THE U.S.-TURKISH DIVIDE

The Globe and Mail (Canada)
October 20, 2007 Saturday

The United States’ military adventure in Iraq has harmed the
strategically vital military partnership between the U.S. and Turkey.

The strain was apparent from 2003, but just how seriously the U.S. has
mismanaged its relations with a country that has been a close ally
since the 1950s became fully obvious only this week.

Where in 2003 Turkish legislators voted against allowing American
troops to use their country as a base to launch a northern front
against Saddam Hussein’s army, they have now voted to let the Turkish
military make incursions into U.S.-occupied Iraq, thereby jeopardizing
the only relatively stable region in the country. But more damning
evidence of the sorry state of U.S.-Turkish strategic relations can
be found than the votes of some mildly Islamist legislators. Turkey’s
most senior general told a newspaper this week that the United States
had "shot itself in the foot" in its dealings with Turkey.

Gen. Yashar Buyukanit was referring in part to a resolution before the
U.S. House of Representatives declaring the mass deaths of Armenians
at the hands of the former Ottoman Empire a century ago to have
been genocide. Setting aside the legitimacy of the declaration –
it is just – the timing seemed almost designed to undermine the U.S.

war effort, since Turkey has let its airspace be used and has been
a crucial staging area for the United States. (Most of the air cargo
destined for Iraq transits through Turkey.)

But the general was also referring to the killings of 20 Turkish
soldiers in the past two weeks alone by Kurdish separatists, and
the failure of the U.S. – for fear of upsetting its Iraqi Kurdish
friends – to deal with the clear threat to its NATO ally posed by
Turkish Kurdish guerrillas operating out of the largely autonomous
Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

It may yet get worse. The possibility now exists that Turkish soldiers
will confront U.S.-backed Iraqi forces in pursuit of Turkish Kurds
in Iraq.