BY SOLI OZEL
SABAH- Columnist Soli Ozel comments on Turkish-US relations in the aftermath of Ankara’s refusal five months ago of US troop deployments. A summary of his column is as follows:
We are now witnessing an extraordinary discussion about the future of Turkey’s foreign policy. One of the reasons for this is the crisis in Turkish-US relations caused by Ankara’s refusal of US troop deployments back in March. Thus, everybody talking about this issue is thinking hard about how the future of Turkish-US relations should be shaped and making suggestions and evaluations according to their own political leanings. However, now both the Cyprus and European Union issues are being evaluated more carefully than in the past in terms of the aims of our foreign policy. Obviously Ankara’s refusal of the US troop deployments created a trauma both for our policymakers and for Washington. US military leaders are angry because the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) didn’t give help when they needed it. They’ve been expressing this anger emotionally. What’s more, US officials prefer to put the blame on our military instead of confronting their own mistakes.
Meanwhile, Turkey is experiencing the shock of its ‘red lines’ evaporating into thin air. Turkey neither adopted a new approach towards Iraq after 1999, nor evaluated politically the situation when the worst of the Kurdish terrorist campaign was over, both of which are affecting the current situation. A few days after Parliament’s refusal, Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok said that Turkey’s preference stood between good and bad. Probably he meant that Turkey didn’t favor a war but that he also understood the need to act together with the US in order to prevent undesirable developments in northern Iraq. Turkey has always stated its opposition to the Kurds establishing a state, but devoting all its attention to northern Iraq has prevented Ankara from dealing with Iraq more comprehensively.
As Gencer Ozcan wrote recently in Foreign Policy magazine, ‘developments since 1991 show that Turkey’s policies on Iraq are largely limited to the issue of northern Iraq. These policies are aimed at eliminating the Kurdish separatist organization’s existence in the region and preventing the establishment of a Kurdish state in Iraq.’ As a result of tying its stance to the US’, to a great extent Turkey has lost its right to speak in northern Iraq. The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s initiating a policy on all of Iraq is an important development, albeit a late one. This new stance shouldn’t be considered only a step for rapprochement with the US. Turkey should have done this before. Our steps for democratization on the path to EU membership will make such a policy easier. While evaluating our relations with the US and discussing what we should do next, we should act in light of this new basis.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION