Goals

BY TOKTAMIS ATES
CUMHURIYET- Columnist Toktamis Ates comments on the US policy towards Iraq and Turkey’s stance on it. A summary of his column is as follows:
It’s easy to speak or write about foreign policy because during normally, one’s analyses are based only on hypotheses. In addition, nobody brings up how realistic or unrealistic these hypotheses might be. Turkey’s current foreign policy has a great many problems to tackle, for example, our relations with Greece and the European Union plus the Cyprus problem. Meanwhile, we also have to follow developments in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans. However, besides these issues, we have other more important problems, that is, our relations with the US and the Iraq problem.
As is well known, countries don’t have traditional ‘friendships’ or ‘enmity’ towards each other, rather, they have interests in foreign policy and they do what their interests require. For example, the US continued its relations with Turkey after 1991 quite warmly, but it also supported the PKK in the southern Anatolia region and northern Iraq. At that time the US wasn’t Turkey’s enemy, but it thought that the Kurds in northern Iraq would be more faithful to it. However, what this policy accomplished is difficult to say.
When tension between the US and Iraq was rising, I believed that the US wouldn’t start a war without Turkey, without the benefit of a northern front. However, the US loudly began the war from the south and took Baghdad in very short order indeed. I wonder if the war has ended. Would a war end this way? Nobody can tell who surrendered and who signed a peace agreement or armistice on whose behalf. However, it seems the US has been unable to find what it was looking for in Iraq, and now it has new goals. I really wonder what kind of a policy the US wants to pursue in Iraq.
Today the most important and even vital decision for our foreign policy is whether to send soldiers to Iraq. When this issue was first raised, I wrote that if we consider ourselves an important regional power, we should do what is necessary. However, I also had two conditions, that is, we should command our own units and our presence in northern Iraq should continue. Today I have the same view, but it’s difficult to sift through the contradictory reports from Iraq to see which are reliable. In this case it’s very hard to analyze foreign policy.