No Turkish Soldiers In Iraq

Wexler also openly asked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Gul if Turkey was turning its foreign policy orientation eastward. According to Wexler, the answer was very clear. ‘Erdogan and Gul vouchsafed to me that there was no shift in Turkey away from the West,’ he said. ‘They also said that it would be out of the question for Ankara to abandon its quest for European Union membership.’ Wexler then left Ankara, calling himself ‘more optimistic than when I arrived.’

However, neither Gul’s denial of any shift in Turkey’s direction nor Erdogan’s participation in a state dinner given in the honor of New Zealand’s visiting governor-general – without his wife in order not to cause another headscarf crisis – seem to have eased the concerns about Turkey’s direction.

The Washington administration’s stance on the AKP following Parliament’s refusal to allow the deployment of US soldiers is being felt directly in the handling of postwar Iraq. Most recently the US signalled, albeit diplomatically, that Turkish soldiers wouldn’t be included in an international peace keeping force to be established in Iraq. The US doesn’t seem to welcome the idea of including soldiers from Iraq’s neighbors in the international peacekeeping force. During their speeches, US officials said that if soldiers from neighboring countries were included in the force, the balance of power in the region might be unsettled.

Another concrete sign came from London. Turkey wasn’t invited to a meeting on establishing stability in Iraq to be held in London, in spite of Ankara’s statements that it warmly welcomed the idea of sending soldiers to the country.

Public opinion in Turkey and many other countries is wondering furiously if the tension between our government, president, military and bureaucracy will be resolved during today’s National Security Council (NSC) meeting.

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION