BY TUFAN TURENC (HURRIYET)
Columnist Tufan Turenc comments on the United States’ goals and the policies followed by Turkey. A summary of his column is as follows:
It would be useful to evaluate the current situation and then, even more importantly, prospects for our future state. Obviously as soon as the US finishes with Iraq, it will then turn to remove other regimes in the region which it considers threats to itself. The first target would be Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. The US sees Arafat as the person responsible for terrorism in the Middle East and believes that he should be gotten rid of. US President George W. Bush has repeatedly said as much in his speeches. The US believes that an Israeli-Palestinian peace is impossible as long as Arafat is the leader of Palestine. Therefore, according to Washington, Arafat needs to be made history. However, clearly it would be impossible to make peace in the region with such an order, which the US is planning to establish through force of arms. Interestingly, Washington fails to grasp that Palestinians expelled from their own lands would only later re-emerge as more extreme terrorists.
The other targets of the US are Syria and Iran, as has made clear. These two countries know that it will be their turn after Iraq. Everybody watching the incidents unfold can easily foresee what will happen in the region. However, it’s odd that the US apparently can’t. Maybe it sees but is deliberately pretending not to.
As for the local scene, through its confusing policies the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has turned Turkish-US relations into an tangled knot. These relations were mended somewhat last week with US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit. The government even decided to deport three Iraqi diplomats, even though it had previously refused similar US requests. These developments relieved those who were concerned with the crisis of confidence between our two nations.
However, the government has also started, out of the blue, a rapprochement with Iran and Syria. Initiating such relations with these two countries, which have been marked as targets by the US, will confuse Washington once again. The US will be scratching its head over Turkey’s actions, as will we all. I wonder if Ankara was unconvinced by the US pledges that a Kurdish state wouldn’t be formed in northern Iraq. Towards this end, if it’s trying to create an alliance with Syria and Iran against a Kurdish state, wouldn’t this amount to a declared lack of confidence with the US? If this is the case, why did it state that there was an ‘accord of viewpoints’ with the US concerning the Iraq issue? Or is the government still continuing its inconsistent and contradictory policies? Or are the suspicions that the AKP is trying to pull Turkey away from the West true? I don’t understand what the government is trying to do and I’m not alone: neither do many politicians, foreign policy experts and political analysts. I hope that, in the end, things get better.

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION