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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (95339)	4/21/2003 11:31:00 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

Methinks the NYTimes didn't want to know, because they were perversely insisting that Bush was acting unilaterally. Well, they were simply echoing what the French refer to as la pensée unique. Which is no better because it shows it shows lack of real newsgathering in that regard. Why look in the Times if they just repeat accepted truisms ? One thing I picked up in the article was this : Turkish officials say a new postwar security arrangement with Washington will emerge. "These issues will define a new relationship and a new U.S. presence abroad," said Faruk Logoglu, Turkey's ambassador to the United States. "But the need for an American presence in the region will not be diminished." If that isn't a refreshing difference from the rhetoric from the Arab Street - and this is Turkey which elected a Muslim political party. We might see a Turkish head of state visit the White House before another French one does at this rate. I thought that cited article was good because it was reporting background about what was going on without the obvious spin for a change.

To: Ilaine who wrote (95339)	4/21/2003 11:35:01 AM
From: BigBull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Turkish turnaround? (Part 1)I am posting several articles on possible thawing of Turkish/US and comments by Turkish officials that indicate to me that now the US is dealing with the Turks from a position of strength and that that position may be having salutory effects. The first article describes the failed Turkish pre war policiies re the US (imo folks should read between the anti US lines in this one) The second is a Time article indicating that the Turks recognize the "new reality" and want in with the winner. The third are recent conciliatory statements by Erdogan and Gul. Turkey’s Iraq odyssey ends in tragedy THE DAILY STAR April 18, 2003 puk.org For the last 10 years, Turkey has been busy building a new reality in northern Iraq and in the country altogether to avoid negative consequences similar to those that came to light after the 1991 Gulf War. That was why Ankara established strong economic links with Baghdad and a permanent military presence in northern Iraq. The Turks fell into the habit of sending their troops over the border to chase rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters, as well as to dissuade the Kurds from even thinking of founding their own independent state. Turkey used the estimated 1 million Iraqi Turkmens as a bargaining chip to stifle Kurdish ambitions. With the eruption of the latest Iraq crisis, Ankara drew several lines in the sand: it declared it would not tolerate the seizure of the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk by the Iraqi Kurds; that it would oppose Kurdish control of Iraq’s rich northern oil fields; that it would oppose Kurdish domination of its Turkmen allies; and, finally, that it would oppose the founding of any sort of independent Kurdish entity (including a federal arrangement) in northern Iraq. When talks about opening a second front against Iraq began between Ankara and Washington, the Turks introduced more conditions: the US must not provide the Kurds with heavy weapons, and that the Kurds are prevented from taking part in fighting against Iraqi forces. These talks ultimately failed when the Turkish Parliament rejected a government bill asking it to agree to the deployment of American forces on Turkish soil in preparation for moving into northern Iraq. The Turkish refusal was originally the result of American failure to provide sufficient guarantees about the role the Kurds would play in a future Iraq. The Turks were suspicious that the Americans had their own hidden agenda concerning the future of Iraq that of the north especially and that they had already promised the Kurds an independent state of their own. Ankara realized Washington’s calculations on the Kurdish question were different to Turkey’s. Ankara has always considered the issue of northern Iraq from the standpoint of its own 12-million-strong Turkish Kurd population. Washington, however, looked at the issue from a different angle that of its effect on the Iraqi situation and the future of the country after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Washington saw the Kurds as their most reliable allies in Iraq over the last several years. They were the only players on the Iraqi stage who could be used to pressure and threaten others. Washington therefore wanted to guarantee that the Kurds could take part in future negotiations from a position of strength. That, consequently, was why the Americans allowed the peshmergas to capture Mosul and the strategically and ethnically crucial city of Kirkuk, and to seize control of the whole of Iraqi Kurdistan. The rich northern Iraqi oil fields are now in Kurdish hands. The Kurds, moreover, have the only organized military force in Iraq at the moment, after the collapse of the Iraqi Army. In all this, Washington has merely been rewarding its faithful Kurdish allies. The Kurds will become America’s tools for carrying out US policies in Iraq. That was