The end of the affair
Turkish-US relations nose-dived last week when American troops detained 11 Turkish soldiers and held them for nearly 60 hours. Gareth Jenkins reports from Ankara
Turkey's relations with the US plummeted to their lowest level in a generation last weekend after American troops arrested a team of Turkish special forces in northern Iraq, apparently suspecting them of involvement in a plot to assassinate a local mayor. The Turkish team was held for nearly 60 hours despite furious demands for their release from Ankara.
The arrests took place last Friday afternoon when around 100 US troops raided a building in the predominantly Kurdish city of Suleimaniya in northern Iraq. The building was part of a complex housing the local offices of the Iraqi Turcoman Front (ITC), an umbrella organisation which claims to represent Iraq's Turcoman minority. Unlike other Turcoman organisations, the ITC has always refused to cooperate with the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, who have frequently accused it of being controlled by Ankara.
Turkey has maintained a substantial military presence in northern Iraq since the mid-1990s. Initially, the troops were deployed to monitor the movements of members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which used bases in northern Iraq to support its guerrilla campaign inside Turkey for greater autonomy for the country's large Kurdish minority. But, although the PKK declared a unilateral cease-fire in 1999, subsequently changing its name to the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) and renouncing armed secessionism, the Turkish troops stayed on.
The Turkish authorities claim that the Special Forces arrested in Suleimaniya on Friday were there to monitor the movements of KADEK militants. But although KADEK still has several thousand militants under arms, they are virtually all in camps in the mountains along the Turkish-Iraq border, well to the north of Suleimaniya.
Until relatively recently the US had been prepared to tolerate the Turkish military presence in northern Iraq. But attitudes hardened following the rejection by the Turkish parliament in March this year of a motion that would have allowed US troops to transit Turkey and launch a two-front campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, striking south towards Baghdad as well driving north out of the Gulf states. The vote infuriated the US.
"At the time of the vote we thought that the Turkish parliament's decision would cost us 1,000-2,000 additional casualties," said a US military source. "Even now we have to keep reminding our troops on the ground in Iraq that it is the remnants of Saddam's regime who are the enemy and that the Turks are our NATO allies."
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the US has made it increasingly clear that it expects all Turkish troops to withdraw from Iraqi territory as soon as possible.
"There is no reason for them to stay," said an official from the US State Department. "We can take care of KADEK. Our troops are under strict orders to treat them as terrorists."
But Turkey has refused to budge, reinforcing Iraqi Kurdish suspicions that its continued military presence is designed to curb their own political ambitions and eventually establish a de facto Turkish protectorate in northern Iraq, using the ITC as a Turkish fifth column against the Kurds. In April this year US troops briefly detained another group of Turkish special forces who they said were carrying weapons to distribute to the Turcomans.
Although Washington has yet to give a reason for last Friday's raid, Turkish newspapers have claimed that the US troops were acting on an intelligence tip-off that the Turkish troops were planning to participate in a Turcoman plot to assassinate the Kurdish mayor of the nearby city of Kirkuk. These charges have been angrily denied by Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.
"The accusation is ridiculous," he said. "We are trying to help establish stability in northern Iraq, not destabilise it."
But it is a sign of how relations between Washington and Ankara have cooled, that it took over two days of furious telephone calls to leading members of the Bush administration by Gul and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan before the soldiers were finally released late on Sunday evening; and then only after they had first been taken to US military facilities in Baghdad for interrogation.
For most Turks the detention of 11 of their soldiers by the US represents a national humiliation. The insult has been particularly acute because for years ties between Turkey and the US were based on close cooperation between the two countries' militaries, what US policy planners describe as a 'mil-mil' relationship.
For the Turkish military itself, the incident is proof that their worst fears may now be coming true. Although the Turkish government never seemed to grasp the depth of anger in Washington at the March parliamentary decision, the military always feared that it could permanently alienate their most important ally.
"The vote was a disaster," said a source close to the Turkish General Staff. "We need the Americans not just because they provide most of our military technology but also because it was they who persuaded the IMF and World Bank to rescue our economy. We can survive without them, but only survive."
On Monday General Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the Turkish General Staff, publicly declared that: "The collapse in confidence between the US and Turkey has reached crisis proportions. I wish this had never happened."
On the weekend, the Turkish government closed the border with Iraq to trucks carrying supplies from Turkey to US troops in Iraq. Meanwhile the Turkish military withdrew its liaison officers from US headquarters in Florida and ordered an immediate boycott of all ceremonies involving the US military. On Monday the Turkish government announced that it was sending 11 more soldiers to Suleimaniya to replace those seized by the Americans.
But such gestures to try to placate bruised national pride are unlikely to cut much ice with the Americans. Privately, Turkish officials acknowledge that the incident, particularly the calculated lethargy of Washington's response to Ankara's increasingly desperate demands for the soldiers' release, means that the US is now serving time on the Turkish military presence in northern Iraq. Unless a face-saving formula can be found, Turkey is likely to be faced with a choice between a humiliating withdrawal or a confrontation with the US that it cannot hope to win.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 - 16 July 2003 (Issue No. 646)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/646/re3.htm