ANKARA, 24 July 2003 — Turkey and the United States will try this week to salvage what they can of their battered “strategic partnership” after a bitter standoff between US troops and Turkish special forces in Iraq. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul makes his first visit to Washington since Parliament refused permission on March 1 for US troops to attack Iraq from Turkish territory, crippling the Pentagon’s plan for a northern land assault.
Tensions resurfaced this month when US forces detained 11 Turkish soldiers in oil-rich northern Iraq amid accusations they were plotting an attack on a local Kurdish mayor, a charge Turkey denied. Never since the strategic alliance was forged in the Cold War have relations between the two NATO allies been so fraught. “This last incident really added fuel to the fire. There is very strong resentment in Turkey and time is needed, a lot of time,” said Mehmet Ali Kislali, columnist at the Turkish daily Radikal.
Gul may offer Turkish peacekeepers for Iraq as an olive branch to the White House — in the past an important force behind Turkey’s EU membership talks bid — but then the ruling party in Ankara would likely need to convince a reluctant Parliament to approve the deployment. He is due to meet US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday. Turkish media speculate some 3,000 Turkish troops may be deployed around Baghdad and Tikrit, hotspots for recent guerrilla attacks on US forces, rather than northern Iraq where Washington fears Turkish forces could clash with Kurds.
Ankara stations thousands of its troops just inside northern Iraq to halt attacks by Turkish Kurdish PKK guerrillas holed up in an Iraqi Kurd-administered region. They also keep a close eye on Iraqi Kurds they fear could create an independent Kurdish state and reignite separatism on Turkish soil. Turkey says some of around 5,000 Kurdish militants are already finding their way back into Turkey from northern Iraq, where an oil pipeline runs from the Iraqi oilfields at Kirkuk to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.
Once a lynchpin of US power on the fringes of the Middle East, some hard-liners in Washington now look on Turkey more as another troublesome neighbor to a war-ravaged country US forces are struggling to stabilize. “The US Army has enough troubles in Iraq,” said one Western military expert in Ankara. “It just can’t tolerate an independent, rival military force operating beyond its control.”
While Washington may like to see Turkish troops out of the north, Turkey demands it first crack down on the Kurdish rebels, whom it blames for the deaths of more than 30,000 people during a decades-long war in its southeast. A firm deal on Turkey’s phased withdrawal, linked to US cooperation in demobilizing the Kurdish guerrillas, may be key to any major improvement in US-Turkish relations.
Turkish skepticism over Washington’s intentions in northern Iraq proved a major sticking point in the bilateral talks that preceded Turkey’s ill-fated Parliament vote in March to allow up to 60,000 US troops to congregate on its border with Iraq. And Turkey’s ruling party is well aware that any serious diplomatic bridge building is fraught with political risk. The brief detention of the Turkish soldiers has stoked the flames of anti-US sentiment among Turkey’s electorate and its powerful military, which had regarded Washington as Ankara’s most trustworthy ally. Failure in any Parliament vote on a Turkish force could seriously undermine the power of a government many in Turkey see as Islamist and a threat to Turkey’s secular order. Deputies representing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the opposition have already voiced strong reservations about sending troops without a clear UN mandate.
Turkey’s government may elect to wait. “The US has lost a lot in the eyes of public opinion. I don’t know how they would convince Parliament,” Kislali said. Turkey’s powerful generals may also be wary of backing a military contingent unless Ankara is seen as winning significant concessions from Washington on northern Iraq.
