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Turkish President to meet with Bush
8.1.2008
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January
8, 2008
WASHINGTON, -- The Turkish president's visit
with U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday is
seen as a major sign of sharply improved relations
between the NATO allies after five years of acrimony
over the Iraq war and U.S. policy on Turkey's fight
against Turkish Kurdish PKK rebels.
President Abdullah Gul 's meeting with President
Bush follows a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan
two months ago
that resulted in a commitment by Bush to share
intelligence on Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party,
or PKK, rebels and not to object to Turkish
airstrikes against the Kurdish guerrillas'
installations in Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq'.
Kurds
protest in
Washington during Turkish premier's visit in
November 2007.
The two sides have even established a coordination
center in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and Americans can
share information.
The first Turkish airstrike was Dec. 16 and used
intelligence shared by Washington. Two days later,www.ekurd.net
a small Turkish ground
force invaded Iraqi Kurdistan to flush out Turkish
Kurds sheltering there. Washington tacitly approved.
Iraqi Kurdistan politician says, Turkey is using
Turkey's Kurdish separatist PKK rebel group as an
excuse to invade Kurdistan region 'Iraq' to prevent
the establishment of Kurdistan state in the Kurdish
autonomous region in 'northern Iraq', Turkey fears this could
fan separatism among its own large Kurdish
population in southeast Turkey.
The PKK has been fighting for two decades to win a
Kurdish homeland in the mainly Kurdish Eastern
Turkey.
Speaking about Turkish-U.S. relations with Turkish
reporters last month, Gul said: "Things are going
well at the moment.
Intelligence is being shared. Now there is a
cooperation befitting our alliance. Both of us are
satisfied. This is how it should be. We could have
come to this point earlier."
In the months leading to Erdogan's Nov. 5 White
House appearance, however, U.S.-Turkish relations
were at their lowest point in many years.
In 2003, during the buildup to the Iraq war, the
Turkish parliament rejected U.S. requests to send
troops into Iraq through Turkish territory. And a
poll last summer showed just 9 percent of Turks saw
the U.S. favorably.
Despite pleas from the Bush administration and
personal appeals from Gul, then foreign minister,
and other prominent Turks, the House Foreign Affairs
Committee passed
a nonbinding resolution last year that described as
genocide the World War I-era deaths of Armenians
during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey
reacted by withdrawing its ambassador from
Washington.
Despite the improved situation since the Erdogan-Bush
meeting, the situation remains touchy.
"Certainly there is far greater satisfaction in
Turkey than there was as late as three months ago,"
John Sitilides, chairman of the Southeast Europe
Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars, said Monday. "It's all related to the
PKK. Now the United States is seen not as an entity
that is holding the Turkish military back but is
working with Turkey."
Still, Sitilides said, Turkey could "respond
recklessly" to perceived U.S. mistreatment with
grievous results. "There are 150,000 U.S. troops on
the ground in Iraq whose well-being would be
jeopardized if Turkey decided on an action such as
closing off access to the flow of war supplies."
Gul is having breakfast on Tuesday with Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and is meeting Bush for talks
and lunch. His schedule released in Ankara said he
also will meet with Vice President Dick Cheney on
Tuesday and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on
Wednesday before flying to New York to meet at the
United Nations with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
While in the United States, the Turkish president is
to meet with representatives of the Meskhetian
Turks. A minority group ousted from the Soviet
Republic of Georgia, the Meskhetians were bounced
around to other Soviet republics until settling in
Krasnodar Krai, a territory of Southern Russia.
The Church World Service Immigration and Refugee
Program undertook what it calls one of the largest
refugee resettlement programs in 2005-2006 to bring
as many as 18,000 Meskhetians to about two dozen
cities in the United States.
More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984
when PKK
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey. A
large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds'
identity in its constitution and of their language
as a native language along with Turkish in the
country's Kurdish areas,www.ekurd.net
the party also demanded
an end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and
constitution against Kurds, granting them full
political freedoms.
The PKK, listed as a "terrorist" group by Ankara, US
and EU.
AP
**
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, a
large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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