THE DAILY BLADE: Our Allies* The Turks
Turkey, a putative ally of the U.S., complicated our Iraq war plans by denying use of airbases and facilities from which to attack Saddam Hussein from the north. Now, with sectarian violence in Iraq at a fever pitch – and the Kurdish region a rare oasis of safety, stability and self-sufficiency – Turkey wants to complicate matters for the U.S. again by invading northern Iraq to launch an offensive against Kurdish guerrillas and their leaders. The Turkish military claims that some 3,800 rebels are based in Iraq, with another 2,300 within Turkey’s borders, and that the Iraqi government has not done enough to curb their activities.
Just as the U.S. is being forced to take sides between Shia and Sunni Iraqis, a cross-border incursion will force us to choose between our Kurdish allies in Iraq and the Turks.
The Associated Press reports that if Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives the green light to Gen. Yasar Buyukanit’s plans, “a key consequence would be strained ties with Washington – which fears an offensive would provoke a fierce reaction from Kurdish groups in Iraq that are key allies of U.S. forces.” For their part, “some Turks question just how strong their ties should be with Washington if it refuses to side with them against the rebels.” The AP article also notes that, “Even if the Bush administration decided to act strongly against the Kurdish rebels in the mountains near the frontier, U.S. forces are already stretched thin by the battle against insurgents in central Iraq.”
Human rights watchdogs have long accused Turkey of brutality against the Kurds, and as a down payment on the price of securing Turkey’s on-again, off-again co-operation in the War on Terror, the U.S. has agreed to help them crush the troublesome Turkish Kurds. According to AP, Turkey has “vowed to continue fighting until all rebels are killed or surrender.”
The balance of our government’s payment to Turkey is for the U.S. to continue to deny that the Ottoman Turks committed genocide against their Armenian population in 1915-1917, by using any means necessary to prevent the House and the Senate from holding floor votes on a resolution acknowledging what historians and other world governments consider settled history, beyond debate or question. In this video clip from C-SPAN, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice squirms in her seat as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) questions her on why the Armenian Genocide is the only such crime against humanity our country has refuses to acknowledge, during a March 21st House hearing on H.Res.106/S.Res.106 (ignore the Armenian text introducing the clip, it switches to English).
Rice calls for “more study” to determine what happened nearly 100 years ago – the first tactic genocide deniers resort to in their historical revisionism. She also cites Turkey’s staged “pro-Armenian” demonstrations in Istanbul after a nationalist plot resulted in the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink as proof of Turkey’s “evolution” on the genocide. The rallies were nothing more than a desperate, cynical gambit to convince the European Union that Turkey – a nation that is 99.8 percent Muslin - is making progress in protecting the rights of its minority Christian population. A few days later an entire soccer stadium was shouting anti-Armenian epithets to spur their team to victory.
This exchange between Schiff and Rice is particularly revealing (he starts by noting that the U.S. does not have the "moral authority that we need to condemn the genocide in Darfur if we do not acknowledge those atrocities that occurred earlier..." and asks, "Is there any doubt in your mind?"):
Rice: "I think the historical circumstances require that we allow historical commissions to explore this issue and come to terms with their past."
Schiff: "You come from academia, is there anything in your background or training that would leave you to believe that this murder of 1.5 million people was not a genocide?"
Rice: "Yes, I do come from academia, but now I am secretary of state. I think that the Armenians and the Turks need to resolve their past before they can move forward."
Schiff: "When Hrant Dink is murdered on his doorstep, when the Turkish government moves to bring him up on charges of "insulting Turkishness," I don’t see Turkey as being a democracy that signifies progress."
But this payola between Turkey and the U.S. is a two-way street. For years, there have been allegations that H.Res.106 has been repeatedly pulled from a floor vote – the last time by former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert – because the Turkish government has been spreading “walking around money” all over Washington, D.C. One whistleblower, a former FBI translator who is fluent in Azeri, Farsi (Persian) and Turkish, even charges that that our own government has been infiltrated by Turkish intelligence operatives.
When it comes to allies, Turkey is a demanding and capricious diva. The protracted struggle that we are in against the dark forces of Islamofascism require staunch and steadfast allies who will not withhold their support at crucial moments, or make a dire situation even more calamitous. Instead of “study groups” to re-examine the established facts of the Armenian Genocide, Rice would do our nation a greater service by studying what other countries in the region would be more suitable allies in the War on Terror than Turkey.
Editorial Note: Why the plural in the hed? Because every country that thought Turkey an ally soon enough found Turks to be two-faced and duplicitous.
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