Turkey in Washington

I know this sounds a bit like the Washington equivalent of Kremlinology, an inexact science founded in the Cold War days when it was possible to analyze the matrices of power in the old Soviet Union by the way the commissars positioned themselves on the podium to watch the May Day parade. How should we interpret the absence of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden when Turkey sent its spanking new foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, its minister of defense and even the odd minister of transport? The simple answer is that it probably has no significance at all. After all, America sent its president to visit Turkey, so Washington almost certainly feels that it has already made the big gesture. It was really Turkey's turn, like the ambassadors of old, to enter a foreign capital with as much pomp as it could muster.

The biggest gun of all was the chief of the Turkish chief of general staff, Gen. İlker Başbuğ, who addressed the dinner audience on Monday night alongside his American counterpart, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen. Of course, speaker after speaker at the conference spoke of the growing complexity of Turkey's relationship with the US, how it was no longer simply a strategic tie built by soldiers, but a more organic web of commerce, education, culture and tourism. On the other hand, it was the breakdown in the strategic relationship at the time of the Gulf War and the subsequent detention of Turkish commandos roaming around northern Iraq in 2003 which allowed the alliance to fall into such disrepair.

It was Gen. Başbuğ who set the tone. By coincidence, I had listened to him speak at a conference in 2005 when he was a mere deputy chief of staff. Then, he was very much wearing a warrior's scowl, upbraiding the United States for its failure to join in on Turkey's own war on terrorism, i.e., its running battle with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). This time, as he began to speak, his trademark puppy-dog jowls broke into what I can only describe as a charming grin. Yes, there was more the United States could do to drain the proverbial swamp of terror, but he praised the intelligence-sharing agreements with the US and indicated that the stage was being set to deny the PKK any room to maneuver in the north of Iraq at all. He had certainly not come to Washington this time to complain.

I managed to corner Gen. Başbuğ afterwards and pressed him on the determination he expressed in his speech to eliminate PKK bases altogether. Wasn't this a tall order, or even counterproductive? He made it clear he was not calling for an immediate frontal assault. It was going to be a slow business and added that the bloodcurdling call for revenge in the Turkish press every time a Turkish soldier died was not helping matters. Mourning should be dignified and not designed to inflame public opinion. At the same time he refused to countenance the notion of a political solution of the sort that the British used to pacify the IRA. There could be no bargaining with the men of violence. This did not mean, however, that there should be no political reforms. He had been among the most vocal in calling for Kurdish cultural rights, he said.

There is a lot of rhetoric on these occasions. Many speakers paraphrased İlker Başbuğ's belief that “Turkish-US cooperation is not a choice but a necessity.” And certainly it makes intuitive sense that Turkey will be more confident in solving its own problems if it feels it has the wind of American support at its back.