish problem were sown during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Turkish Republic after World War I when the Christian West used the stick of religion and nationalism to break up the empire during the 19th and early 20th century. The first to leave were the Balkan Christians, and in the late 19th century it was feared that even the Kurds might desert, like the Egyptians. But the last straw was the revolt by Muslim Arabs, for the Ottoman Caliphs were always Muslims first and then Turks.
Hence, Turks manifest a pervasive distrust of autonomy or models of a federal state for Iraqi Kurds. It would affect and encourage the aspirations of its own Kurds. It also revives memories of Western conspiracies against Turkey and the unratified 1920 Treaty of Sevres forced on the Ottoman Sultan by the World War I victors which had promised independence to the Armenians and autonomy to Turkey's Kurds. So Ataturk opted for a unitary state and Kurdish rebellions in Turkey were ruthlessly suppressed.
Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War
The 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war proved to be a watershed in the violent explosion of the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey. A nebulous and ambiguous situation emerged in north Iraq when, at the end of the war, Bush Sr encouraged the Kurds (and the hapless Shi'ites in the south) to revolt against Saddam's Sunni Arab regime. Turkey was dead against it, as a Kurdish state in the north would give ideas to its own to Kurds.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Gulf were totally opposed to a Shi'ite state in south Iraq. The hapless Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites paid a heavy price. Thousands were butchered. The international media's coverage of the pitiable conditions, with more than half a million Iraqi Kurds escaping towards the Turkish border from Saddam's forces in March 1991, led to the creation of a protected zone in north Iraq, later patrolled by US and British war planes. The Iraqi Kurds did elect a parliament, but it never functioned properly. Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani run almost autonomous administrations in their areas. They made forced handshakes under US pressure. This state of affairs has allowed the PKK a free run in north Iraq.
But many Turks still remain fascinated with the dream of "getting back" the Ottoman provinces of Kurdish majority Mosul and Kirkuk in Iraq. They were originally included within the sacred borders of the republic proclaimed in the National Pact of 1919 by Ataturk and his comrades, who had started organizing resistance to fight for Turkey's independence from the occupying World War I victors. So it has always remained a mission and objective to be reclaimed some time. The oil-rich part of Mosul region was occupied by the British forces illegally after the armistice and then annexed to Iraq, then under British mandate, in 1925, much to Turkish chagrin. Iraq was created by joining Ottoman Baghdad and Basra vilayats (provinces). Turks also base their claims on behalf of less than half a million Turkomen (ethnic Turks living in Iraq), who lived in Kirkuk with the Kurds before Arabization changed the ethnic balance of the region.
After 1991, Turkey lost out instead of gaining. The closure of Iraqi pipelines, economic sanctions and the loss of trade with Iraq, which used to pump billions of US dollars into the economy and provide employment to hundreds of thousands, with thousands of trucks roaring up and down to Iraq, further exacerbated the economic and social problems in the Kurdish heartland and the center of the rebellion.
The 1980s war between Iraq and resurgent Shi'ites in Iran helped the PKK to establish itself in the lawless north Kurdish Iraq territory. The PKK also helped itself with arms freely available in the region during the eight-year long war.
It is factors such as these that make Turkey, and the United States for that matter, very anxious, and which provide all the more reason for the two countries to cooperate, rather than to confront each other if they want to avoid the unrest that grips much of Iraq from spreading to the north.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.
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