U.S. Urges Turkish Restraint On Kurds
Strike Could Imperil Broader War in Iraq
By Molly Moore and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 14, 2007; A01
ISTANBUL, Oct. 13 — U.S. officials began an intense lobbying effort
Saturday to defuse Turkish threats to launch a cross-border military
attack against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and to limit access to
critical air and land routes that have become a lifeline for U.S.
troops in Iraq.
"The Turkish government and public are seriously weighing all of their
options," Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said after
meetings with Turkish officials in Ankara, the capital. "We need to
focus with Turkey on our long-term mutual interests."
But even as the U.S. official appealed for restraint, Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at a political rally in
Istanbul on Saturday, urged the parliament to vote unanimously next
week to "declare a mobilization" against Kurdish rebels and their
"terrorist organization," the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Fears of a new frontier of instability in the troubled Middle East
sent oil prices soaring Friday to a record high of $84 a barrel. U.S.
military officials predicted disastrous consequences if Turkey carries
out a threat to strike northern Iraq, and they warned of serious
repercussions for the safety of American troops if Turkey reduces
supply lines in response to a congressional vote last week on the
killing of Armenians nine decades ago.
The confluence of two seemingly unrelated events could not have come
at a worse time. Thirteen soldiers killed last weekend in Turkey in
the most deadly attack by Kurdish separatists in more than a decade
had barely been buried when the House Foreign Affairs Committee in
Washington approved a resolution labeling as genocide the mass
killings of Armenians during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey does not deny the deaths but argues that they occurred as part
of a war in which Turks were also killed.
"This is not only about a resolution," said Egemen Bagis, a member of
the Turkish parliament and a foreign policy adviser to Erdogan. "We’re
fed up with the PKK — it is a clear and present danger for us. This
insult over the genocide claims is the last straw."
Domestic politics in both countries — the Armenian lobby that pushed
for the genocide resolution in the U.S. Congress and growing pressure
on the Turkish president to stop Kurdish rebel attacks — collided to
create an international crisis.
"It’s a difficult time for the relationship," U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice told reporters Saturday during her trip to Russia,
noting that Fried and another senior State Department official had
traveled to Turkey to reassure the Turks "that we really value this
relationship."
A recent poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United
States, a transatlantic public policy organization, found that Turkish
attitudes toward the United States were becoming increasingly hostile.
Using its 100-degree thermometer scale, the fund found that Turkish
"warmth" toward the United States had plunged from 28 degrees in 2004
to 11 degrees in 2007.
"Each time we have a soldier killed, many people look at Washington
and they believe that Americans are responsible for this because they
prevent us from stopping the infiltration into Turkey," said Onur
Oymen, deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party.
Erdogan is feeling increased heat from his military, which is
suspicious of his Islamic roots and acquiescence to Washington in
taking no action against Kurdish rebels in Iraq. His public is angry
over the genocide vote, frustrated with a European Union that is
unwilling to admit Turkey to its club, and outraged that the United
States has turned its back on what Turks consider their own fight
against terrorism, a 23-year-long war with the Kurdish separatists.
"The Turkish newspapers are printing full front-page pictures of dead
soldiers with Turkish flags," said Bulent Aliriza, director of the
Turkey project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The accusation is that this guy is soft on the Kurdish issue and does
only what the U.S. wants him to do."
That perception prompted Erdogan to issue a warning to Washington this
week: "If you’re against [the rebels], make your attitude clear and do
whatever is necessary. If you cannot do it, then let us do it."
A major operation by Turkey "would start a war with the Iraqi Kurds,"
said Henri Barkey, a former State Department official who now heads
the International Relations Department at Lehigh University. "Northern
Iraq is the only place that the U.S. has managed to achieve a modicum
of stability and [it] is afraid that a major operation would unleash
violence in the north.
"I’m sure the U.S. would say okay to a limited, one-time operation,"
Barkey said. "But everyone knows a one-time operation is not going to
solve the problem. The Turks want a carte blanche to do whatever they
want to do. That’s the problem."
Marc Grossman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and undersecretary
of state for political affairs during President Bush’s first term,
said there were three reasons the United States has been reluctant to
take action in northern Iraq against the PKK: U.S. troops are already
fully engaged, and the north is generally stable. Plus, he said,
"there’s a lot of sympathy in some parts of our government for the
Kurds and some residual disappointment for the Turkish government
decision on March 1, 2003," to forbid the United States to launch an
assault in Iraq through Turkey.
Human rights groups have long criticized Turkey for the brutal
treatment of its Kurdish minority and its efforts to suppress the
Kurdish culture and language within Turkish borders.
The PKK problem had become so frustrating to both Turkey and the
United States that the retired U.S. and Turkish generals appointed in
2006 to help resolve some of the tensions have left their jobs: The
Turk was relieved of his position just before he planned to resign,
and the American offered his resignation letter weeks ago, though it
was accepted by the Bush administration only this week, according to
U.S. and Turkish officials.
Bagis, the soft-spoken Turkish lawmaker and Erdogan adviser, has what
for the moment might be one of the world’s least enviable positions —
chairman of the Turkey-USA Interparliamentary Friendship Caucus, a
group of Turkish lawmakers who meet regularly with their counterparts
in the U.S. Congress.
He returned here from Washington on Friday after a failed push to head
off the genocide resolution. On Saturday, in the midst of the Muslim
festival of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Ramadan fasting
period, Bagis’s young children were pleading with him to get off the
telephone and play.
But Bagis could not shake the frustration of the past several months.
He and other Turkish officials, including Erdogan, have been warning
the Americans for months that the situation on the Turkish-Iraqi
border had deteriorated.
The PKK leadership operates freely in northern Iraq, they argued. The
rebels have established camps and a safe haven, and the attacks in
Turkey are becoming increasingly bold. Neither the United States nor
the Iraqi government had taken any action to arrest PKK leaders or
curb their activities.
Even though the U.S. government was the first foreign country to
declare the PKK a terrorist organization, it appeared to many Turkish
officials that the United States was setting a double standard in not
allowing them to launch an attack against the rebels to protect their
soldiers and citizens.
After the past two weeks’ spate of PKK attacks, which killed a total
of 30 soldiers, police officers and civilians, Turkish authorities
arrested suspected rebels who were carrying U.S. military-issue 9mm
Glock semiautomatic pistols. U.S. officials said at the time that the
weapons had been stolen.
Bagis’s response: "The good news, we have found your stolen weapons;
the bad news, they’re killing us."
He added, "And while all this is going on, all of a sudden this
resolution comes along with this ally you consider as your most
important strategic partner in the world, your strong NATO ally —
insulting you with something that is claimed to have happened back in
1915.
"It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Oh, it never happened,’ " Bagis said.
"We’re saying, ‘Let the historians judge it, not the politicians.’ "
Wright reported from Washington.
Source: le/2007/10/13/AR2007101301427.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic