US Seeking to Assign Blame in Its Disappointment Over the Note

In an interview with CNN-Turk yesterday, Perle criticized the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) for disclosing its opinion concerning U.S. deployment in Turkey only after the note was rejected by parliament. "Had this opinion been announced earlier, it would have influenced parliament in a positive way."

Henri J. Barkey, a former U.S. Department of State expert on Iraq and now department chair of international relations at Lehigh University, made a striking assertion concerning the deployment note crisis when he commented on the military’s "limited" support for the government during the course of the Iraq crisis. In reference to the extraordinarily long negotiation period for the parliamentary note, Barkey said, "Those steps were taken to wear out the AKP government, both inside and out." Barkey, also an expert on Turkey, expresses his views in a paper titled "The Strategic Future of Turkey: an American Approach," which he will present at the Center for European Political Studies (CEPS) in Brussels on May 12.

Foreign News Services / Istanbul / TURKEY