Tag Archives: Iraq

Eastward bound…

Posted on by

This is the sec­ond of my posts from Turkey, made after I arrived in Ankara. Prior to my arrival, I met with Turan Cey­lan, the man­ager of the Inter-​Continental Hotel in Istan­bul. He’s a Kur­dish suc­cess story, one of many in Istan­bul where many Kurds have set­tled after the PKK trou­bles in the south­east dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s. I didn’t get much to get out of the inter­view, except that he is pro-​EU (he’s a busi­ness­man) and he believes that dis­crim­i­na­tion against Kurds is blown way out of pro­por­tion by West­ern press (which is easy for him to say; he comes from a rich fam­ily that runs one of the largest con­struc­tion firms in Turkey.)

This was an atti­tude I dis­cov­ered among many middle-​class Istan­bul res­i­dents. Aydin Kudu, my orig­i­nal fixer before he suf­fered a hip injury, had me over for din­ner and dur­ing the post-​prandial tea, he and Raia, his girl­friend and some­times partner-​guide, said the same thing: There is no dis­crim­i­na­tion in Turkey; Kurds can do what­ever they like, as long as they don’t break any laws.

On one level, they have a point. At least one pres­i­dent of Turkey, Turgut Ozal, has claimed Kur­dish ances­try and Istan­bul has seen a num­ber of Kurds other than Cey­lan rise to suc­cess in the busi­ness­world. But there is a great deal of unknown truth in the state­ment that “Kurds can do what­ever they like, as long as they don’t break any laws.” But until recently, it was ille­gal to be Kur­dish. It was ille­gal to teach or sing in Kur­dish. Yes, Kurds could suc­ceed in Turkey, but only if they assim­i­lated and acted Turk­ish. And even then, if someone’s ID card listed them as hail­ing from the south­east, they would often be greeted with sus­pi­cion and had a harder time find­ing jobs in the more cos­mopoli­tan west­ern part of the country.

At any rate, this gave me much to think about. So after a cou­ple of days, I took a bus from Tak­sim in Istan­bul where Aykut Uzun, my fixer, met me. After five hours on the road in Turkey, I was glad to see him.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Ecevit: Kurds dragging Turkey into war

Posted on by

Wow. I posted the pro­posed Kur­dish and Iraqi con­sti­tu­tions last night—and my thoughts that the Kurds are ask­ing for trouble—and wouldn’t you know it? Today, the Guardian runs this. It’s more of that growl­ing that I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post, but what’s most alarm­ing about this is Turkey’s charges that the United States is direct­ing the Kurds: “It is beyond encour­age­ment, (Wash­ing­ton) is direct­ing them,” Prime Min­is­ter Bulent Ece­vit told the Turk­ish paper Mil­liyet. “We will talk to the United States.“
If the United States is direct­ing the PUK and the KDP, that would amount to a stun­ning rever­sal against Turkey, one of our most loyal allies in the region. I don’t think that we are, frankly, and these com­ments are likely play­ing to Ecevit’s nation­al­ist base of sup­port, which often views the U.S. with sus­pi­cion. (They still har­bor resent­ments over Cyprus form 1964 and 1974.)
The United States needs Turkey more than it needs the Kurds, sadly, as the Kurds have only about 80,000 lightly armed pesh­mer­gas while the Turks have tanks and F-​16s (bought from the United States, of course.) They’re also a NATO ally and Incir­lik is a nec­es­sary base for run­ning sor­ties in the north­ern no-​fly zone.
But beyond that Turkey is valu­able to the United States in that it pro­vides a “good exam­ple” of democ­racy and Islam, serv­ing as an effec­tive ide­o­log­i­cal coun­ter­weight to Iran. It also has close ties to the Turkish-​speaking peo­ples of cen­tral Asia and their energy reserves.
This is why the United States has been such a pro­po­nent of Turkey’s ascen­sion to the Euro­pean Union. America’s sup­port is a com­plex web of self-​interest (keep­ing a strong, demo­c­ra­tic Mus­lim nation tied to the West) and pay-​back (see mil­i­tary alliance above.) It’s also why the Kurds of south­east Turkey both admire and resent the United States. They admire it for its stance on the Turkey-​EU issue, and they see mem­ber­ship as the key to eco­nomic recov­ery in that depressed region. They resent Amer­ica because it was very very sup­port­ive of Turkey’s war against the PKK’s ter­ror cam­paign (which Turkey remem­bered when Sept. 11, 2001 hap­pened.)
So, again, I’m not sure what would hap­pen if Iraq’s Kurds attain some form of inde­pen­dence. That would almost cer­tainly drive the Turks to war in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, and what then would the Amer­i­cans do? This may turn out to be a big­ger ques­tion than who rules the day after Saddam…

Calif. congressman: “I don’t trust this president”

Posted on by

Woah. This firery deunciation of Bush comes from Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif. (He represents Fremont, home of the largest population of Afghanis in the United States, interestingly enough.) His statement is full of red meat for leftists, calling Bush a lightweight National Guardsman in the 1960s, and questioning his tough-guy cred by quoting columnist Molly Ivins: "For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy."
I'm not one to take away from Mssr. Stark's statement. I agree with most of it, in that the people who will pick up the $200 billion (estimated) tab for Gulf War II: The Sequel will likely be people like my grandmother who depends on Medicare, but will see it cut to make way for Bush's tax cut and war costs. Others likely to pay include those who need unemployment insurance, students who don't get federal money to go to college and any number of natural Democratic constituencies.
And now that the House and Seanate have passed their respective war resolutions, we have politicians like Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who say things like, "The bottom line is . . . we want to move on." The impression one gets is that Democrats want to move on to economic issues that play well a month from now, that might give them back the House and cement their hold on the Senate. Understandible, true, but at what cost?
It seems the Democrats were outmaneuvered by Bush & Co. yet again, just as Republicans were constantly outmaneuvered by President Clinton through most of the 1990s. Bush cranked up the war rhetoric from September on, to force an early vote, knowing the Democrats would be forced to either delay the vote, and open themselves up to charges of treason and/or wimpism (the Bush family's least favorite slur!) or rush the vote and give the president what he wanted in the first place. Of course, this week's quickie vote on war will come back to haunt the Democrats, when their liberal, anti-war supporters get wooed by the Green Party charging that Democrats and Republicans are but two sides of the same coin. (Nader's party is active in many close races, potentially threatening Democrats from the left.)
So Mssr. Stark can afford to vote no and denounce Bush on the House floor. He’s in a safe dis­trict. The ques­tion is, now that he’s got his war on, will Bush’s action leave any­where safe?

Update on House Vote

Posted on by

The Hastert-​Gephardt pro­posal (H.J.R 114) passed the House today on a 296 – 113 vote. The Sen­ate also voted 75 – 25 to limit debate, mean­ing its vote on the war res­o­lu­tion could come as early as tomor­row. This is dis­ap­point­ing as the Spratt amend­ment was a common-​sense approach to this whole killin’ Iraqis busi­ness. (For a glimpse of alter­na­tives, Here’s a PDF that com­pares the var­i­ous House and Sen­ate pro­pos­als.)
All of this may be moot, how­ever because sources on Cap­i­tal Hill are say­ing that Bush doesn’t want war at all! That come Nov. 5, Bush will sud­dently start talk­ing about how the United Nations is a use­ful body after all, and that inspec­tors will be allowed to do their job. I’m told Bush doesn’t want to be look­ing at an occu­pied Iraq two years from now when we have guerilla fight­ing in Bagh­dad sub­urbs, a mas­sive drain on the national econ­omy and a sta­ble oil sup­ply only because United States occu­pa­tion forces keep Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs (not to men­tion Turkomen and Ira­ni­ans) from each oth­ers’ throats. Add to that a daily trickle of body bags as one or two GIs die every cou­ple of days. That wouldn’t be very fun to run on, would it? Espe­cially since Bush avoided the hor­rors of a long, drawn out guerilla war once before!
This would be a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of dog-​wagging. At least Pres­i­dent Clin­ton actu­ally tossed some cruise missles around when he was accused of doing it to dis­tract the nation from him “doing it.” In Bush’s case, how­ever war with Iraq will have been talked up, the Mid­dle East desta­bi­lized, the UN insulted and our rep­u­ta­tion trashed with allies — all for short-​term elec­tion gains. (Well, not all for short-​term gains. No doubt there are plenty of true believ­ers who think that Sad­dam should be blowed up real good, but try­ing to divine the influ­ence of peo­ple like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney et al., is akin to Krem­li­nol­ogy.) A post-​election change in rhetoric would prove the influ­ence of “Gen­eral Rove.”