Look who’s knocking on your door, Mr. Wilson!..
We should be honest with each other. In that respect, northern Iraq is a good place to start. One step backward is what the Turks are expecting from their US allies. Adjustment is what is essentially required at this stage.
I have closely followed the remarks made by influential U.S. officials over the last 10 days on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) presence in northern Iraq and Turkey’s increasing troop build up on the border. The common point of these various messages is their carefully worded opposition to a military incursion into northern Iraq by Turkey. If it comes to suggestions, however, there has been no indication so far that Washington intends to be more proactive in its approach. As usual, it seems to be replying with rhetoric rather than actions. Briefing journalists en route to Madrid on Friday, for instance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice maintained that the Bush administration takes the terrorist safe havens on northern Iraqi soil “very seriously.” She then added, “We are really working very, very, very closely with the Turks.” I really wonder whether she knows the number of Turkish casualties since Friday.
Amid such abstract evaluations, it was Ambassador Ross Wilson who eventually highlighted what the Bush administration is principally suggesting. During his interview with Turkish broadcaster Kanal D last week, he said, “The principal address in Iraq for Turkey on dealing with the problem of the PKK in northern Iraq remains the central government in Baghdad.”
The door with the PKK’s name on it
Given this backdrop, the magic formula our beloved American friends put forward is merely door-to-door diplomacy. It seems to function as follows: A tired Ankara knocks on the door of the U.S., but Washington shakes its head and says the address they want is the Iraqi central government. The Turkish establishment, undeterred by this setback, knocks on the door of Baghdad. Soon, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki appears but after listening to Ankara’s concerns he apologetically says this address is wrong as well. He too points to another door, namely that of Massoud Barzani, the head of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. At this point, Ankara’s annoyance becomes visible. With little expectation, nevertheless, it knocks on this door as well. With a smile on his lips, Barzani opens it. His greeting is far from friendly however and he admonishes Ankara, saying it should not knock so loudly next time. “And go to the door around the back,” he screams and slams the door in Ankara’s face. Knowing well whose name is written on that door, Ankara realizes its efforts have been in vain and turns for home.
Is that the way the Bush administration takes the issue “very seriously” and is “working very, very, very closely with the Turks?”
The turning tide in the broader picture
Ever since I heard assertions by Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official, that the two men guiding U.S. policy on Turkey are Deputy Secretary of State Dan Fried and Ambassador Wilson, I have paid a great deal of attention to the latter’s statements as part of his endeavor for public diplomacy.
Just recently the ambassador was reported to have said, “We have felt, in Iraq, that our efforts needed to be focused on big problems for Iraq.” In U.S. strategy, the center of gravity was “in Baghdad” and the U.S. Army was willing to allocate the overwhelming part of its attention, time and resources in dealing with this problem. As a result, he then maintained, they “have cautioned against steps that would undermine Iraqi territorial integrity or sovereignty.” That would also undermine “what is an extremely delicate and obviously very, very difficult political and security challenge that [they] face and that others face.”
Do you really think that the Turkish establishment does not know these facts? Can the higher power echelons in Turkey be indeed so shortsighted? On the contrary, it has always been understood by Turkish decision-makers from all spectrums that the U.S. has had other security priorities in Iraq. Turkish authorities, by and large, have acknowledged Washington’s reluctance to take military action, since it is expensive in manpower and time-consuming amid the tense situation in the center of war-torn Iraq.
What rather disturbs them is the U.S.’ apparent lack of will to employ even means other than purely the military one in dealing with this actual problem. According to the intelligence reports Turkish authorities handed over to both the Iraqi and U.S. authorities, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership’s sponsorship of PKK terrorism is pretty clear. Northern Iraq has become a kind of grand bazaar for PKK terrorists where they can shop for everything for further assaults. At that point, political measures could have indeed helped. Our American friends could have at least exercised pressure on Barzani regarding the PKK shelters in northern Iraq. Instead, however, they chose to give the impression of being Barzani’s enthusiastic spokesperson. They somehow have encouraged the Iraqi Kurdish leadership in their non-conciliatory approach to Ankara. As stressed by Rubin too, in his article entitled “Enabling Kurdish Illusions,” the Kurdish leaders have eventually come to overestimate “the meaning of U.S. sympathy for the Kurds.”
Today, the tide, whatever its effect on the broader picture our American friends are so sensitive to, has unfortunately finally turned. You may not be happy about it or even choose to ignore it. But at a time when each bomb that explodes in another corner of a Turkish city is starkly visible to the Turkish public, as is each new coffin for an innocent Turkish citizen, the “wise and sensible” policies Ambassador Wilson has recommended to Ankara just recently are no longer realistic. With another explosion in a Turkish city and/or news stories about new casualties, I do not think that such U.S. pretexts will be appreciated any longer. At least, the Turkish public will not.
The impact of Clinton’s nose
Former U.S. Consul General in Istanbul David Arnett, in his article entitled “The Importance of Emotions in Turkish-American relations,” wrote, “Practically all of the conflicts between the United States and Turkey, both past and present, can be explained by U.S. lack of sensitivity to Turkish emotional responses and Turkish overreaction to perceived American arrogance.” He then pointed out the positive impact of humanitarian gestures on the Turkish people and said, “The genuine affection of the Turkish people for Bill Clinton stems not from any policy decisions that he made in regard to Turkey when he was President but rather from the simple human act of picking up a Turkish baby and allowing it to play with his nose when he was visiting the region struck by the devastating 1999 earthquake.”
In the near past I had similar views. I also was of the opinion that anti-U.S. sentiments among the Turkish public were in general conjectural. I kept repeating that there was at least a common strategic vision between the two parties that is the basic requirement for any solid strategic partnership. The reciprocal disagreements stemmed from the difference between the means to achieve the ends.
At present, however, I strongly believe that bilateral relations are leading to a serious clash of interests. The way the impact of Clinton’s nose on the Turkish public turned from positive to negative precisely exemplifies what I am asserting. Readers will actually well remember him, mentioning in his interview with Asarq Al-Awsat that he favors U.S. forces’ redeployment within Iraq to meet the “Turkish threat.” Presumably, Turkish military operations against the PKK in northern Iraq would lead to a disaster in the region. This statement was a kind of shock to the Turkish public at the time. The Turks were not able to grasp how the “ideal” U.S. president in Turkish perceptions could betray Turkey’s just causes. However, Clinton just did what an U.S. president, former or still in office, is normally expected to do within the framework of current strategies. More dramatically, the number of people in Washington who share views similar to that of Clinton’s is indeed astounding. I am pretty sure that with the situation in Iraq becoming more complicated and a Democratic president coming to office, more and more Americans will come to assert what Clinton said.
In such a milieu, the respective parties act as if problems as well as divergence of opinions do not exist at all. Suffice to say that the broader consequences of disagreements have come to be frequently linked to artificial human errors. Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee in February, for instance, Rice was reported to have referred to the Iraqi-Turkish frontier as “the border between Turkey and Kurdistan.” It stirred up remarkable discontent in the Turkish public at the time. Shortly after that, the State Department announced Rice simply misspoke.
How have such “inadvertent” as well as “unintended” U.S. errors become very common in Turkish-U.S. relations, the latest of which was an “accidental” incursion by two U.S. F-16s into Turkish airspace that occurred last week? Are they indeed mere accidents? If so, why has the Turkish public become so sensitive that it starts to search for conspiracy theories behind every single U.S. error? Really only because of populism, an attitude our beloved American friends claim is unfortunately all too common in Turkish politics?
We should be honest with each other. In that respect, northern Iraq is a good place to start. One step backward is what the Turks are expecting from their U.S. allies. Adjustment is what is essentially required at this stage.
Mr. Wilson, it is your turn now …