BY YILMAZ OZTUNA
TURKIYE- Columnist Yilmaz Oztuna comments on the aftermath of yesterday’s Cankaya Presidential Palace summit. A summary of his column is as follows:
During yesterday’s Cankaya Presidential Palace summit, it was decided that Turkey will send soldiers to Iraq. Thus, a new proposal on this issue will be presented to Parliament for the deputies to vote on. If they reject it, the government will have to resign. Such a development would be disastrous because Turkey would waste so much time, our economy would suffer and our foreign policy would be damaged. For this reason, the government should present to Parliament a well-crafted proposal. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) leaders should make sure its ranks know about Turkey’s best interests. Of course it should also make a group decision on this proposal.
Possibly the government will call Parliament to meet in extraordinary session. For this reason, Ankara is waiting for Washington to respond its questions. We are expecting information on the situation of Turkish soldiers in Iraq. The status applied to other countries’ soldiers would be valid for us in any case. However, our role in Iraq might be proportional to the number of soldiers we send.
If there are soldiers here from every country but Turkey, it doesn’t take a political genius to predict our sufferings in such a case. The US allowed the plundering of the Baghdad Museum. We should send as large a force as possible because the US needs our help in this land so it doesn’t commit the same blunders twice.