AWAITING KEY VOTE, TURKS MULL RISKS OF LEBANON TROOP MOVE
by Hande Culpan

Agence France Presse — English
September 4, 2006 Monday 12:44 PM GMT

Analysts on Monday cast doubt on the wisdom of Turkey’s decision to
join the enlarged UN force in Lebanon, saying it could carry grave
risks, as parliament readied to vote on the planned deployment.

Lawmakers were due to gather Tuesday to vote on authorising the
government to implement a one-year deployment of troops as part of
the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

The ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) is highly likely to
secure the vote since it holds an absolute majority in the 550-seat
parliament.

The government argues the move will strengthen its influence in the
Middle East, a region which was ruled by its predecessor, the Ottoman
Empire, for centuries and where Ankara has for years strived to become
a regional player.

In a bid to quell concerns, Turkish leaders have underlined that the
mission has minimal risk, that Turkish soldiers will not be a combat
force and they will not be tasked with disarming the Shiite Muslim
Hezbollah militia.

But the government’s rationale has failed to convince sceptics who
see Lebanon as a predicament in which Turkish troops risk being in
the line of fire.

"To send soldiers into a quagmire like Lebanon… and to say that
they will not get into fighting at all is like saying ‘I am going to
swim in the sea but not get wet’," commentator Mustafa Balbay wrote
in the left-leaning Cumhuriyet daily.

Political scientists Dogu Ergil raised the possibility of Turkish
troops facing hostilities in Lebanon due to locals’ resentment of
their former Ottoman rulers.

"There is a bitter legacy of Turkish rule in the region that the
Turkish official historiography has covered up. The appearance of
Turkish flags and uniforms will rekindle this anxiety to the risk of
the security of the Turkish contingent in Lebanon," he said in the
English-language Turkish Daily News.

Lebanon’s Armenians — the largest such community in the Arab world —
have already spoken out against Turkish peacekeepers on account of
the massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule in 1915-1917 and the
concurrent Ottoman occupation of Lebanon.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered by
Ottoman Turks in a genocide campaign.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
died when Armenians sided with invading Russian troops for independence
in eastern Anatolia and were deported to the Middle East.

Some commentators, meanwhile, saw the risk of Turkey being drawn into
a wider regional conflict if Turkish troops engage in fighting with
fellow Muslims and Hezbollah militia whose main backer is Iran.

"The gist of the story is this: They (Turkish soldiers) will probably
die and kill in Lebanon. They will rehearse for a possible conflict
with Iran. They will be accepted as a party to the wider sectarian
and ethnic civil wars in the region," commentator Umur Talu said in
the mass-circulation Sabah newspaper

Then there is also widespread public opposition to the deployment.

Polls carried out by several Turkish newspapers on their Internet sites
showed staunch opposition to the deployment of Turkish soldiers. Of the
51,000 participants who voted on the website of the mass-circulation
Hurriyet daily, 77.2 percent opposed Turkey’s UNIFIL participation.

"What are we going to do in Lebanon? We should first take care of
the terrorist threat we face," a reader said in a message left on
the website of the Milliyet daily, referring to mounting Kurdish
insurgency in Turkey’s southeast.

At emotional funeral services at the weekend for eight Turkish soldiers
killed in fighting with separatist Kurdish rebels, mourning relatives
spoke out against the government’s plans.

"The government should send soldiers not to Lebanon but to northern
Iraq", which the rebels use as a springboard for attacks against
Turkey, the father of one of the slain soldiers said, according to
Sabah newspaper.