SECRETARY RICE SPEAKS AT AMERICAN-TURKISH COUNCIL LUNCHEON

US Fed News
April 15, 2008 Tuesday 9:29 PM EST
USA

The U.S. Department of State issued the following transcript of
remarks by the U.S. Secretary of State:

Secretary Condoleezza Rice:

Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Eli Alharal. Thank you for
that wonderful introduction. I’d also like to thank my great friend
and mentor, General Brent Scowcroft. I hear he was telling you stories
about when I was younger. I hope he didn’t tell you too many.

I could tell you a few about him, too. (Laughter.) But Brent, thank
you for your work with this great organization, but also for your
continuing leadership and your great public service.

I’d like to thank the Turkish Minister of State for Trade, Mr. Kursat
Tuzmen, whom I had a chance to meet just recently. The Minister of
Defense is here, Mr. Vecdi Gonul and also I see that the Ambassador
to the United States from Turkey is here and the American Ambassador
to Turkey is here. So we have a very distinguished group of people,
all of whom are dedicated and devoted to furthering this extremely
important relationship, a relationship that has only grown in
importance over the recent years in the complicated environment in
which we find ourselves in the world. It’s wonderful to see so many
other friends here from the Diplomatic Corps.

Turkey is a vital and strategic partner of the United States, and so
it’s fitting that this year’s conference theme is: "Regional Allies
and Global Partners." I did indeed visit Turkey, first as Secretary
of State, in my very first trip in 2005 because the centrality of
this relationship is very clear to me and has been for a number
of years. But a year later, my then counterpart, Foreign Minister
Gul, now President Gul, and I decided to create a strategic vision
statement for U.S.-Turkish relations, because we wanted to show that
the relationship between Turkey and the United States was evolving
and was moving toward the challenges of the 21st century. That it,
of course, was a relationship that had important elements as military
allies and NATO. But it was much more than that. It was a relationship
of growing economic ties. It was a relationship of growing diplomatic
responsibility for the challenges in the world.

And perhaps, most importantly, it was a growing relationship between
our peoples. I am always very much mindful that, while the relationship
between governments is important, the relationship between peoples is
what really brings a firm foundation to a relationship between nations.

Now, as NATO allies over many decades, our cooperation today is closer
and more necessary than ever – in fighting terrorism, in promoting
freedom and democracy, and in ensuring that all people within the
region can live safely and securely without fear. Our commitment to
these goals also leads us beyond the region, to cooperate on a global
basis for the advancement of peace and prosperity and freedom. The
United States views our great democratic ally, Turkey, as an active
shaper of positive global trends, and it is a mission that is uniting
us more and more in the 21st century.

It was Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, who famously described the
new Republic’s vision as, "Peace at home, peace in the world." He
recognized back then the importance of promoting peace as a key
policy objective of the Turkish Republic – just as our own founder
Thomas Jefferson did for the United States when he said, "Peace
and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy." Our mutual
cooperation is helping to ensure a region and a world that are freer,
more at peace, and more secure.

Turkey and the United States in pursuing that vision share a commitment
to a united Iraq that is secure, stable, prosperous, at peace with its
neighbors, and free from all forms of terrorism. Let me be very clear:
the United States recognizes the PKK as a common enemy of Turkey,
Iraq, and the United States. Our nations, together with our European
partners, are pursuing a comprehensive strategy to eliminate the PKK’s
safe haven in Northern Iraq and to cut off its criminal and financial
networks in Europe. At the same time, we are working for positive
change in Iraq to ensure the stability of Iraq through the neighbors
process. Turkey hosted the last expanded Iraq neighbors ministerial
in November in Istanbul. And we will meet later this month in Kuwait
to address the challenges that we face and the progress that has been
made in Iraq.

Turkey and the United States are also working side-by-side in
Afghanistan. I was just with my Turkish colleagues, including
President Gul and Foreign Minister Babacan in Bucharest this week –
last week with our NATO allies to reaffirm our long-term commitment to
Afghanistan’s success. Turkey has been integral to NATO’s success in
supporting the Karzai government, in limiting the Taliban’s influence,
and in providing humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for the
Afghan people. Together we recognize that sustainable democratic
development in Afghanistan is the key to sustainable peace.

Turkey and the United States will continue to work together to
defend and promote freedom and opportunity for the people of Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Kosovo. As President Bush has said, "Freedom can be
resisted, and freedom can be delayed, but freedom cannot be denied."

Turkey’s own long legacy of advancing modern and democratic reforms
as a Muslim majority society can inspire those throughout the broader
Middle East and beyond who seek to meet their own national challenges
democratically.

Governments that are democratic and free must also strive to ensure
that their citizens are prosperous. Turkey and the United States have
been promoting economic freedom, open markets, and increased trade,
not only with each other but also with our partners around the world.

Our dialog on these issues is very deep, it’s frequent, and it’s
wide-ranging. In fact, this Thursday, as we hold our annual Economic
Partnership Commission, this will be in full view. This meeting
addresses the central economic issues that tie Turkey and the
United States ever closer together in an ever more mature economic
relationship – including investment, trade, innovation, cooperation
in building prosperity in states that neighbor, states like Pakistan
and Afghanistan. And of course, there is a significant portion of
our work that is devoted to reliable energy.

We fully understand that the growth of both our economies increasingly
depends on new, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly
sources of energy. Currently, Turkey occupies a strategic location
in the region’s energy supply chain. Eight percent of the world’s
oil transits Turkey each day, and its position becomes increasingly
more important with the construction of each new pipeline on Turkish
soil. Turkey and the United States are now building on the success
of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and we are developing a new
generation of natural gas infrastructure that will help Europe secure
its energy supplies at prices set by markets, not by monopolists. The
Turkey-Greece-Italy and Nabucco pipelines are emerging as a new
Southern Corridor connecting gas supplies in Azerbaijan and the
Caspian Basin, as well as Iraq, with Turkey and other European markets.

The United States and Turkey will from time to time disagree on how
best to pursue our goals on all the issues I have mentioned today. It
happens among friends. But we will also – always do so, remaining
firmly united by our shared democratic values, like tolerance and
respect for human dignity and human rights. Throughout history,
both Turkey and the United States have struggled to be true to these
values. And while we have each made many advances, many struggles
lie ahead.

The United States was founded on great principles, but our founding
documents did not recognize equal rights for my ancestors or for
women. In fact, when our Founding Fathers said "We the People,"
they didn’t actually mean me. It took the Great Emancipator, Abraham
Lincoln, to overcome the compromise in our Constitution that made the
founding of the United States of America possible, but that made my
ancestors three-fifths of a man and enslaved them for another hundred
years. Many courageous individuals fought for many years to improve
American democracy, and to ensure that it is truly representative of
all American citizens and that process continues even today. Thus, when
we see the process of building and perfecting democracy in a friend
like Turkey, we know that the road is not easy; it is, indeed, hard.

In the 84 years since the founding of the Turkish Republic, Turkish
citizens have continually built on Ataturk’s commitment to democracy
and secularism. As with all countries, it is a work in progress. We
have seen Turkey strive to improve and transform its democracy and
to modernize its economy in its bid to join the European Union. We
continue strongly to support Turkey’s EU candidacy. It will be good for
Turkey and it will be good for Europe. Ankara’s openness to renewed
efforts on the divided island of Cyprus to reach an agreement on
bizonal, bicommunal federation is also a key part of the process of
Europe’s construction.

In 2007, we witnessed the maturity and vibrancy of Turkey’s democracy
as it weathered and came out stronger. It was a challenging political
year that included a delay in the presidential election, and then the
carrying out of both parliamentary and presidential elections. You
may know that the struggles continue. But Turkish – the Turkish
people, the Turkish voters, will resolve the difficulties before them
within their secular democratic context and their secular democratic
principles. All that can be asked of a democratic society is to stay
true to those principles as it goes through difficult times.

Indeed, as Winston Churchill once said, "democracy is the worst form
of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried
from time to time." Still, both we and Turkey know that democracy is
the best system we have to ensure that human rights and fundamental
freedoms are ensured for all. On that note, we commend Prime Minister
Erdogan for stating recently that parliament will amend Article 301 of
the Turkish Penal Code, which criminalizes insulting "Turkishness." We
encourage this. Expressing one’s beliefs is not an insult to the state;
it is one of the highest forms of citizenship.

Democracy is also the best way to protect peoples’ right to practice
religion freely. We appreciate the support that Turkey has given to
the people across the broader Middle East and North Africa – impatient
patriots in those places who are working to strengthen civil society
and build democratic institutions as the guarantee for their freedom
of conscience. These freedoms are essential to defeating extremism
and terror. We have worked together, too, in the Middle East to try
and promote a process through the Annapolis process, that would give
the Palestinian people also an alternative to extremism and terror in
their own state. And I want to thank the Turkish Government for the –
its presence at Annapolis and its continuing support to that process.

Both of our nations want to be the best champions of these values that
we can within the region, and therefore we must continue to strengthen
these values at home in our own democracies. We continue to encourage
Turkey to recognize and protect civil rights of all religious and
ethnic groups, such as by reopening the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s
Halki Seminary as a vocational school.

The United States and Turkey will continue to support freedom,
democracy and prosperity in the broader Middle East and well
beyond because we know from hard experience that it is the best way
for diverse peoples to live together, and to share power, and to
resolve their differences in peace without oppression of anyone, or
exclusion, or worse. These values are the foundation of everything we
do together. And they are why I believe Lord Palmerston got it wrong
when he said that "nations have no permanent allies." The United States
does have permanent allies and those are nations with which we share
values and we have, therefore, a permanent friend and ally in Turkey.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MODERATOR: Secretary Rice has graciously agreed to take some questions,
and I’ll assist. The lights are bright, so we’ll do our best to see
hands, but we’ve got – let’s see, what have we got?

SECRETARY RICE: I see somebody over there, yes.

MODERATOR: ?mit, we’ve got a microphone right here. All right, we’re
going to go for a non-journalist first. (Laughter.) Here’s one right
here. Please.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, the United States had supported when the
Annan plan vote was proceeding that it will support the ending of
the isolation of the northern Cypriot people, the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus. As an incentive to the new momentum that is building
up on the island, is there any opening toward that? Thank you, ma’am.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. Yes, there is a new momentum building on
the island, and we very much support efforts to use this new momentum
to perhaps finally come to a solution. We were disappointed, frankly,
a couple of years ago when the efforts of Kofi Annan, we thought,
were very close to producing a result and, frankly, should have
produced a result. And we made it known that we felt the Turkish
Government had supported that solution, and we therefore acted to
make some small steps to help to end the isolation of the Turkish
Cypriots. I received, for instance, members of that government.

It’s a more hopeful period and a more hopeful sign now. But ultimately,
some difficult choices are going to have to be made.

People are going to have to overcome political differences and,
really, political resistance from both sides. And so we will be
very supportive of the UN process there. We will be active in the
diplomacy, as we were the last time. I can tell you, for instance,
when the referendum was up, the President personally made phone calls
to try and carry it across. And so we’re going to do everything we
can to encourage the parties, but there is a different spirit now
and we should build on that momentum.

QUESTION: Thank you. Madame Secretary, thank you very much. It was
a great speech. Perhaps you could share with us, since you were in
Bucharest here not too long ago, since we have two great NATO allies
here, maybe you could share with us a little bit of your sensing of how
did the summit go and what were some of the great takeaways that came,
particularly like in Afghanistan. Could you share that with us, please?

SECRETARY RICE: Absolutely. It was a terrific summit. It was, in
particular, a terrific summit because it was rather unscripted and
people didn’t read from their note cards. They actually worked at the
summit. And it was a summit that I think will be remembered for four
very important achievements.

The first actually has to do with Afghanistan. The alliance issued
a vision statement on Afghanistan that clearly commits the alliance
for the long term in Afghanistan. And I don’t mean military forces.

Hopefully, the time will come in the relatively near future where
Afghans can largely carry out security on their own. But we have
to remain committed to that country because, of course, the Taliban
is a tough enemy. It’s an enemy, by the way, that isn’t winning on
the battlefield, so it’s decided to do what terrorists do; it’s
decided to kill innocent people instead. And that’s why you have
the car bombs and the suicide bombs and those techniques, and the
kidnappings. That’s a sign, to my mind, that they don’t want to take
on NATO in military formations; they want to – they want instead to
kill innocent civilians.

And so it’s a hard problem. It’s a counterinsurgency strategy that
has to be met by clearing these areas, by giving security, building
police forces, and then reconstruction and development. And a lot
of the discussion was about how to get a better reconstruction and
development civilian component to the counterinsurgency. But the allies
did talk about troops levels. We received new forces from France. The
United States made some commitments. And I’m confident that NATO is
going to take that mission and carry it to its successful conclusion.

Secondly, we had very great successes on missile defense. The truth
is that this is not, of course, missile defense as we conceived it
in the 1980s when it was meant to be a kind of shield against the
mutually assured destruction of facing thousands and thousands of
Soviet warheads. Rather, this recognizes that the region, including,
by the way, the region in which Turkey lives, faces the emerging threat
of small missile threats from the region, and that countries ought to
be able to defend themselves. And so NATO has agreed on a program of
cooperation on missile defense, and we then went on to Sochi to talk to
the Russians, where I think there was general agreement that we, with
Europe and Russia, should pursue the possibilities of missile defense.

Third, I think it will be remembered as a summit where new members
were admitted: Albania and Croatia. I know that the enlargement of
NATO is controversial in some quarters, but I can tell you that when
I sit in this alliance where now, 12 of the 26 members are former
captive nations, it is an alliance that is reborn by the fact that
it has members who have recent experience with tyranny. They are the
people who remind us what NATO really was about, which was an umbrella
for security among democracies.

And when you sit with Poles and Czechs and Hungarians and Latvians and
other Balts, you know what NATO is and why it has been so important
to peace and security in the world. And so, the admission of Albania
and Croatia was great. It was unfortunate that Macedonia could not
be admitted. And as soon as that name issue is resolved, it will be
admitted, and that came through very closely – very clearly.

Finally, it was – it was a summit that I think will be remembered for
having said that NATO’s lines will not stop at Ukraine, that in fact,
Ukraine and Georgia should eventually have membership in NATO when
they meet the criteria. And while there was lots of reporting about
the membership action plan, this or that, I would just point people
to one of the first sentences of that statement, which literally said
that they will be members of NATO. And that’s an important signal,
because there is a struggle, still, in much of this part of the world
for whether or not these are going to be countries that are going to
be immersed in transatlantic values and transatlantic institutions.

And this was a strong signal.

Turkey was a good partner in all of those. I, myself, believe that
the European construction, which has been really very rapidly moving
along in the last few years since the end of the Cold War, will not
really be complete until Turkey is in the European Union. But this
was another opportunity to show that transatlantic institutions have
tremendous power to transform nations and peoples in accordance with
the values that won the Cold War.

MODERATOR: The Secretary knows that the hand waving frantically in
the background is a Turkish journalist and she says that’s fine.

(Laughter.) ?mit?

QUESTION: Thank you, Madame Secretary. One thing, there is a legal
closure case against Turkey’s ruling party. What’s your take on that?

Thank you.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes. We are following very closely this case,
of course, and it is a matter, obviously, for Turks to decide. We
believe and hope that this will be decided within Turkey’s secular
democratic context and by its secular democratic principles. But
I think it is in everybody’s interest that it be done in this way,
that the voters will be heard. Turkey has democratic institutions,
and it is our great hope that it will be resolved in that context.

MODERATOR: One more question. I saw another hand back here a minute
ago. Right here. Cengiz.

QUESTION: Thank you, Madame Secretary. As a dual citizen of Turkey
and U.S., I’m going to ask a tough question if you’ll allow me. When
the Soviet Union was dissolved, then-Secretary of State Baker sent
a letter to each republic as a precondition of democratic relation
– diplomatic relations. There were four conditions, one of which
was no change in prevailing borders with use of arms. Subsequently,
20 percent of Azerbaijan was occupied by Armenia. And United States
initiated sanctions against Azerbaijan. And 20 percent of Azerbaijan
continues to be occupied at the moment. How are we going to solve that
problem for the benefit of all the people, including the Armenians?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes. Well, I am very much of the view that the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue is one that could be resolved, and actually,
with just a little bit of will, could be resolved relatively quickly.

We have been close several times within the Minsk process, where
we have the cooperation of several countries including Russia, the
European Union, the United States. It is just going to take taking
a couple of difficult decisions and getting an agreement between
Azerbaijan and Armenia on Nagorno-Karabakh.

It needs to be done. I have made the case to both the Armenian
Government and to the Azeri Government that they are falling behind
the rest of the region because they will not resolve this conflict
between them. And frankly, there is plenty of, if you wish to use
the word blame, to go around on both sides. This could be done if
there’s political will and it ought to – it ought to be done.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Madame Secretary. Please remain at
your seats. The Secretary will say hello to our head table and we want
to thank her very much for a wonderful speech and for being with us
this afternoon.

SECRETARY RICE: Thanks, Jim. Thank you. (Applause.)