Mission in Iraq threatens to strain US-Turkish ties

Military reticence could provoke rift between allies

By Burak Bekdil - Kathimerini English Edition

Politics is often full of ironies. It was Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, who, under pressure from the military, had to seal a critical military deal with Israel in 1996 — a deal he had pledged to scrap before he rose to power. Seven years later, it was another Islamist leader, Abdullah Gul, who, this time under pressure from America, reluctantly agreed to help facilitate President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq despite silent but angry opposition from his party roots. Well, they call it realpolitik.

Turkey’s belated and limited consent to America’s war plans against neighboring Iraq reflects a marriage of convenience between allies. It has come too late and it does not fully fit into President Bush’s ideal timetable for military action. Thus it has failed to win hearts in Washington.

Two days after he received a telephone call from Vice President Dick Cheney and heard “strongly worded language,” Prime Minister Gul announced that Turkey had eventually decided to collaborate with Washington “after seeing that efforts for a peaceful solution to the Iraq problem were failing.”

Later that day, Turkey’s Parliament formally gave the United States permission to upgrade a number of air bases and ports for use in military action against Iraqi forces. However, a second and more critical measure to allow the United States to deploy troops on Turkish territory was scheduled for a parliamentary vote on Feb. 18. The delay for the second authorization may appear insignificant but is probably not.

For technical reasons, US military planners are trying to avoid any invasion in warm weather but Turkey’s slow, reluctant and limited cooperation is not only pushing the date for action into an undesirable season but is also jeopardizing a quick victory. Hence, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer’s remark on Feb. 6: “We appreciate Turkey’s political support. However, there are still a number of things that need to be clarified on military matters.”

True, the United States is not short of military options. One way or another, the superpower will manage to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. But without Turkish support, the mission will be riskier, more costly and slower. “If Turkey cooperates fully, hostilities won’t last long and everything will be smoother for the United States,” said Michael Eisenstadt, a military specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington-based think tank.

In Washington, there is every indication that Turkey’s uneasy and distant cooperation could be the opening of a rather tense chapter in relations between the two strategic partners. In Ankara, policymakers still suspect the Americans might have a secret agenda for post-Saddam Iraq — an agenda that might not fully comply with what the Turks see as their ideal neighbors.

Kirkuk, which stands in the center of oil fields producing around 900,000 barrels a day, could be the epicenter of a possible conflict between two countries which may no longer be allies after a war in Iraq. The Americans have said they do not want any Turkish or Iraqi Kurdish forces in the oil city. But the Turks suspect their allies might be discreetly planning to send a sizable Kurdish population to Kirkuk to pave the way for a stronger Kurdish entity in northern Iraq — a move that would trigger Turkish military action despite America. It did not go unnoticed in Ankara when Secretary of State Colin Powell told senators that “success” in Iraq would reshape the Middle East in a way that serves US interests. The million-dollar question is, what are US interests? Not only counterterrorism, for sure...

As far as we can see, Turkey is sending thousands of troops to northern Iraq to control the border and help manage any large-scale movement of refugees. But the genuine mission for the Turkish military will be to more carefully govern an area it has partially controlled since the Gulf War. The Kurds, on the other hand, suspect the Turks could have territorial aspirations to what once belonged to their Ottoman ancestors.

An oriental chess game with a Western fist on the board is about to start in a volatile part of the world. Ousting Saddam will not be the end, but rather the beginning of a complex power struggle in no-man’s land.