BY MURAT YETKIN
RADIKAL- Columnist Murat Yetkin comments on Turkish-US relations and Turkey’s democracy. A summary of his column is as follows:
We’re all closely following US President George W. Bush’s tour of Europe and the Middle East from our TVs. Besides the G-8 meeting and the Palestinian-Israeli peace summit, the US president is holding meetings all over the world, from Poland to Russia to Egypt. He is trying to determine what went wrong between Europe and his country during the Iraq war and to mend strained relations. However, Turkey was invited to none of these meetings and was absent from Bush’s itinerary. Our prime minister is watching these meetings on TV like everybody else.
But why?
The reason is quite simple. Bush thinks that since Turkey refused US troop deployment within its territories prior to the Iraq war, its future attitude concerning the next possible crisis is a question mark. Bush knows or thinks he can predict what other US allies and anti-US circles would do during such a period of crisis. However, Turkey is an enigma to Washington, which is why this is a period of pronounced distance, of coldness. Under these circumstances, Turkey should immediately decide which way it will go.
Washington’s attitude is clear. Although it recently opened its doors to Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ugur Ziyal, it has yet to make an appointment with our foreign minister, ignoring his clearly-expressed wish to visit the US. By the way, what would happen if our prime minister or foreign minister were to visit Washington now? What would change if they met with Bush, Cheney or Powell? Wouldn’t they be scolded once more as if they had done something wrong? ‘We wanted cooperation so badly, but your government let us down,’ the US officials would probably say. Would our top-level officials dare to promise future cooperation Parliament’s independent will notwithstanding? We can of course argue that our Parliament did the right thing and safeguarded our nation’s interests. ‘Parliament resisted the US despite our economic difficulties,’ we can proudly say. However, Turkey owes its present situation – in other words its isolation from world politics – to a Parliament which paid heed to the feelings of ordinary citizens. Previously the US has made countless statements promoting Turkish democracy. The US has always favored the improvement of our democracy. Maybe Turkish democracy worked for the first time, but it worked erroneously...
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION