Cool in Ankara: A partnership under
strain By M K Bhadrakumar
Conventional wisdom holds that any serious
US diplomacy with any of Iran's neighbors at this
time would have something to do with the US-Iran
standoff. So the red-carpet welcome extended to
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev by the White
House this week underscored the extent to which
Washington is prepared to go to woo Iran's
neighbors.
Until very recently, Aliev
figured prominently on the US "watch list" of
dictators dotting the post-Soviet landscape.
Indeed, hardly four months ago, Baku was paranoid
that Washington was
plotting another "color
revolution", this time in Azerbaijan.
But
now it is time to kiss and make up, which
Washington did without any hesitation. Azerbaijan
happens to be very valuable real estate for any US
operations directed against Iran. Iranian
national-security chief Ali Larijani alleged in an
interview with the
Arab media earlier in the week
that US intelligence operatives have already begun
working out of Azerbaijan.
The warmth
extended to Azerbaijan contrasted sharply with the
coolness in Washington's relations with another
important regional player. The Iran nuclear issue
indeed figured in the talks during US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Turkey on
Tuesday. But the two erstwhile Cold War allies
agreed to disagree. As soon as Rice wound up her
visit, Ankara accepted a pending proposal from
Tehran for consultations with Larijani.
Iran's chief negotiator on the nuclear
issue, Ali Larijani is expected to visit Ankara
next Wednesday. (This is in addition to the likely
meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
on the sidelines of the Economic Cooperation
Organization summit meeting scheduled to take
place in Baku next week. Ankara also hosted
Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for a
two-day visit just before Rice arrived.)
The Rice visit throws light on the
differing priorities of Turkey and the United
States at the present juncture of Middle East
politics. Even the prominent Turkish commentator
Mehmet Ali Birand, a sincere proponent of
Turkish-American friendship, had to admit, "The
way Ankara and Washington see Hamas is worlds
apart. The Justice and Development Party ...
believes constantly slamming Hamas and cutting aid
will not lead to anything concrete and instead
will result in an escalation of violence."
On Iran, Birand pointed out, there is
broad agreement between Turkey and the US that
Iran should not become a nuclear-weapons state.
But having said that, he added, "The difference of
opinion is how Iran can be stopped. Are aggressive
methods like embargoes, isolation and military
intervention the way to go, or is diplomatic
persuasion preferable?
"Ankara wants
diplomacy, while the US prefers more aggressive
approaches ... Turkey is worried about the US
policies in the region that are based on trying to
isolate countries. Efforts to isolate Syria, Hamas
and Iran are causing consternation in Ankara. The
basis reason this is so is the fact that such
policies will shut down all of Turkey's links to
Central Asia."
Conceivably, for Rice's
Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul, the priority in their talks in Ankara on
Tuesday was not the Iran nuclear issue. The top
agenda item in Turkish-American relations, as one
views it from Ankara, happens to be Iraq.
Specifically, this concerns the serious escalation
in Kurdish violence in Turkey's southeastern
provinces in recent weeks.
The German
newspaper Der Spiegel gave a colorful twist to the
situation by writing last week that "the
government in Ankara is worried about a Kurdish
intifada". But the realities on the ground are
grave enough for Ankara to be seriously concerned.
Fifteen soldiers, four police officers and more
than 40 Kurdish militants have reportedly been
killed in the recent outbreak of violence. There
were eight incidents of terrorist bombings that
left two people dead and 47 injured.
Turkish media reports in recent days
pointed toward substantial reinforcements of the
security forces in the border region with northern
Iraq. Some reports put the figure of Turkish troop
deployment at 250,000. The Turkish Daily News
quoted military officials as putting the figure at
about 120,000 troops. Naturally, considerable
speculation followed whether Turkish forces might
resort to "hot pursuit" of Kurdish guerrillas into
their sanctuaries in northern Iraq. Turkey's chief
of general staff, General Hilmi Ozkok, insisted
that Turkey's national-security concerns could not
be compromised in any way.
Talking to
journalists in Ankara last Sunday, General Ozkok
said, "Turkey is a sovereign country. If
conditions warrant it, Turkey would use its rights
just like any sovereign country. The country from
where the attacks are made [Iraq] should take
measures and prevent that. If they don't or if the
[attacks] cannot be prevented, then those
conditions ['hot pursuit'] will be considered."
On the eve of Rice's visit to Ankara,
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani voiced concern over
these Turkish troop deployments. Gul left no one
in doubt about Turkey's expectations. At a joint
press conference with Rice after the talks in
Ankara, Gul said Turkey looked forward to "more
cooperation" from the US in the fight against
terrorism.
"We have more expectations from
the American side," Gul said. He stressed, "The
[Kurdish] terrorist organization is benefiting
from a vacuum in northern Iraq, and they have
started to inflict harm, and I have shared these
views with my colleague."
In her response,
Rice was non-committal. She treaded old ground by
stressing the importance of intelligence sharing
and "other means to prevent any vacuum from being
used as a way to inflict harm here in Turkey". On
the other hand, Rice exhorted Ankara on the "need
to work with the new Iraqi government ... We have
had a trilateral [US-Turkey-Iraq] mechanism to
work on this issue, and I hope that we can
invigorate it when there is a new Iraqi
government."
Gul was clearly unimpressed
by Rice's cool response. He went on to elaborate
Turkey's concerns in a political idiom that one
might hear from Moscow or Beijing: "Now, fighting
against terrorism is a duty for us all, and as we
fight against terrorism, we see that there are
different kinds of terrorist organizations, and
the terrorist organization that we are concerned
about and the terrorist organization that our
allies may be concerned about may be different
from one another. International solidarity is
important here, so if we take one terrorist
organization more seriously as opposed to another
one, that may create some sort of [double
standards] in the fight against terrorism in the
international platform. And Turkey has had a lot
of [double standards] as regards PKK [Kurdish
Workers' Party] terrorism."
The foreign
minister said there are thousands of Kurdish
terrorists in northern Iraq and "they are able to
freely move around, and that area has become a
training ground for them ... they have begun
stepping up their activity inside Turkey ... And,
of course, like every country, Turkey will take
her own precautions, and as we take our
precautions, international relations and relations
with our neighbors are very important for us. And
within that framework of course, we will - we have
a lot of expectations from the coalition forces
... And what we are doing is to establish better
control of our borders ... our job is to protect
our own soil ... And the security forces are
taking precautions and measures, and this is not
something new. It's been done in previous years.
So, otherwise, we have no claim on anybody's soil,
on any country's soil for that matter."
Rice remained icy cool, nonetheless. She
insisted the US was "active in helping" Turkey.
Then she warned, "But of course we want anything
that we do to contribute to stability in Iraq, not
to threaten that stability or to make a difficult
situation worse. And that is why a cooperative
approach to this problem, cooperation between
Iraq, Turkey and the coalition is very important,
and it's that cooperation that I think we're both
committed to."
No sooner had Rice left
Ankara, however, that she changed her earlier
travel plan to proceed to Sofia, Bulgaria, and
instead headed for Baghdad, where the Iraqi
government delivered a protest note to Ankara
alleging Turkey's "hot pursuit" into northern Iraq
and conveying concern over the Turkish troop
buildup on the Iraqi border regions.
The
growing perception in Turkish opinion is that the
United States' Kurdish allies in northern Iraq are
actively helping the PKK guerrillas, and that the
US itself is "the master of all puppets in Iraq" -
as the Turkish Daily News sardonically commented
on Rice's visit. According to media reports, after
the Turkish troop movements, PKK leaders in
northern Iraq have been spirited away to "safe
areas in Baghdad" - presumably, so that they will
be beyond the long arm of the Turkish military.
For its part the US seems to be sending an
unambiguous message to Ankara - friendship is a
two-way street. If "strategic partnership" were to
make allowance for differences of opinion
regarding the Iran nuclear issue or Hamas and
Syria, can it be any different apropos the fight
against terrorism?
But the issue is not a
limited question of Turkey's "hot pursuit" of
Kurdish guerrillas. There is a fundamental clash
of interests between the US and Turkey over the
future of Iraq. There is no country that has such
a high stake in the preservation of Iraq's
territorial integrity as Turkey. But in fact Iraq
is disintegrating - and Turkey sees that happening
day by day.
More important, Turkey is not
unaware that a debate has begun in the US about
how to cope with a splintering of Iraq. The debate
is no longer an esoteric intellectual exercise by
pro-Kurdish opinion-makers like Peter Galbraith.
The strategic community is getting involved -
including pro-Israel neo-cons.
Turkey's
interest in the former Iraqi prime minister
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the radical Shi'ite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Arab Sunnis arguably
devolved on a common denominator - their
commitment to Iraqi identity in traditional
nationalist terms. Turkey views with consternation
that the Kurdish north is already acting as if an
independent Kurdistan is a reality.
Ankara
suspects that the Kurdish leadership's real reason
for insisting on removing Jaafari from the post of
prime minister was that he wanted to pursue a
"recentralization strategy" in the direction of a
unified Iraq with the support of Sadr and Arab
Sunni groups. This explained Ankara's decision to
host a visit by Jaafari in March and even to
contemplate a visit by Sadr to Turkey - Talabani
could barely disguise his anxieties about what
Turkey was up to. (The Washington Post reported
that in the recent days the coalition forces cited
units of Sadr's militia for the first time in
Kirkuk.)
In this context, the real
intentions of the US in rooting for Jaafari's
removal must be viewed by Turkey as serving
Kurdish interests. The Kurdish groups are
understandably opposed tooth and nail to any
restoration of Baghdad's authority. They would
prefer a weak central authority in Baghdad
presiding over an confederal Iraqi state for the
present until such time as Kurdistan can assert
its full independence. The Kurdish groups would
not allow under any circumstances the stationing
of Iraqi military forces on Kurdish soil without
the concurrence of the Kurdish National Assembly,
nor would they forfeit their right to police
northern Iraq's border regions with Turkey and
Iran.
With the removal of Jaafari from
power, Turkey would conclude that the process
toward a looser Iraq was gaining momentum. The
only thing breaking that momentum would be if an
Arab nationalist bloc could be galvanized to take
up arms to oppose Iraq's slide toward federalism.
But Turkey will not take such an initiative.
At the same time, the US would be
hard-pressed to persuade Turkey that federalism
itself could have the potential ultimately to
reduce violence and disorder, which was, after
all, Turkey's main concern. Turkey knows that the
US is hardly in a position to give any guarantee
that tomorrow Kurdish national aspiration may not
assume wider proportions - encompassing an entire
arc running from Syria to the Iranian border,
which includes Sinjar, Makhmour, Mosul, Tuz,
Kirkuk, Khanaquin and Mandali.
Certainly,
during Ali Larijani's visit to Ankara next
Wednesday, Turkey would want to harmonize its
concerns over the Iraqi situation with Iran.
Turkey would ascertain whether on the broader
plane of the loosening of Iraq as a federal state
Iran would see a positive process in its
implications for "Shi'astan" - the
Shi'ite-majority southern provinces. But, equally
so, Iran would seek Turkey's continued
understanding on its standoff with the United
States.
M K Bhadrakumar served
as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
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Arab media earlier in the week
that US intelligence operatives have already begun
working out of Azerbaijan. 
