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India and Turkey rediscover each
other
By K Gajendra Singh
In
the mid-1980s, during a transit visit to the Indian city
of Bombay, now known as Mumbai, Turkish prime minister
Turgut Ozal was very much taken by the drive and bustle
along glittering Marine Drive, which in many ways
reminds Turks of their Istanbul on the Bosporus,
separating Europe from Asia.
Before leaving,
Ozal told his ambassador, "Perhaps we have neglected
this country." (Jawaharlal Nehru's visit to Ankara in
1960 was the first and last by an Indian prime minister
to the country.) At a subsequent United Nations General
Assembly session in New York, Ozal and then Indian prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi, both leaders with a modern
outlook, met and took a liking to one anther. Ozal was
duly invited to India, an offer that he took up the
following year, 1987. Thus high-level exchanges were
renewed between India and Turkey, two secular republics
with much in common. But they drifted apart during the
Cold War, and only now are they rediscovering each
other.
Recent global events have helped this
process. During Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha's
just-concluded two-day visit to Ankara, the most complex
and vital issue facing both sides was not bilateral
relations, but the United States request for them to
send troops to help "stabilize" Iraq. Sinha did,
however, find time to meet President Ahmet Necdet Sezer,
as well as Prime Minister Recep Tayep Erdogan. He also
held discussions with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul on bilateral relations, which included greater
economic, scientific, educational and tourism-sector
cooperation. They told a press conference that they
would strive to develop these relations further. A
meeting of the Turkish-Indian Joint Economic Commission
will be held within a few months, and Indian Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will visit Turkey in
September.
But the Iraq issue was of prime
concern. Sinha and Gul both stressed that Iraq's
territorial integrity should be preserved and stability
in the region should be established as soon as possible.
Sinha remarked that, like Turkey, India might send
troops to Iraq if the United Nations provides a mandate.
Despite its emerging strategic relationship with
Washington, the Indian parliament condemned the US-led
invasion of Iraq, a steadfast friend of India that had
always supported Delhi on its Jammu and Kashmir
(J&K) dispute with Pakistan.
In addition to
the opposition parties, especially the secular Congress
party, the Communist and other left-of-center parties,
there was opposition to sending troops to Iraq even by
some coalition partners in the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party-led government and in the BJP itself. It was
feared that Indian troops would become cheap cannon
fodder in the quagmire that Iraq has become. Elections
are scheduled in five Indian states by the end of the
year, and the issue had all the potential of becoming a
very hot electoral card.
Sending troops would
also have created resentment among many Arab and Muslim
governments, and certainly the Muslim community all over
the world. Even within India, Muslims number more than
120 million, and millions of Indians work in Persian
Gulf countries, remitting billions of dollars every year
to their homeland.
India has no direct strategic
objectives in Iraq, and Indians are also aware of Iraq's
imperial history, when India under British colonial rule
sent Indian troops to that country for the expansion and
the greater glory of the British Empire in the early
20th century.
During World War I, Mesopotamia
was the battleground for the struggle between the
Ottomans and the British. About 12,000 soldiers - more
than half from Indian divisions - surrendered to Turkish
forces in May 1916 after a siege that had lasted 147
days. Of the troops who left Kut, more than 4,000 died,
either on their way to captivity or in prisoner-of-war
camps. In four years of fighting, 31,000 British and
Indian lives were lost, leaving Iraq with graves and
burning pyres all over the countryside.
After
Iraq was eventually taken over by the British, its
people struggled against the occupying forces, and
Indian troops were used to suppress a nationalist
uprising in the summer of 1920. Like today's US forces,
the 60,000 British and Indian troops trying to control
Mesopotamia then were never engaged in direct battle,
but faced hit-and-run raids from the deserts. More than
1,000 Indian soldiers and 8,000 Arab fighters were
either killed or captured in a few weeks.
India,
which has been asked by Washington to occupy the
so-called "peaceful" Kurdish northern Iraq, has already
declined, but the United States has not given up yet.
This region is where the Turks would like to go - to
keep an eye on Kurdish matters lest their own restive
Kurds be influenced - but the US wants them to go to
Shi'ite Basra in the south, which has only recently
shown signs of unrest. The British occupiers, perhaps
with memories and experience of colonial rule, have done
a better job of containing frustrations and anger than
the US forces.
Indian-Turkish
relations
After its independence in 1947, India
found Turkey on the other side of the Cold War divide,
so there were few exchanges between them. Indian
minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad did visit Ankara in the
1950s, and signed agreements on educational, cultural
and scientific cooperation. Nehru's visit in 1960 turned
out to be ill-timed because a few days later the
government of prime minister Adnan Menderes was
overthrown by the Turkish armed forces. Nehru had
insisted and met with Ismet Inonu, Kemal Ataturk's
right-hand man and successor, then the opposition
leader, but only at an embassy reception as the
government would not fix an official meeting.
Menderes and his delegation came to the
reception only after Inonu had left (after the coup,
Menderes was tried and hanged). Inonu had told Nehru not
to trust the communists (Chinese), and sent guns to
India after the 1962 Chinese invasion of India, despite
Pakistani objections.
The Turks maintain that
they have always been the ones to take the initiative to
normalize bilateral relations with India. As part of
widening foreign relations, then prime minister Sulayman
Demirel sent his foreign minister, Ihsan Sabri
Caglayangil, to India in 1968. This was basically to
soften up non-aligned movement leader India's support of
Archbishop Makarios on Cyprus, as Turkey's relations
with Arab and other Muslim countries had not improved
enough on the basis of religious and economic interests.
The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) had not yet
been founded to garner Muslim support against Makarios.
But within a decade, India and Turkey became engrossed
in their own affairs.
In 1985, Ozal, like
Demirel in the late 1960s, was broadening and expanding
Turkey's political and economic relations. During Rajiv
Gandhi's visit to Turkey in 1986, Ozal granted a railway
electrification project to India without a tender
notice. Since then there have been regular exchanges of
high-level visits, including that of president S D
Sharma to Turkey in 1993 and Demirel's return visit in
January 1995. Another important visitor in 1996 was
Turkey's chief of general staff, General I H Karadayi.
The military, along with politicians and the secular
elite, form the third power center in Turkey's ruling
triangle.
Ozal was a statesman with vision and
drive and he had transformed Turkey's moribund and
closed economy into a throbbing market-oriented one in a
decade. By the end 1995 it was advanced enough to enter
into a Customs Union Agreement with the Europe Union -
ie, exports and imports are not subject to duties.
Turkey subsequently captured the white-goods market in
the EU. Ankara is now preparing to discuss in 2004 dates
for its accession into the EU. For India's part,
starting with the relaxation of market controls and the
opening of its economy in the beginning of the 1990s, it
has made steady progress, with economic growth averaging
about 6 percent.
There were other visits, such
as that of Indian president K R Narayan in 1998, and of
Sanskrit- and Bengali-literate prime minister Bulent
Ecevit to India in 2000. A poet and a trade unionist,
Ecevit has been premier on a number of occasions,
finally losing power last November to the Justice and
Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots and
which became the first such party to win a two-thirds
majority in parliament. Ecevit followed the Bhagavad
Gita's teachings in his political life and also
translated some poems from Tagore's Geetanjali
into Turkish. Ironically, in 1997, when in the
opposition, Ecevit praised Indian political parties for
not supporting the minority government of the BJP, a
conservative Hindu religious party. India's generally
hawkish home minister, L K Advani, visited Turkey in
2001.
There are no direct bilateral problems
between India and Turkey. Both have been established as
secular democratic republics, even though the population
of Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, and India's 84 percent
Hindu. Both the AKP and the BJP face opposition to their
religious agenda from the secular establishment. How
successfully the two republics internalize rising
fundamentalist forces within a secular framework could
serve as an example to other countries. But while in
Turkey the fight to protect the secular system is led by
the armed forces, in India the judiciary and the media
are the main opponents of fundamentalist forces.
The AKP's massive majority seems to have gone to
the head of its inexperienced leadership, who have
exploited the pretext of changing the constitution to
conform to EU norms to curb the role of the armed forces
in political decision-making as enshrined in the
National Security Council. In doing this, the AKP is
treading a dangerous path. The Turkish armed forces are
a bastion and guardian of secularism. Most recently, in
1997, they forced the resignation of a coalition
government led by an Islamist prime minister, Najemettin
Erbakan.
Turkey is a member of the OIC's contact
group on J&K, but it has generally been
constructive. During the Cold War, Turkey traditionally
supported Pakistan on Kashmir in return for reciprocal
support on Cyprus and other issues. India used to
support Cyprus. In the early 1970s, after the Indian
foreign minister's visit to Ankara, this writer assisted
at the negotiations of a joint statement. The Turkish
side said half-seriously that India could write what it
wished on Kashmir, but they must be allowed to write the
paragraphs on Cyprus.
This in a nutshell sums up
the differences, if any. But now serious efforts are
being made to resolve the Cyprus problem. A very
generous solution under the UN umbrella was not accepted
by Turkey and Turkish Cypriots in April, but efforts are
continuing. If a solution is found, Turkey will have
little cause to support Pakistan on J&K. Turkey's
secular mandarins have always felt uncomfortable at the
OIC and other Islamic get-togethers and guard themselves
by making reservations that any communiques that are
against Turkey's (secular)constitution would be
unacceptable.
Turkish-US differences in
northern Iraq
Of course, unlike India, Turkey has
vital strategic interests in Kurdish northern Iraq,
which so far clash with US plans for the region. But
three months after hostilities were declared over in
Iraq, and learning some lessons, especially from the war
of attrition against US troops, both the United States
and Turkey are now working together after two serious
flare-ups in their relations. The first was the Turkish
parliament's refusal to allow US troops access to
Turkish soil for them to open a new front against Iraq
from the north.
The second took place early last
month when a few US soldiers entered a Turkish liaison
office in Sulaimaniya, northern Iraq, 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 and took them to Baghdad.
Despite the subsequent furor, the soldiers were only
released after 60 hours. From Turkish President Sezer
downward, 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 hurt the sensitivities of a proud
nation, which threatened retaliation if there were a
repetition. 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 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has
for the time being calmed the twitchy nerves of the two
old allies.
General John Abizaid, successor of
General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command, visited
Ankara on July 20 to pacify Turkey. After this visit the
two sides reached agreement on the elimination of
Turkish Kurdish terrorist organization, the Marxist
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK- Kadek) in northern Iraq.
The US then requested Turkey to send troops to help
stabilize southern Iraq. Turkey would also take part in
the rebuilding of Iraq.
Some economic gains have
already come Turkey's way, with Turkish contractors
doing some US$430 million in business since the war's
end in May. This figure could climb as high as $800
million before 2004. Turkey's exports to Iraq have
skyrocketed by 187 percent in June and 197 percent in
July, compared with last year. Turkey and Iraq have
signed an agreement in Baghdad to resume railway
services between the two countries. Under this, four
trains a week will transport food and reconstruction
material to Iraq via the existing railway
lines connecting Istanbul, Baghdad and
Basra.
State Minister for Economy Ali Babacan
announced that an economic Turkish delegation will fly
to Washington this month to discuss the release of $8.5
billion in US loans, with participation by International
Monetary Fund (IMF) officials. "There are presently no
obstacles to the loan," stated Babacan, adding, however,
that Turkey was not including the funds in its fiscal
projections. The funds, disbursable as either $1 billion
in outright grants or $8.5 billion in loans, were
allocated by the US Congress (as a carrot) to help
compensate Turkey's Iraq war-related losses. Their
release was tied to Ankara's compliance with IMF
guidelines.
Turkey has always wanted to send
more troops to Kurdish northern Iraq, where their number
is between 5,000 and 10,000, but the United States wants
Turkey to send troops instead to the Shi'ite south.
Turkey is not keen on doing this, but it appears to be
coming around.
"Turkey is clearly the most
important country capable of contributing to peace and
stability in the region," said one Turkish military
source. "The US should hand over PKK-Kadek militants to
Turkey along with their weapons. This is the only way to
establish a basis for sound cooperation between the two
countries. Otherwise, Turkish soldiers cannot serve as
peacekeepers in the region."
Gul, during his
visit to Washington late last month, also conveyed
similar messages to Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Turkey never
regarded the US as whom it should speak to on this
issue, because no political authority existed in
northern Iraq," Gul reportedly said. "However, now there
is a central authority in Iraq, and the US represents
it, which is why Washington is now our interlocutor. The
terrorists PKK-Kadek must be completely eradicated. As
long as it exists, Turkey cannot serve peace and
stability in the region."
The US has responded
positively to Turkey's request. And now that a bill
allowing amnesty for repentant militants of the PKK has
been signed into law in Turkey, the US expects that
membership in the group will plummet. However, if the
law doesn't have the expected impact, the US military
could force the militants to face the law. The final
alternative would be to launch another military
operation to eliminate them.
Chief of General
Staff Hilmi Ozkok and Erdogan have also discussed the
prospect of Turkish troop deployment in Iraq as part of
the international stabilization force there. Ozkok
reportedly told Erdogan that if a decision was made in
favor of deployment, Turkish armed forces would be ready
to move in 45 days. Reportedly the military brass was
opposed to a formula under which Turkish troops could be
deployed in Iraq on an invitation from the Iraqi
Governing Council, as this body currently lacks any
international recognition. Turkey has made it amply
clear what it will do if the Kurds of northern Iraq
declare independence.
More than 10,000 Turkish
Kurds currently in the UN-administered Mahmur camp in
northern Iraq could also return to Turkey. They were
forced in 1994 by the PKK to leave their homes near the
Turkish-Iraqi border and were based first in the Atrush
camp, and then moved to Mahmur, where they have been
ever since. Turkish and US forces reportedly found a
large cache of weapons and ammunition believed to belong
to the PKK-Kadek, Gul told UN Iraq envoy Sergio Vieira
de Mello in Ankara, and so it should be closed down.
But it is not going to be easy. Iraqi Kurds are
raising objections to Turkish troops even going by road
to southern Iraq via Kurdish territory, arguing that
they should be flown. In Sulaimaniya, stating that
Kirkuk is a Kurdish city, Gadir Aziz Cabbari, a
representative of the Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party
(KDP), recently said he hoped to see the northern Iraqi
city of Kirkuk as the future capital of Kurdistan,
without making it clear what he meant by "Kurdistan", a
federal Iraqi province or an independent state.
Meanwhile, Sulaimaniya Mayor Aiso Shak Norey, as
Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) representative,
echoed this sentiment, adding that Arbil might be an
alternative choice. Both officials alleged that Turkey
regarded the chaos in the region as an excuse to "get
back" Kirkuk, to which it has historical claims.
Recently, Kenneth Pollack, a leading Iraq expert
with the prestigious US Brookings Institute, said in an
interview with CNN Turk, "If the situation in Iraq does
not stabilize, if it leads to a civil war [ie, if
Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs rebel against the central
administration to be established and if developments get
out of hand, leaving the country in a climate of turmoil
where the wheels of the economy cannot turn], then there
would be the possibility of Kurds declaring independence
to secure their own region."
How would the US
act in such a case? According to Pollack, a United
States bogged down in a swamp may not say "Stop!" to the
Kurds in such a climate of turmoil. While tackling
incidents in other parts of the country, it may feel the
need to condone the Kurds' move. According to Pollack,
the administration of US President George W Bush has
pushed itself into a tight spot because it failed to
plan well for the aftermath of the war. The US public is
already asking what is going on.
On August 1, US
chief administrator in Iraq L Paul Bremer said in
Baghdad, "It is certainly not unrealistic to think we
could have elections by mid-year 2004, and when a
sovereign government is installed my job here will be
done."
In 1917, British General Stanley Maude
told the people of Baghdad, "Our armies do not come into
your cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators."
They didn't believe him either.
Whatever the
differences about power-sharing among the various
Shi'ite groups in Iraq, such as adopting Iran's Islamic
revolutionary model, when they come to power, they are
in total agreement that foreign troops should leave
Iraq. They survived the ruthless security apparatus of
the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein regime, and even four
centuries of Sunni Ottoman rule. They will be quite
happy with the mortal struggle going on between
basically Sunni resistance, composed not only of
pro-Saddam supporters but also other Sunni tribes, and
the occupying forces. They will be content to watch them
exhaust themselves. They are now lying low, and under
their tradition of takkiya, ie, not to tell the
truth when under duress, the Shi'ites do not speak what
is on their minds.
There is growing awareness
that the situation is getting out of hand, and that
greater UN involvement is required. UN envoy de Mello,
who played a vital behind-the-scenes role in the
creation of the Governing Council, including a lower
profile for Bremer at the inauguration, has held many
rounds of discussions in Ankara.
After one
meeting, Gul said he had conveyed to de Mello the
Turkish government's views on Iraq, stressing that the
nation's territorial integrity should be protected and
its various ethnic groups dealt with fairly and
impartially. For his part, de Mello said he shared Gul's
concerns, adding that Turkey could play an important
role in the postwar period. De Mello added that the UN
expected Ankara to participate at a conference this
December dealing with Iraq's reconstruction, both
political and physical.
Gul feels that the
postwar situation is a more important factor. "There's a
great difference between the prewar situation and now,"
he explained. "Back then, there was the risk of war.
Today, there is the problem of establishing stability,
plus the task of reconstruction. This is not only a
military, but also a social, economic and political
process. If Turkey can contribute to Iraq and if doing
so would benefit our national interests as well, of
course it would be right for us as a neighboring country
to make a contribution."
Slowly but surely the
necessity of a new UN Security Council resolution on
Iraq is being accepted. Russia has reiterated many times
that this is required. US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee chairman Richard Lugar said on Sunday that the
United States should seek a new resolution to help
secure greater international support.
A US draft
resolution now under consideration wants to regularize
the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and to enhance
the legitimacy of this 25-member body. The resolution
would also formally establish a UN mission in Iraq to
oversee the council's activities there. The UN already
has a mandate to contribute to the relief of civilians
and reconstruction. But Secretary General Kofi Annan
told the 15-nation Security Council at a luncheon last
week that he wanted a new mission created to provide a
more formal UN presence in the country to aid de Mello.
While the United States hopes that the
resolution will strengthen the perception that the UN is
playing a vital role in Iraq, diplomats noted that the
text granted little new authority to the UN, preserving
power in the hands of the US-led military coalition.
When asked to comment on the proposed draft
resolution, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve
Ladsous replied, "We have indeed heard of a project for
a resolution on Iraq. This text would formalize, as
recommended by Kofi Annan, the creation of an UN
assistance mission for Iraq," he added. He said
consultations on the proposal would take place in New
York and France had no further comment at this stage. As
for the Governing Council, Ladsous said that note should
be taken of its creation, "the first step in the process
of establishing representative institutions".
France, Russia and Germany, which opposed the
war in the first place, have said they would send
peacekeeping troops to Iraq or help in other ways if the
UN had a bigger role there. The situation can only be
retrieved if the responsibility for Iraq is fully
transferred to the United Nations, and the people of
Iraq see it as so, and accept it.
Even then, it
will be a Herculean task to keep the country's three
diverse regions together and stabilize them.
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. E-mail Gajendrak@hotmail.com
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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