The Lincoln Plawg

Sunday, March 23, 2003 10:50 a.m.

Turkey: more information, more fog (but Erdogan speaks!)

The great invasion from the North (oiled by a copious supply of Yankee dollars) has long since been a dead duck. Now, the name of the game is Turkish army incursions: numbers, equipment, duration, purpose - and degree of consent from Uncle Sam [1].

Today's WaPo has a piece which has the Turks denying that any of its forces have crossed into Iraq. The Turkish Ambassador in DC is quoted as saying

We reserve both the option and the intention of sending troops into northern Iraq. But we have to do this in consultation with the U.S. administration, and hopefully with its consent.

Currently, there is no agreement on the point. But

Turkish officials say they reached a preliminary agreement with Washington for the introduction of as many as 30,000 Turkish troops into a 12 1/2-mile band along the border

when the US deployment agreement was being negotiated.

(What puzzles me, military mug that I am, is, What can the Turks do in a 12.5m band that they can't do within their own frontier? How, for instance, could they help their beloved Turcomans? Still less dissuade jubilant Kurds against locking in their desired autonomous status by creating military facts on the ground in Mosul-Kirkuk...)

US Central Command seems pretty relaxed on the movements that Turkey denies

U.S. officials said small Turkish military units, with as many as 1,500 soldiers, have been moving back and forth across the border for months.

But there's trouble from Berlin:

Germany announced yesterday that if Ankara became a belligerent, it would withdraw its air crews from early-warning AWACS aircraft that have been patrolling over Turkey on behalf of NATO.

Perhaps, the US wouldn't exactly move heaven and earth to jump into the breach, all things considered.

Following the BBC's triumph in getting then Foreign Minister Yasir Yakis to speak on camera, the Post has an interview with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan , the man who sacked him.

One expects little from these things, but the piece is not devoid of interest.

After the hack mentions the reduced US request for overflight rights only, we get the following:

Shouldn't Turkey have gotten on board earlier?
What remains is the negative approach of the U.S. toward full cooperation.
When did that occur?
The negotiations started back in January. We came to this point because we didn't have positive results from these negotiations. The U.S. media has a huge responsibility in this outcome: They showcased Turkey as a country just doing things for monetary gain. We suffered major damage after the Gulf War and our people and parliament know this. Now we are entering this war and will incur more losses. We must talk about how to minimize them.

And then

Do you think that American troops will have to stay on the ground in order to achieve this? There's a lot of apprehension that Kurds may start killing Shiites and Shiites may kill Sunnis. Your prediction?
It's obvious that some forces will need to stay there to protect peace.
For a long time?
The sooner we leave that country, the sooner the people of that country can learn to live with each other again.

Note the shift from American troops to we. On Turkish participation in post-war peacekeeping, Erdogan says

I do not have the authority to make that decision. But Turkey has always been involved in such operations.

On the Bush plan for democratising the entire region, he says

Turkey will definitely have an active role in that because Turkey is a model -- a secular and democratic country.

And, of course, General Hilmi Ozkok is right behind him on that. As on all matters...

Triangulating the truth is an impossible task, of course - as with this from the Observer.
The improbably named Lally Weymouth. British aristo?