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Second
in a series by former Post co-owner Lowell Blankfort,
who recently returned from a three-week reporting
trip in Turkey.
For more than four decades in the last century,
Turkey was America's first frontier.
Bordering the Soviet Union, Turkish soil for more
than half that era held American nuclear missiles
pointed at Moscow and the heart of the Soviet empire
(until they were removed in return for the removal
of Soviet missiles from Cuba).
Today Turkey is again a front-line state for
America. It borders on Iraq - and also on Iran and
Syria, other crucial pieces in the Middle East power
game into which Washington has intruded itself.
Turkey also is the only Muslim nation that is
secular; the only Muslim nation that recognizes
American ally Israel; the only nation in the NATO
military alliance, with a 500,000-strong military,
second in size in the alliance only to America
itself.
Straddling both Europe and Asia, and led now by a
moderate party seeking to join the European Union,
Turkey would seem a natural buddy to America, like
during the Cold War.
And technically Turkey is still an American ally.
President Bush showered nice words upon Turkey in a
visit to Istanbul in June (while 40,000 Turkish
demonstrators, kept out of his sight, jeered him).
The Turks responded a few months later by agreeing
to help train Iraqi soldiers, after earlier allowing
the United States to use an air base in southern
Turkey to rotate troops in Iraq.
But beneath the cooperation, there is anger and
tension.
The Americans are angry because, just before the
U.S. started the war, Turkey refused to let the Bush
administration use Turkish military bases for 62,000
American troops to invade Iraq from the north. The
U.S. responded by reneging on $6 billion in crucial
aid it had promised Turkey.
Turkish officials are angry because the U.S.
wouldn't let the Turks invade the border areas in
Iraq to beat up on Kurds from Turkey they call
terrorists, who were using the area as a sanctuary
to fight for the rights of the Kurdish minority in
Turkey.
But underlying the Turkish tension is a general
resentment - they don't like the war in Iraq one
bit.
Because it serves the interests of Turkish officials
they will cooperate - the United States, after all,
has the big bucks that can, and has, helped Turkey's
economy and military - but they bite their lips as
they do.
Overwhelmingly, the Turkish public is contemptuous
of the war against fellow Muslims and of the United
States.
Polls last year showed 80 percent were against the
American invasion. Four years ago, asked to name the
country that is Turkey's best friend, 60 percent of
Turks chose the United States. Last month a Pew
Research poll showed 85 percent of Turks considered
America "the most dangerous country in the world."
Dr. Seyfi Ashan, professor of international
relations at Bilkent University just outside of
Istanbul, was the founder of Turkey's first private
foreign policy think tank 30 years ago, and has
close relations with American think tanks, like the
conservative Heritage Foundation. He says American
officials have no respect for Turkey.
"We were not treated as allies," he said of the
United States. "When the Americans first approached
us, we thought the attempt to remove Saddam would be
a joint endeavor but they wanted to do it alone.
They did not even give us the courtesy of notifying
us before the invasion began. We are a people who
know Iraq much better than the Americans. We ran
Iraq (under Turkey's Ottoman Empire) for four
centuries. But we were not consulted by the
Americans.
"We wanted to put Turkish troops into Iraq's border
area, only 35 miles deep, to attack PKK (Kurdish)
terrorists, but they did not want this. We wanted
them to treat protection of our Turkomans in Iraq
(families of Turkish descent) as a main element, but
they didn't do it. All they wanted Turkey for was to
use our territory as a good way to attack Iraq."
Now, Tashan said, the U.S. has no choice but to stay
in Iraq.
"They have to create a big Iraq army," he said. "But
I don't know what will come out of it. Maybe another
Saddam? The idea of a democracy in Iraq is
far-fetched."
At Turkey's Foreign Ministry in the capital of
Ankara, the head of its foreign policy and planning
department (he asked to remain anonymous) said, "We
never wanted war. We knew it would bring more
problems. We tried to tell our apprehensions to the
United States, and then to the United Nations
Security Council. But the U.N. arms inspectors were
not allowed (by Washington) to complete their
mission. It was a great mistake."
The foreign policy and planning department that the
speaker heads is composed of seven former
ambassadors. He himself is a recent former
ambassador to Iraq.
"It makes me sick to watch TV and see the terrible
things that are happening there," he said.
"We dreaded this war. Turkey suffered more than any
other country from the first Gulf War.
The embargo against Iraq cost us $20-to-$30 billion;
oil (which was sent though Turkish pipelines)
stopped flowing.
It gave a safe haven in northern Iraq to the PKK
(Turkish Kurd) terrorists. The Americans wouldn't
let us go after them."
He fears that, in a split up of Iraq, that nation's
3.5 million Kurds on Turkey's border could form a
separate Kurd nation in the north that could either
be a base for rebellious Turkish Kurds or encourage
Turkish Kurds to join them and fulfill the dream of
a Kurdish nation.
Talking of the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk in the
north, which the Iraqi Kurds want to control, he
said, "no ethnic group should control energy
sources.
"We wouldn't send troops now (into Kurdish areas of
Iraq); it's too much of a mess," he said. "But will
there be a civil war? Things in Iraq could be a lot
better, but they also can be worse."
The head of Turkey's Land Forces Command, Aytac
Yalman, has not been hesitant regarding northern
Iraq. He recently accused the U.S. of "harboring a
secret plan to establish an independent state of
Iraqi Kurdistan," according to an article in the
October "Foreign Policy" magazine. He also praised
Turkish academics who have called for cutting ties
with "imperialist America and the European Union."
The influential Turkish military has been
historically supportive of a strong U.S.-Turkish
alliance.
It reportedly had told American military officials
that it favored allowing the U.S. to invade Iraq
through Turkey, which was rejected by the Turkish
parliament - a measure of the military's diminishing
influence and the Turkish public's anger at the U.S.
Meanwhile, Turkey's brass is reportedly split over
how far Turkey should go in yielding to European
Union membership demands, among the foremost of
which is strong civilian control over the military.
Beginning serious negotiations to join the EU is
Turkey's No. 1 foreign policy goal. On Dec. 17 the
European parliament will decide whether to okay
this. The U.S. has long pushed its European allies
to admit Turkey. But, in a Eur-ope where attitudes
toward the U.S. have hardened since the Iraq
invasion, the EU's enlargement commissioner, Gunter
Verheugen, warned that Turkey's cause risked being
damaged by "counter-productive" U.S. pressure.
Meanwhile, unlike the first Gulf War, Turkey is
making money off this one.
"We are the only country that exports food,
industrial goods and other products to Iraq," the
chief of the Foreign Ministry's policy planning
group said.
The kidnapping and killing of Turkish truck drivers
by insurgents, he stated, has reduced the flow of
Turkish trucks into Iraq from about 1,500 to 800,
most now going in convoys, but trade remains brisk.
The speaker also said Turkey is embarking on
outreach to other Middle East countries, even those
not on good terms with the Americans.
"We want to improve relations with Iran and Syria
(both on Turkey's borders)," he said. "Iran is
apprehensive because it is surrounded by American
troops (in Afghan-istan and Iraq) on both sides."
(But one overture to Iran failed. After our
conversation, isolationist Iran notified Turkey it
does not want to do business with the Turks, because
it thinks business deals should be confined to
Iranian firms.)
Another close Turkish relationship long encouraged
by the United States but cooled by current events -
has been Turkey's coziness with Israel.
For a decade, the Muslim and Jewish states have
enjoyed very friendly military and economic
relations, even holding joint military exercises.
But Israel's bloody attacks against Palestinians in
its occupied territories, shown in living color on
Turkish television, were too much for Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the spring. Calling
Israel's actions "state terror," he said, "the
violent policies that Israel is following cannot be
accepted."
Israel, facing the loss of its closest and largest
Muslim ally, a few weeks later invited Erdogan to
visit - which he declined to do. Instead he called
home Turkey's ambassador to Israel and its consul in
Jerusalem for consultations.
In September three Turkish parliamentary deputies,
said to be close to Erdogan, went to visit, with
unknown results.
Turks like Americans as individuals. In three weeks
there, my wife and I met no Turk who was not warm
and friendly and only one or two rather cold
waiters. American chains, particularly fast-food
ones like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken,
appear to be flourishing.
A California woman who knows more about this is
Patricia Langlais, who likes Turks so much she has
lived in Istanbul 10 years doing charity work for
ecclesiastical groups.
She says Turks have a genuine fondness for the
American people - but not American foreign policy."
"They separate the two," she said. "They don't blame
Americans for the terrible things they see on TV
happening in Iraq and Palestine."
But that was before Nov. 2.
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