The Fromson File

II. A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE ON TURKEY:   Motivated by pride and necessity, Turkey’s overriding desire today is to be accepted as an equal partner in the European Union. Its next big test will come in December when the EU meets to decide whether or not to accept Turkey’s application for full-fledged membership.    The Turks are both realistic and patient. They worry that European public opinion may not yet be willing to accept them just yet, fearing that with a population of 70 million and chronic unemployment problems, Turkey would export even more cheap labor to the continent.  But Prime Minister Erdogan, a suave, dynamic former mayor of Istanbul, has impressed European leaders with the changes he has brought about in the last year and the degree to which Turkey has moved toward democracy. In something of an irony, its one million man army is essential to protection of that principle. That’s because of its uncompromising commitment to the maintenance of a secular nation.    The Turks’desire to enter the EU has the enthusiastic support of the United States--and for good reason. Despite U.S  displeasure with Turkey’s unwillingness to grant American forces bases from which to launch operations against Sadaam Hussein’s regime in 2003, relations between Ankara and Washington have been strong for more than a half century. Those ties always are subject to well-known emotional and political pressures from the Armenian and human rights communities in the U.S.   One of the more delicate issues facing the Turks is their treatment of the Kurdish minority. In a gesture of accommodation, Erdogan recently authorized the establishment of a Kurdish language radio station. On the other hand, Armenian Americans are unrelenting in their demands that present day Turkey acknowledge responsibility for the alleged genocide that occurred during the reign of the Ottoman empire at the beginning of the 20th Century..   Relations between the United States and Turkey are among the oldest in U.S. history, beginning with the arrival in Turkish waters of an American naval armada in 1800. A century and a half later, President Harry Truman provided substantial military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece as a response to territorial threats by the U.S.S.R.; one of the earliest crises of the Cold War.  However, in terms of national security the U.S. owes the Turks big time.   Turkey was among the first nations to align itself with Washington and the United Nations during the Korean War. It committed troops to combat in 1950-51 that resulted in nearly 800 Turks being killed in combat.  Their remains are buried in the United Nations Cemetery in Pusan. That commitment, marking the first time the Turkish Republic had ever sent soldiers abroad, had a lasting impact on its view of the world. Their soldiers were among the toughest combat troops I ever encountered in Korea. At one point, their recovery of a key mountaintop occupied by Chinese forces stunned me.  Faced with what were thought to be impregnable Communist machine gun positions, the Turks threw aside their rifles and charged up the mountainside with fixed bayonets to rout the Chinese. Officers of  the U.S. 25th Infantry Division, to whom the Turks were attached, recommended them for a Distinguished Unit Citation.    Stephen Kinzer, writing in “Crescent and Star” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2001) describes the pride with which veterans of that war have adorned restaurants, a grocery, a tea house, yachts and skiffs with the name “Koreli,” the Turkish word for Korea.   Turkey’s collaboration was essential throughout the Cold War. It permitted U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor every Soviet nuclear test conducted in Central Asia from listening posts on the Black Sea.  It offered air bases from which high-flying U-2 spy planes flew reconnaissance missions over the U.S.S.R. on a routine basis. Moreover, the Turks allowed the U.S. National Security Agency to mine the seabeds in the Dardanelles with highly sensitive microphones that enabled it to track every Soviet nuclear submarine that sailed from the Black Sea and Bosporus toward the Mediterranean. That access could have prevented the Soviet underwater fleet from ever reaching the high seas in the event of a nuclear war.   Developments in neighboring Iraq and nearby Israel have propelled Turkey into the middle of a crisis it would rather avoid. That’s especially when it is hoping so much to reinforce its image as a part of Europe. But like it or not, its strategic location and the common assumption that it is indeed part of the Middle East places it in a potentially embarrassing situation. The Turks’ close friendship with Israel has been complicated by Ariel Sharon’s handling of the West Bank and Gaza. Every time the Israelis launch attacks on Palestinian homes or towns with the seeming loss of innocent civilian life, the images are played back on Turkish television. Rightly or wrongly, they arouse public opinion that requires Erdogan or a Turkish government spokesman to respond. The Israelis have worsened matters, , according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine, by deploying the Mossad, their skilled intelligence operatives, to train and arm the Kurds in northern Iraq That alarms Ankara which has its own dicey Kurdish problem.  Turkey does not envision itself as a broker of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, but as a Muslim nation, it feels obliged to lend a sympathetic ear to Arab grievances, no matter how strong its military and economic ties have been over the years with Israel. Last week, Sharon sent his deputy prime minister to Ankara in an effort to smooth over the ruffled relationship.