Uncertain allies

At least one cannot accuse Kemal Unakitan, finance minister, for making life dull in the heat of Ankara summer. The man has passed a law that scrapped his prosecution for tax evasion through forgery. He admits, with quite sympathetic smiles, that his own house is an unlicensed building – now awaiting amnesty through another shrewd piece of legislation. And finally he has admitted to have illegally possessed 50,000 square meters of government-owned property, literally a forest at the heart of Istanbul, also awaiting amnesty through a separate legislation. As a matter of reflex one must look at Mr Unakitan every time the government drafts an amnesty for past illegal dealings. But this is hardly the right time to contemplate on the virtues of Mr Unakitan’s affairs.

Just when the bigwigs in Ankara thought the Americans tended to "forgive but not forget" Turkey’s refusal to fully cooperate on war against Iraq, a new dispute inflamed fresh tensions between the two NATO allies and (former) strategic partners.

The detention and release of Turkish Special Forces in Iraq last week is quite mysterious by its happening; and less so by its objectives. For the careful observer, the incident is not at all surprising. In fact there were signs of a confrontation as early as April when the U.S. forces briefly captured and released a team of Turkish Special Forces en route to Kirkuk for allegedly transporting weaponry to the Turkmen.

Ankara and Washington have different ideas on how to deal with the non-PKK/KADEK Kurds – and ethnic Turkmen. Ankara views with great suspicion what Washington views as a legitimate, friendly force. And Ankara views as a friendly ethnic group what Washington sees as a blockade to greater Kurdish control over northern Iraq. The incidents in April and last week point to an open secret: Turkey and the United States have opposing interests in northern Iraq.

The United States is upset about the activities and presence of Turkish forces in northern Iraq. The Pentagon’s love affair with the Kurds can only flourish as planned if the Turks keep hands off northern Iraq. The Americans apparently prefer to provoke incidents rather than tell the Turks to pack up and leave. And they have a solid pretext for that. Was it not the Turks who first broke the alliance by refusing U.S. troop deployments on their soil to fight a villain like Saddam Hussein?

Secretly, the Americans are hoping to provoke Turkish retaliation which will, practically, have no effect on American interests and instead give them better pretext for their next moves. As the Americans hoped, Turkey’s top generals met to discuss possible retaliatory measures against the United States if all of the soldiers were not promptly released with a formal apology. They ordered a border gate that allowed transport of American logistics into northern Iraq closed immediately.

Further measures could include (1) closing Turkish airspace to American planes; (2) boosting Turkish military presence in northern Iraq; and (3) barring the Americans from using an airbase in southern Turkey as a support base for the effort in Iraq. The trouble is, (1) and (3) will have practically no effect on American plans over the future of Iraq and (2) looks non-applicable under the circumstances. Every retaliatory move, however, will give the Americans solid pretexts for future hostility.

The dossier on the incident will probably close sooner than later. But it has already done irrepairable damage on a relationship already strained by divergence of goals in a most problematic part of the world. U.S.-backed Kurdish leaders who have run the region since the end of the 1991 Gulf War have urged Turkey to withdraw. But Turkey considers northern Iraq part of its sphere of influence and fears that Kurds in northern Iraq might try to create an independent state – a move Ankara sees as casus belli.

The incident in Sulaimaniya has fueled enough animosity among Turks towards the United States. Despite the release of the officers, there will surely be public protests against the hyper-power. The Turks have rarely felt so anti- American before.

All the same past experiences have more than proved Turkish sentimentalism is often overdosed and short-termed. Recent history is full of public campaigns to boycott certain foreign commodities – boycott Syrian goods, now buy Syrian goods and boycott Italian goods, now buy Italian goods and boycott Russian and Greek goods, buy Kenyan goods (if you happen to find them on the market), boycott French goods now that you can buy Russian and Greek goods et cetera.

But more importantly, the mistrust between the militaries is growing irreversibly. Turkish top brass are all rage. That may be bad news for Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Bell Helicopter Textron and BAE Systems North America. All the same "efficient" local agents may help procurement officials forget the Sulaimaniya incident more easily.

The entire episode is very badly-timed for Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. It sounds like a bad joke but Mr Gul is scheduled to travel to Washington at the end of this month on a fence-mending mission. He might of course cancel the trip which, under the circumstances, will be no more than a vacation in a boring capital.

But the pragmatic Mr Gul cannot afford to fuel the tensions. His government badly needs western support for survival vis- …-vis a hostile military. It particularly needs American support to keep Turkey’s fragile economy on track. It is not a secret that Istanbul’s financial markets would crash on the first news of further confrontation with the United States.

What was once a solid strategic alliance of half a century, based on Cold War realpolitik, became, to put it mildly, an uncertain alliance in a span of a few months. The Turks must learn to live with the bitter truth.