The Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

32 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 1 0 hit it —without objection from Sad- dam Hussein. After the U.S. inva- sion, however, cross-border action was no longer possible. Washington thought this might unhinge the Iraqi Kurds, potentially unsettle the most stable part of the country, and per- haps have other unintended conse- quences. And U.S. officials respon- sible for Iraq policy had more im- mediate concerns than 3,500-odd fighters located in remote border regions who, whatever their other sins, did not target Iraqis or Americans. But as terrorist attacks in Turkey mounted, claiming hundreds of lives, Turks increasingly blamed the PKK’s de facto sanctuary in northern Iraq. They demanded that either we or the Iraqis act, or that Turkish forces be allowed to do so. U.S. acquiescence to Israel’s July 2006 cross-border invasion of Lebanon to fight Hezbollah ac- centuated these demands, especially when it was fol- lowed in August by at least 13 bomb attacks in Istanbul and other urban centers. Many Turks concluded that we and the Iraqi Kurds tacitly — or perhaps even ac- tively — supported the PKK. Seizures from captured fighters of U.S.-origin small arms (provided to Iraq for security forces there) seemed to confirm this. Our embrace of the Kurdistan Regional Govern- ment and calls by reputable figures outside the Bush administration to divide Iraq along ethnic lines added the specter of Kurdistan to Turks’ angst. It seemed to some that our goals for Iraq included an independent Kurdistan that might even take in a chunk of Turkey’s southeast as a reward for the Iraqi Kurds’ support in deposing Saddam Hussein in 2003 — and retribution for Turkey’s lack thereof. In May 2007, a suicide bomber in Ankara targeted Turkey’s military commander. More attacks followed, and matters came to a head when PKK attacks over three out of four consecutive weekends in September and October 2007 claimed dozens of casualties near the border in southeast Turkey. No democratically elected government could allow such violence to go unan- swered, and Turkey’s parliament passed a measure on Oct. 17 authorizing a cross-border operation. This was the picture when Prime Minister Erdogan arrived in Wash- ington to meet President George W. Bush on Nov. 5 of that year. Diplomacy and Decision It seemed obvious in 2005 that getting the Iraq problem in U.S.- Turkish relations fixed was essen- tial. Iraq was our nation’s top foreign policy priority. We needed Turkey’s help and cooperation there, as well as an end to the Iraq- related enmity that was degrading a decades-old alliance and under- mining our work on terrorism, en- ergy, Iran and other issues. So we increased our consultations with Ankara on Iraq, made common cause on several of those issues, and addressed specific prob- lems, especially the PKK. Policy changes in both Wash- ington and Ankara were essential. Dialogue: Much of diplomacy consists of talking with and listening to others, so expanding our consultations with Turkey on Iraq was an obvious — and relatively easy — point of departure. • Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s coordinator for Iraq, Ambassador David Satterfield, became a fre- quent visitor to Ankara, and both he and his predecessor, Ambassador James Jeffrey (now ambassador to Turkey), as well as senior National Security Council staff respon- sible for Iraq, made plenty of time available for Turkish visitors to Washington. • Multinational Force-Iraq Commanding Generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno initiated regular meetings with the Turkish deputy chiefs of the General Staff, Generals Ergin Saygun and Hasan Igsiz. • U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad (later Ryan Crocker) visited Turkey, as well, and they and em- bassy staff met often with the Turkish ambassador to Iraq (first Ünal Çeviköz, then Derya Kanbay). • Embassy Ankara staff were frequent guests of Turk- ish Foreign Ministry Iraq Coordinators Ambassadors Oguz Çelikkol and Murat Özçelik, briefing them on de- velopments, identifying upcoming issues and soliciting Turkish views. • Iraq usually headed the agenda when Sec. Rice and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns (later William Burns) met with their counterparts. And the “Shared Vision and Structured Dialogue” initia- tive launched by Sec. Rice and Foreign Minister Abdul- lah Gül in 2006 put Iraq in the middle of a compre- hensive dialogue about the region. F O C U S President George W. Bush’s Nov. 5, 2007, meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan proved to be a turning point.