Unfortunately, I must totally disagree with the author
of this article. In my mind, the integration of
Turkey, ie. a secular Muslim democracy in the Middle
East into Western Civilization is one of the most
important tasks facing our civilization. We must
prove that Western Civilization and Muslim
Civilization are not incompatabile, and that indeed,
they can be merged. Turkey is perhaps our best
chance of accomplishing that.
Likewise, Hitchens totally fails to consider the
consequences of endorsing the formation of a
Kurdistan. For better or for worse, such actions
would be viewed as the US dismembering an Arab,
Muslim, State. Even worse, it would also be viewed
as the US stabbing-in-the-back its primary Muslim
ally. Unfortunately, we simply must do the best we
can for the Kurds - as ethnic minorities in
democratic, pluralistic Turkey and Iraq.
JDG
Talking Turkey
An ally we're better off without.
By Christopher Hitchens
Updated Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at 2:50 PM PT
The slander of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition, and
of their friends, as little better than puppets of the
Bush administration is an idea that is half-alive in
the minds of those who are knowingly trying to buy
"more time" for Saddam Hussein. Every now and then,
one gets a sneer about it. So, it's good to step aside
from the everyday arguments with the regime preservers
and point out that proxies and mercenaries seldom
express themselves as forcefully and publicly as the
Iraqi opposition has been doing recently.
The first point of disagreement�about the role of
American officers in the aftermath�is a matter of
principle but still somewhat contingent since nobody
can know in advance what conditions will be in the
post-Baathist republic. Many of the supplies required
for rebuilding may be deliverable, for example, only
by military transports. Nonetheless, a strong
presumption has been established against any uniformed
tutelage; the Iraqi National Congress, the Shiite
forces, and the Kurds have united forcefully on the
issue of self-government.
A second point of dissent hardly admits of any
negotiation at all. Turkey has no rights in any part
of Iraq, and least of all does it have any right to
involve itself in the Kurdish areas, emancipated for a
dozen years from Saddam's rule, which adjoin its own
borders. The Bush administration has been entirely too
lenient with Ankara, not just on this point but on
many related ones.
1) Kurdistan itself. It has taken decades for the
Turkish state even to acknowledge that another people
with a distinct language and culture lives within its
borders. It's sadly true that a Kurdish rebellion in
southeastern Turkey was led by a "Shining Path"-type
leader named Abdullah Ocalan (believe me: I
interviewed him in Lebanon and found a Kurdish Pol
Pot), but this in itself expresses the desperate
conditions that obtain. Under steady civilian pressure
from within and without, Turkish authorities are now
prepared to concede on the Kurdish right to
exist�principally because the European Union has
insisted on the point. The time for Washington to make
a statement about Kurdish rights in Turkey would be
right about now. (We have only been waiting since
Woodrow Wilson first murmured on the same point.)
2) Cyprus. If any regime in the world has collected a
bigger sheaf of resolutions condemning its
international behavior than the Iraqi one, it must be
the Turks (followed perhaps by the Israelis).
Since 1974, Turkey has patrolled a line of forcible
partition drawn by its own troops�the first occupation
of the territory of another European state since 1945.
It has expelled almost one-third of the original Greek
inhabitants and further violated international law by
importing settlers and colonists from the Anatolian
mainland. It has been condemned for murder, rape, and
theft by innumerable European court rulings. So
abysmal are conditions in its sweatshop colony in
northern Cyprus, policed by the notorious thug and
proxy Rauf Denktash, that the majority of Turkish
Cypriots have recently joined vast demonstrations
calling for an end to his rule and a federal
brotherhood with their Greek co-citizens. Turkey could
not hang on to Cyprus for a day without vast tranches
of American military aid that shield it from the real
cost of the annexation. This aid should be cut off
without any further shameful delay: It makes the
United States an accomplice in a gross violation of
international law and human rights.
3) Armenia. The destruction and dispossession of the
Armenian people, in the first ethnocide of the 20th
century, is not the responsibility of Turkey's
present-day elected government. Nonetheless, the
Turkish authorities continue to deny historical
responsibility and even to deny that the massacres
occurred at all. Repeated proposals in the U.S. Senate
to observe a day for Armenian-Americans (bravely
sponsored for years by former Sen. Robert Dole) have
been defeated by an alliance of defense contractors
owed money by Turkey and an Israeli lobby that desires
to avoid offending a "Muslim" ally. It is improbable
that Turkey would cease its heavy consumption of
American aid if the resolution passed: It is
intolerable that aid should be granted as a collusion
in such a denial.
A footnote: The Ottoman Empire employed many Kurdish
mercenaries as shock troops in the killing of
Armenians. I have interviewed Jalal Talabani of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and heard him offer an
apology on the record for this blot: Kurds do not
confess to crimes that they have not committed. Thus
the moral element in one instance is, as one might
expect, inseparably linked to the moral case in
another.
It may now be argued that, in order to shorten the
period of hostilities with Saddam Hussein and minimize
casualties, the Iraqi border should be secured from
all directions. But the Turks do not propose to help
guarantee this border or to protect those who live
within it. Rather, they propose to cross the frontier
for no better reason than to aggrandize themselves and
to prolong the subjection of their own Kurdish
population. This doesn't just disgrace the
regime-change strategy. It actually destabilizes it.
And it's humiliating to see the president begging and
bribing the Turks to do the wrong thing and to see
them in return reject his offer. He should take their
ugly egotism and selfishness as a compliment to his
policy, cut off their aid, leave them to put their own
case to the European Union, and tell them to get out
of Cyprus into the bargain. Then we could be surer
that we were really "remaking" the region.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country � your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
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