The Turkish `people have spoken’

The decision was voided on constitutional grounds and Turkey’s government announced yesterday it has no plans in the "foreseeable future" to see another vote for deployment of U.S. troops on Turkish soil, Eyup Fatsa, a party leader, said yesterday. But U.S. officials continued to hold out hope yesterday that Turkey would agree to let American ground forces use its bases for an invasion of Iraq, even as military planners prepared to shift to an alternate plan for occupying northern Iraq, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
With about two dozen military cargo ships in the eastern Mediterranean standing by to unload tanks and other weaponry in Turkey for America’s 4th Infantry Division, Pentagon officials have been saying for days that virtually no time remained before the ships would have to be redirected to Kuwait and the war plan changed.
But no such order came yesterday, according to several military officials, suggesting some slight flexibility still existed in the Pentagon’s timetable. The delay also appeared to reflect the reluctance of the Bush administration to give up on the Turkish option, for both military and political reasons.
In the streets of Ankara the vote was seen as a victory for democracy.
"There was never any moral justification for this war. Everybody in our country is opposed to such aggression.
"The people have spoken," said Inal Banu, a senior member of the opposition Republican People’s Party.
For weeks, Washington had been mounting such intense pressure to approve the bill that most ministers, even those opposed, considered the prospect of U.S. troops on Turkish soil a done deal, even though local polls put public opposition as high as 90 per cent. A day ahead of the vote, one senior foreign ministry official justified the government’s support for U.S. troops against the wall of opposition.
"Look, sometimes governments and statesmen take unpopular decisions. Sometimes they have to think further ahead of the popular sentiment."
To understand why the vote failed one has to consider the political dilemma facing Turkey’s leaders.
On one hand, they oppose war against Iraq fearing it would create chaos at the southern border, turn Turkey into a target, spark a refugee crisis and send the economy into a tailspin again.
On the other hand, in denying U.S. combat troops entry via Turkish soil, they risk loosing a valuable ally. They claim Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy and a member of NATO, is a country under siege, surrounded by Iran’s theocratic Islamic Republic, Syria’s police state and a Kurdish autonomous zone, buffering it from Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime.
There is a deep fear among government ministers that the Kurdish self-rule zone in Iraq could revive similar dreams among the 12 million Kurds living in Turkey, should war take place. More than 30,000 lives have been lost in the guerrilla war waged by Kurdish separatists which some say, despite a ceasefire, may re-ignite.
Turkish leaders are pressing for U.S. clearance to send thousands of troops into northern Iraq to prevent establishment of a Kurdish state on Turkish soil, plus $15 billion (U.S.) in economic aid to act as a cushion.
The overriding objective, the government said, would have been to prevent Iraqi Kurds from forming their own state.
Given public opposition to war, any decision to allow American combat troops on Turkish bases was defended as self-defence, rather than aggression.
As one analyst with a Washing ton democratic institute observed before yesterday’s vote: "Turkey’s choice is that it never had one."
That was before Saturday’s mass demonstration, the largest in this country’s collective memory.
The voided vote could have a negative effect on Turkey’s shaky economy. Critics say it reveals the new government’s failure to achieve party discipline.
With files from Star wires