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Politics : Foreign Affairs - No Political Rants -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul_philp who wrote (189)	3/3/2003 1:15:50 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 504

I've been reading the Turkish press and various regional news outlets over the weekend, trying to figure out what happened in Turkey. Clearly, Gul and/or Erdogan miscalculated, although how or why isn't exactly clear. The kindest explanation is that they were snookered by the members of their party. It appears that there is a bye-election on March 9, so maybe the party members were afraid they would not be re-elected? The least kind explanation is that they deliberately misled the US in order to give Saddam an advantage. And there is always plain old human error. Another element is the Kurdish-Turkish enmity. The Northern Iraqi Kurds don't want armed Turks, the Turks don't want armed Kurds. US military types with a lot of experience in Turkey are very complimentary to the Turkish military as very reliable and far more trustworthy than even the US itself. The Turks feel like they have been snookered by the US a lot, as we have seen in Afghanistan and in Iraq itself. Good intentions fall by the wayside as soon as the attention is turned elsewhere. I deeply regret that we have a habit of doing that, and wonder what it would take for us to change.