OPINION

Opinion

. ..The ongoing rapprochement between Russia and the West which is based on the need to combat global terrorism has caused alarm in Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem’s hasty visit to Washington was interpreted in Athens as an attempt to fathom the geopolitical strategy of US President George W. Bush’s administration in the wake of the terrorist assaults in New York and on the Pentagon. What is of particular interest is that Turkey is not playing any important role in US efforts to tackle this new challenge, as it has in previous times. The fact that US officials refused entry to 800 Turkish employees at the US military base in Incirlik, Turkey, is indicative of their intention to control the information over their staging grounds. The Washington-led coalition is very broad and therefore the leverage of US allies has been considerably reduced. This is with the exception of Great Britain whose position is being upgraded, being the only NATO-member state to cooperate with Washington at the operational level. The recent defense ministers’ summit in Brussels confirmed Washington’s intention to conceal the details of the nascent military response. It should not be done so that citizens can judge the stance of their rulers, but in order to determine the administration’s flaws (whether intentional or not). Party-political objectives and clientele relations alike saw public administration not as a sector that required efficient staff but as an area for the granting of political favors.

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