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作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
World Opinion Roundup
All Is Not Quiet on Iraq's Northern Front
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 26, 2003; 5:51 AM
All is not quiet on the northern front of the war in Iraq.
While war rages in southern and central Iraq, the regions north of Baghdad are tense and uncertain. The U.S. has begun bombing a small enclave of pro-al Qaeda Islamic fighters along the Iranian border. U.S. Special Forces are starting to arrive in Kurdish-held territory. The local Kurdish forces, known as the pesh merga, are itching to join the fight against their longtime foe, Saddam Hussein.
All of that leaves neighboring Turkey in agony. The secular Islamic democracy northwest of Iraq is deep in acrimonious debate. The all-consuming question is whether its government should join a war that is unpopular with its people but all-important to its chief strategic partner, the United States.
Turkey's answer is not yet clear. So far Turkey has refused to allow U.S. forces to use its territory to press the attack on Iraq, although it is allowing use of its air space. Contrary to erroneous press reports, Turkey has not sent its own troops into northern Iraq. The U.S. has withdrawn an offer of $6 billion in aid but according to a story in today's Washington Post the Bush administration is setting aside $1 billion for possible economic aid.
For Turkey, the heart of the issue is the Kurds, the independent-minded people scattered across Turkey, Iraq and Iran. They have a long history of hostility to Saddam Hussein and an even longer tradition of hostility to the Turks. If and when the U.S. wins in Iraq, Turkey fears the Kurds stand to gain ground, oil and freedom. Turkey doesn't like the prospect nor does it know how to prevent it.
One school of thought is that Turkey has already squandered its chances to influence events. "Turkey is no more an important strategic country," wrote Gungor Uras, columnist for Milliyet, a centrist daily in Istanbul. By denying support to the United States, the country has put itself on the sidelines of power, he wrote Monday.
"The United States will remain in Iraq and several other parts of the Middle East after the war ends. No one will think about Turkey's strategic importance anymore. The United States will not adopt a hostile approach towards Turkey but it will no longer attach importance to it as much as it did so in the past. Nor will it support our country as much as it did so until now."
Another line of thinking holds that Turkey's firm stance against U.S. intervention is heightening the country's importance. Also writing in Milliyet, columnist Fikret Bila said the United States, faced with Hussein's resistance and his shelling of the Kurdish positions, needs Turkey to salvage its military operation in Iraq, and that this new development may mitigate the US-Turkish tension.
The Islamic press is uniformly hostile to the war, according to translations made by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
"How Can a Maniac Have Smart Bombs?" asked columnist Hasan Karakaya in Tuesday's edition of Vakit. Karakaya described President Bush as "a psychopath who outdoes even Nero in destroying and setting fire to the world." The paper also devoted an entire page to an illustrated report entitled "U.S. Targets Civilians Again" which stated that the U.S.-British attacks on Iraq "have turned into a Crusader campaign of terrorism."
In an article entitled "We Can Never Be a Member of This Foul Coalition," a columnist for Milli Gazete called on Prime Minister Erdogan to take back his remark that Turkey is a part of the coalition against Iraq and dismissed the ongoing military campaign against Baghdad as "illegitimate, illogical, and ruthless."
In Yeni Safak, another Islamic daily in Istanbul, columnist Mustafa Karaalioglu argued Monday that Turkey's refusal to allow U.S. troop deployments gives Ankara the opportunity to play a leading role in stopping the war on Iraq through cooperation with Europe and the Arab world. According to Karaalioglu, Ankara should not be "obsessed with the notion" that relations with Washington will deteriorate.
What happens next is anyone's guess.
"Do not believe the interpretations that the relations between Turkey and the United States, which were upset with the rejection of the second draft permission [allowing U.S. troops to enter], have started to return to normal with the third permission," allowing the use of Turkish air space, columnist Erdal Safak wrote on Saturday in Sabah, a leading centrist daily.
"On the contrary, the relations are becoming even more strained. Moreover, they are being dragged towards very dangerous waters. The cause of it is northern Iraq," Safak wrote. The United States is "is violently opposing the entrance of Turkish soldiers into northern Iraq. The situation in the region, however, has rather incited the determination of Turkey to send forces there."
With Kurdish forces preparing to move on Kirkuk, an oil-rich Iraqi city that was once part of the Ottoman empire and almost became part of Turkey in the early 20th century, the prospect of an independent Kurdish state is growing and Turkish national security is at stake, according to Safak.
"It is necessary from now on for us to act with concerns about the situation, both within and across borders," he wrote. "In other words, just as the United States has sent soldiers to Iraq in accordance with 'preventive war' strategy, Turkey is also forced to enter northern Iraq for 'preventive intervention.'"
But one of the country's leading journalists, Mehmet Ali Birand, writing for the Turkish Daily News said today that "Washington has given satisfactory assurances" that it will not allow Kurdish independence and "the western world is definitely opposing Turkey sending more troops into Northern Iraq."
Birand predicts that Turkey and the United States will agree that "the Turkish army will be deployed along the border to prevent a migration wave" of Kurds fleeing the war but that Turkey will have to give up it traditional approach to checking Kurdish self-determination.
"A brand new world is being built right in front of us," Birand concluded. "Since we do not want to take part in this new formation we are outside rather than being at the table."
?2003 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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