U.S. Officials Began Lobbying To Defuse Turkish Threats
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
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.
