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Turkey fouls up the US
works
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
PRAGUE - The United States has been pressing
Ankara to authorize the deployment of tens of thousands
of US soldiers north of the 350 kilometer Turkish-Iraqi
border with a view to opening a second front against
Baghdad. For the Pentagon, this plan should help take
the burden off a possible primary southern invasion from
Kuwait and Qatar in the Persian Gulf area.
Washington has already amassed 150,000 army
personnel in the region for an attack, while Britain is
considering sending more than 40,000 troops. Four US
ships carrying heavy equipment for use in a possible
"northern front" are reportedly waiting off the Turkish
coast. An additional three dozen supply ships are due to
arrive in the area soon.
All the United States
needs now is Turkey's green light. With more than 90
percent of Turks opposed to a new war, Ankara is proving
to be a tough negotiator now under the recently-elected
Justice and Development Party, a political grouping with
Islamic roots.
Phillip Mitchell is a
ground-forces analyst at the London-based International
Institute for Strategic Studies. He told RFE/RL
correspondents that it may be a matter of days before
the Pentagon is forced to modify its war plans. "All the
US mechanized troops' equipment is at the far end of the
Mediterranean [Sea], and [the Americans] cannot hold it
there for much longer. If permission [by Turkey] is not
going to be given, then that equipment and those ships
will have to be diverted to the Suez Canal and onwards
to Kuwait to meet up with troops there," Mitchell said.
Some news reports say that the Pentagon might
discount the possibility of Turkey's cooperation if
Ankara doesn't make a decision within the next 48 hours.
The US State Department has so far declined to confirm
that Washington is considering any such deadline.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told a
briefing on Thursday that Washington has options to
deploy troops elsewhere in the region should Turkey
reject the US's "final offer". "Turkey, of course, is a
desirable [partner] from the strategic point of view for
any military staging, but the military of the United
States is sufficiently flexible, and whatever decision
is made, the United States will still be successful in
carrying out any military operations," Fleischer said.
Michele Flournoy is a senior adviser for the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International
Studies. She said that, even if the US political
leadership decides to continue talks with Turkey without
an immediate agreement, the Pentagon might still
confront logistical problems. "I think [military
planners] are not going to wait forever. Once you deploy
large numbers of US troops into the region, the clock is
ticking, because if you don't use them, you have to
start worrying about degrading [combat] readiness and
also the need to rotate them out of the region after a
certain point of time," Flournoy said.
Turkish
lawmakers on February 6 decided to allow US army
engineers to upgrade a number of seaports and airfields
for use in a possible attack on Iraq. But Ankara this
week warned that ongoing work to modernize military
facilities does not prejudge the possible use of
national territory as a springboard for a ground
offensive against Baghdad.
On February 18,
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said that any
large-scale US military buildup within Turkey's borders
is conditional on passage of a second UN Security
Council resolution authorizing the use of force against
Iraq.
Although US President George W Bush this
week said he does not believe a new UN resolution is
necessary, both Washington and London are reportedly
working on a document that would placate widespread
opposition to immediate military action against Iraq. It
is unclear when a draft resolution - if ever - will be
submitted to the Security Council.
US officials
believe that Turkish-US ties are suffering because of
Ankara's decision to put off a parliamentary debate over
the issue of US military deployment. The hearings were
due to have taken place on February 18, but were
adjourned indefinitely after the Turkish government told
Washington it could not guarantee a "yes" vote. New
Turkish-US talks took place on Thursday in Ankara but
yielded no result.
Speaking in Ankara after a
meeting with Turkish Foreign Ministry undersecretary
Ugur Ziyal, US ambassador Robert Pearson indicated that
time is running out for Turkey to make a decision. "Our
time frame is the [US] president's, and I won't speak
for him. But as I've said before, time is a critical
issue for us. Both sides are working hard, and I hope we
can find a solution."
Also on Thursday, a
Turkish cabinet meeting concluded that the US has failed
so far to allay Ankara's concerns about the economic,
political and military risks inherent in involvement in
any US-led operation against Iraq.
Washington is
said to be offering Ankara an economic aid package worth
$26 billion - partly in grants and partly in loans - to
compensate for the losses that would be incurred in any
war with Iraq. But Turkey, which says that the 1991 Gulf
War cost its economy some $40 billion, is asking for
more money. It is also demanding written guarantees from
the US Congress that, unlike what happened 12 years ago,
Washington will honor its promises.
Yet analysts
generally agree that money is not Turkey's only concern.
Ankara is trying to obtain firm US assurances that no
autonomous or independent Kurdistan will emerge from the
rubble of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime.
Turkey, which is considering sending some 50,000
soldiers to Iraq's Kurdish-held areas to prevent a
massive influx of refugees, is also refusing to put its
troops under US command. Finally, it wants US guarantees
regarding the future of Iraq's 300,000-strong Turkic
community.
Most defense experts believe the
inability to stage a major invasion from Turkey would
strike a serious blow to the Pentagon's war plans, even
though the US may still be able to achieve its war
objectives. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says
that there are ways to compensate if Turkey decides not
to cooperate.
British analyst Mitchell agreed,
saying that losing Turkey would not prove fatal to US
war plans against Iraq. "I am sure [the Americans] can
go ahead without an attack from the north. That just
means that the southern offensive would take priority. I
am sure they have already factored in this possibility
and this option. How they would attack Iraq on a
one-front basis, I have no idea. But I am sure it can be
done and will be done," Mitchell said.
Flournoy
said that, in the event of what she described as the
"unlikely" scenario that Turkey will deny US troops
access to its territory, Washington might turn to other
countries for assistance. "I think there are certainly
other options for aircraft and air forces. They would be
staged from other bases in Europe, and they would simply
have to travel longer distances to conduct their
missions. I think for ground forces, what we would see
is a shift in focus toward other countries that border
on Iraq and much greater pressure put on them to accept
additional ground forces so that that second front could
be created," Flournoy said.
Flournoy said that
Saudi Arabia and Jordan are among the countries the US
could ask to allow large numbers of its troops to
operate on their soil. Saudi Arabia served as a
launchpad for US-led coalition forces against Iraq in
1991, but it has still not made clear whether it would
authorize the use of its bases in any new war. Like
Turkey, the Saudi kingdom already hosts US and British
aircraft tasked with implementing the no-fly zones
imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War.
Although
Jordan did not participate in the previous conflict,
Washington has been considering using Iraq's
southwestern neighbor as a possible springboard. Despite
Amman's denials to the contrary, some 1,500 US special
operations troops have reportedly been stationed in
Jordan since October.
Anthony Cordesman, a
former senior official at the US State and Defense
departments, is one of the US's top military analysts.
Cordesman, in an interview with RFE/RL, said, "We really
have no access to the [Persian] Gulf except through
Kuwait. It would put all of our advance on one line of
advance; it would greatly complicate the logistic
problems; it would complicate the supply problems and
make our line of advance far more predictable. There
would be the difficulty that Iraq would be able to
predict the lines of advance and that it would be
relatively secure in the north."
That means that
Iraq could concentrate on defending its south and west,
where US troops may attack from Jordan, a task Cordesman
said would greatly simplify Iraq's defense and
complicate US efforts to achieve a swift victory. "And
it certainly would create potential problems in the
course of the war, because the United States would not
be moving through the Kurdish areas, not be securing the
north, and this creates a higher risk of Kurdish
separatism and a different kind of Turkish
intervention," Cordesman said.
Reports say that,
should Turkey eventually deny its territory for use in a
ground offensive, the Pentagon might still consider
attacking Iraq from the north with airborne troops in a
scenario that would involve substantially fewer troops.
Kamran al-Karadaghi is deputy director of Radio
Free Iraq. He said that existing infrastructure in
Iraq's Kurdish-led areas is suitable for a possible
airlift option, although such airfields would not be
appropriate for a large-scale offensive. "If you're
talking about special-forces operations, then it is
possible, because in Kurdistan there are a few small
[airfields], and the Americans have been working on them
for months now to prepare them for possible use. So I
think there is a possibility, really, for this kind of
operation. But for a [large]-scale operation, I think it
would be difficult without having [ground] troops
[entering] from Turkey," al-Karadaghi said.
Analyst Mitchell, himself a retired British army
officer, agreed that an airlift operation would have to
be limited in scope. Should Ankara decide against the
use of its territory by US tanks and infantry, he said
an airborne invasion from the north is unlikely, even
though any US war plan probably envisages airlifting
some troops into Iraqi Kurdistan. "That was going to go
ahead anyway and that will probably still go ahead. But
the problem is that once airborne troops are here, once
[they] are landed, they can only stay on the ground for
a limited period of time before other advancing troops
have to meet up with them. They can only sustain
themselves on the ground for a limited period of time
before they would require assistance. So that would be a
very difficult option," Mitchell said.
Officials
in the US capital claim that Turkey is bound to open its
territory to US troops for fear of damaging relations.
Convinced that it is a key element in US war plans,
Turkey in turn is trying to obtain as much economic
compensation and security guarantees as it can from
Washington.
Both sides are "bluffing", in
Mitchell's view: "With the Turks holding out for as much
money as they can possibly get, and the US saying, 'If
you don't allow us in, you stand to lose far more in
terms of economic assistance and credits', it is a huge
game of poker, isn't it?"
Copyright (c) 2002,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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