Turks want a hard bargain with
the US By M K Bhadrakumar
The conflict in Lebanon is beginning to
have an immediate effect on Turkish-US relations
as Washington is in great need of involving Ankara
in a lead role in Lebanon.
Turkey's
credentials are unmatchable - its geographical
location bridging Europe and the Middle East,
being a Muslim country with secular background, a
long-standing member country of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), and least of all, its
profound Ottoman legacy in the Levant.
And
Turkey won't let such a rare opportunity pass
without extracting maximum mileage. It has not
been often in the post-Cold War era that
Washington has felt beholden to Ankara. Turkey
feels it has every right to expect a quid pro
quo from the
United States. Turkey knows
that its US "partner" is finding itself in a very
tricky position in the Middle East, and has hardly
any friends of substance in the region on which to
rely.
The pro-US Arab regimes (such as
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) are cowed at the
sight of the rising tide of "Islamism" in the
region. Isolated from their own people and
worrying about their own survival in a maelstrom,
they are hardly in a position to reciprocate the
US largess they have enjoyed all this while, even
when Washington needs them most.
Turkey
has been keenly watching the charade of the US and
its "allies" in the Arab world and, with the
shrewdness of a good bazaari, estimating
the price that it must demand when Uncle Sam
remembers Ankara. Nothing ever pleases Turkey like
a big haggle. And Ankara can now look forward to a
really big haggle - nothing less than a Kurdish
scalp in northern Iraq.
US President
George W Bush is personally handling the haggle
from the Washington end. He called Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday for a
second telephone conversation within three days,
to set the ball rolling. According to a White
House spokesperson, Bush told Erdogan, "The United
States will work with Turkey to deal with this
terrorist threat" from the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK).
The leaders in
Ankara noted with satisfaction Bush telling
Erdogan that the US understood the "urgency and
seriousness" of the matter of curbing the
activities of the PKK from its sanctuaries in
northern (Kurdish) Iraq directed against Turkey.
The Turkish side revealed that Bush
informed Erdogan about necessary instructions
having been already issued by him for working with
Turkey in fighting the PKK's terrorist activities,
and of the Iraqi government also having been given
a "strong message" by the US administration to
this effect.
Erdogan expressed
satisfaction that Washington had already initiated
military-to-military discussions with Turkey as
regards "concrete steps" that are to be taken
against the PKK, which Ankara wants to prevent
from stirring unrest, let alone thoughts of
independence, among Turkey's large Kurdish
population.
Other senior US officials
swiftly followed up on Bush's telephone
conversation. On Saturday, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice called her Turkish counterpart,
Abdullah Gul, to convey a similar message.
According to Anatolia news agency, Rice told Gul
that the US would do "whatever necessary" in
curbing the PKK and that Washington wouldn't allow
the present situation to continue. Gul voiced the
Turkish expectation that a "meaningful and
visible" outcome was needed.
Matt Bryza,
deputy assistant secretary of state for European
and Eurasian affairs in the State Department,
later told reporters, "Bear with me here for a
little while, and you'll see, I think, some more
concrete results [against the PKK] shortly. Part
of that will come through the [US-Turkish-Iraqi]
trilateral process, but there will be other ways
that you'll see us moving against the PKK." He
didn't give details.
But Turkish
television reported that at the military level,
discussions were already under way in Ankara and
Baghdad between the US and Turkey about "concrete
steps" to be initiated against the PKK.
Turkey says that up to 5,000 PKK militants
operate out of northern Iraq to attack targets
inside Turkey. In the month of July alone, PKK
militants killed 25 Turkish security personnel.
Turkey was particularly incensed that the US
remained impassive to its requests to do something
about the spurt in violence from the PKK's camps
in northern Iraq, and instead kept insisting that
Ankara shouldn't undertake "hot pursuit" of PKK
militants in Iraqi territory.
Turkish
frustration over the US stance has been quite
visible in the recent weeks. As a senior political
observer, Oktai Eksi, wrote in the establishment
daily Hurriyet, "Actually, when we look at the
policies that have been followed by Bush, who
violates international law every day, we see that
no country except the US and Israel has the right
to defend itself ... Our experience shows that
we're the US's strategic partner when it suits
them, but it hems and haws when we ask for its
support."
Turkey even resorted to some
brinkmanship when Erdogan asked the Turkish
General Staff to plan and prepare for a possible
cross-border operation into Iraq. A wave of
"anti-Americanism" swept over the Anatolian
heartland even as Erdogan warned that PKK
activities had gone "beyond the limits of
tolerance".
The US side still remained
impassive and kept reiterating its opposition to
any Turkish armed incursions into northern Iraq
and blandly counseled that Turkey must handle the
problem in coordination with Iraq's government.
Meanwhile, Turkish anger rose to a
crescendo when it transpired that top PKK brass
had shifted from northern Iraq to Baghdad, and
even opened an office in the Iraqi capital right
in the US line of vision.
Turkish
commentators had no difficulty sensing that
Washington was deliberately "punishing" Ankara for
its last-minute decision in March 2003 not to
provide a land corridor for the US invasion of
Iraq.
Lebanon: All change Then
came the Lebanon conflict. With that, the
kaleidoscope abruptly shifted and new patterns
began appearing in the sights in Washington.
Overnight, a need arose for Washington to locate
its long-lost Turkish ally. Washington factored
that Turkey had been developing a highly nuanced
neighborhood policy in the recent past, especially
since the present government came to power in
2002.
Turkey was the first country to host
a Hamas delegation after the Palestinian elections
catapulted the latter into office in the Palestine
Authority. Turkey argued against the US-Israeli
policy of imposing an economic boycott of the new
Hamas government.
Turkish-Iranian
relations warmed up perceptively in the recent
period. The two countries worked out better
coordination in curbing Kurdish militancy. The two
leaderships held a series of meetings.
Gul
drew attention to the vast change in the climate
of Turkish-Iranian relations when he told Fikret
Bila, a top Turkish commentator, in April, "There
is no comparison between Iran and Iraq as
independent countries. Iran is a genuine country.
With its history, culture, diplomacy, it is a
powerful country from every angle. It is a country
that has diplomatic capability. It is bound to
find a solution [to the nuclear standoff] through
diplomatic means. Iraq had a leader [Saddam
Hussein] who couldn't even be reached for passing
on a message. Iran is not like that."
Gul
was stressing that Turkish soil wouldn't be
available for any US adventurism directed against
Iran. Actually, Turkish interests will be very
badly hit in any US move to impose economic
sanctions against Iran. It is estimated that
70,000 Turkish trucks transit through Iranian
territory annually, ferrying goods to and from the
Central Asian region. Turkey imports US$3.5
billion worth of Iranian gas annually.
Turkish-Iranian trade is expected to touch $6
billion this year, and more than a million Iranian
tourists visit Turkey annually.
The
Turkish government charted out an independent
foreign policy also with regard to Syria, the
Caucasus and the Black Sea region. Even with
regard to the conflict in Lebanon, Turkey openly
differed from the US stance and called for an
immediate ceasefire as the need of the hour.
Erdogan has been closely consulting his
Iranian and Syrian counterparts over the Lebanon
crisis at a time when Washington wishes to isolate
those two countries and pillory them as the
promoters of Hezbollah.
It is indeed a
measure of the huge loss of influence of the US in
the Middle East region in the past two to three
years that Washington has been compelled to invoke
the long-forgotten strategic partnership with
Ankara.
Turkey has been invited as a key
participant in the foreign ministers' conference
co-hosted by Italy and the US in Rome on
Wednesday. Gul promptly announced that he would
attend the meet, which brings together all
important countries that might have a say in the
Lebanon crisis - the US, Britain, Russia, France,
Italy, Germany, Spain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan, apart from representatives of the World
Bank, the European Union and the United Nations.
Turkey is already being mentioned as a
likely actor to lead any International
Stabilization Force (ISF) in southern Lebanon.
It is not lost on Turkey that there is a
link between Bush's new conciliatory attitude with
regard to the PKK militancy that is bleeding
Turkey and Washington's acute need of a dependable
ally with regional standing (vis-a-vis the Arab
side as well as Israel) and the military and
diplomatic capability to undertake a difficult
mission in southern Lebanon.
If the
proposed ISF is indeed an interim measure that
will almost certainly lead, as has happened in
Afghanistan, to the eventual entry of a
full-fledged NATO force in the Levant, there is no
better country than Turkey to facilitate the
transition. (Turkey played such a crucial role in
Afghanistan.)
Indeed, it is only Turkey,
arguably, that can act as a bridge in a transition
holding such a profound symbolism in
civilizational terms. After all, the soil of the
Levant is soaked with the blood of Crusaders, and
if and when NATO wades ashore from the eastern
Mediterranean into the Levant, that will be a
poignant moment in modern history, which is bound
to stir up the Muslim consciousness.
Given
such a heavy dependence of the US on its Turkish
ally in the coming months, it will be utterly
fascinating to watch how Ankara bends Washington
to its will apropos the Kurdish problem. There are
several tricky dimensions to the unfolding
spectacle. The crisis over Lebanon has of course
made Turkey's generals relevant once again for
Washington. This comes at a time when Turkish
generals have gradually restored their status in
Turkish politics.
Observers of Turkey's
"post-modern" democracy will take note that the
Bush administration is improving its relations
with the Turkish military just months ahead of the
spring 2007 presidential race in Turkey in which
the Islamist party headed by Erdogan is well
placed to win. Equally, in August, incumbent
liberal-minded Chief of General Staff General
Hilmi Ozkok will retire. There is wide speculation
that his successor may be more in the classic
"Kemalist" mold. [1]
Washington has always
taken in interest in who rules Chankaya (Ankara's
seat of power). Turkey is far too important a
regional power to be left alone.
Turkey
will closely look for signs of how the Bush
administration proposes to translate into practice
its assurances of cooperation in curbing the PKK.
Turkey will argue that the US should squash the
PKK positions within northern Iraq by itself or
give the Turkish military a free hand to do so.
But this has deep implications for the US
military's working relationship with its Kurdish
allies in northern Iraq. [2] Washington would have
a difficult time "calming down" any Kurdish sense
of betrayal by the US. The equations in Kirkuk are
so complex that no one can pretend to be in
control even as the region is hurtling toward a
referendum on Kurdistan in the autumn of 2007.
Clearly, Cold War or no Cold War, the US
needs Turkey as a military and political partner.
Also, despite all the peace treaties Israel may
have with Egypt and Jordan, Washington knows that
Turkey is still the only meaningful partner of
Israel in the volatile region.
Turkey,
too, needs the US if the balance of forces in the
region is not to be heavily upset by a stronger
Iran that seems to be inexorably in the making.
Turkey would like the US to curb Iranian
ambitions, but not go to war with Iran.
Evidently, a lot of horse-trading becomes
inevitable between Washington and Ankara. The US
will want to see how Turkey leverages its
influences with Iran, Syria and the Palestinian
groups in stabilizing the ground situation in
southern Lebanon.
Having said that, Turkey
will be hard-pressed to distance itself from any
US agenda of rolling back the Shi'ite empowerment
in Lebanon, overthrow of the Ba'athist regime in
Damascus or any confrontation with Tehran.
Turkey is heading for parliamentary
elections in the autumn of 2007. The present
ruling party hopes to put up a strong show, and
will be particularly sensitive about the swings of
public opinion. The fact is, Turkish public
opinion has become overwhelmingly critical of the
US and Israel. (Two days ago, an Englishman was
beaten up in Istanbul by an irate mob that took
him to be an Israeli.)
One of Washington's
sincere friends in the Turkish media, Mehmet Ali
Birand, warned on Tuesday, "We are passing through
a very dangerous time. Events are pushing the
Turkish society toward becoming more anti-US and
anti-Israel ... If things continue this way,
public anger will prevent the government from
maintaining proper relations with either the US or
Israel. We may return to an environment as in the
1970s when cars were burned in front of the
American Embassy and huge protest rallies were
held against Israel. Just look around. The number
of rallies is increasing ... pointing to the anger
and fury in the public opinion."
But
Turkey also has vast experience in dealing with
the US. Ankara knows Washington is as much aware
as it is that the secret often lies in not seeking
straightforward answers to each and every
troubling question. Indications are that at
high-level military-to-military contacts
(sequestered from the pressures of public opinion)
this year, it became apparent to all concerned
that a modus vivendi is always possible
between Turkish interests on the one hand and
those of the US and Israel on the other - though
no one may speak of any "axis" as such. Both
Washington and Jerusalem can count on the Turkish
military's morbid fear of "Islamism".
Thus, in essence, Washington hopes to play
a "situational game" with several players at the
same time. By virtually conceding reciprocity
between Turkish concerns about the PKK menace and
US concerns over the inferno in Lebanon,
Washington is dealing one card to Ankara while
securing a card for itself.
Notes 1. Kemalist
Ideology, also known as Kemalism and Six Arrows,
is based on Kemal Ataturk's six principles during
the Turkish national movement. The principles were
not defined as an ideology during the life of
Ataturk, but formulated later on. Kemalism's
politics are described as left-wing.
2.
The Kurdistan region is an autonomous, federally
recognized, political entity in Iraq. It borders
Iran to the east, Turkey to the north and Syria to
the west. Its capital is the city of Arbil. The
Kurds have ruled themselves in northern Iraq since
the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991, when a
"safe haven" was created to protect them from
Saddam Hussein.
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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