9/11 - Looking at US :Louder Than Bombs

The intensive strategic alliance between Turkey and the United States, (USA) which has been maintained since the World War II both on a bilateral basis and within NATO, has nowadays become even more significant as a result of the pending Iraq question.

Even the CIA could not find a single admirer of Saddam Hussein in Turkey. Yet, should a choice between the United States and Iraq be required, the majority of Turkish people would side with Iraq because of religious and cultural connections.

No one wants it again

But people here also remember what happened when Turkey took part in the alliance against Iraq in 1991, when the country suffered both political and economic ramifications. No one wants to go through that again.

The 1991 experience taught this bitter lesson as well: When the United States attacks Iraq, nothing happens to the Baghdad regime nor to Saddam Hussein; only women, children and civilians suffer. From this perspective, closing down the Turkish-Iraqi border and thus closing the oil pipelines, would paralyze the entire southeastern Anatolia region.

But while the Turkish army, the government and the public originally seemed opposed to President George W. Bush's plan to wage war against Iraq, more recently the government in Ankara has tried to use the continuing economic crisis in Turkey as a reason to help the United States.

IMF and EU

Thanks to both Turkish politicians and the International Monetary Fund, (IMF) foreign and domestic debts increase every day here. There is no investment, no employment, production is not at the desired level and the Turkish lira keeps losing value. This economic weakness makes the government in Ankara take irrational steps to try to secure financial support from abroad.

For instance, over the objections of a majority of the members of the European Union, (EU) Ankara implies that it can provide support to the United States for an attack against Iraq in return for money. This fuels the political and economic instability in the country.

In addition, democracy has not exactly flourished in Turkey. And since September 11, the language of America's war on terrorism has been used by those in power as an excuse to further repress the Kurdish people here.

The Kurds

The Kurds, who make up one-third of the country's population, have been pursuing their struggle for democratic and cultural rights with arms since no political or legal means were available to them. In response, Ankara has generally ignored their most fundamental human rights and resorted to violence.

According to the government, the Kurds are terrorists and should be punished as such. This is, of course, a different type of terrorism than the September 11 attacks. The Kurds have a legitimate grievance against the Turkish government, and no legal means to press their case. But the government has used Bush's own post-September 11 arguments about terrorism to justify its immoral and violent treatment of the Kurds. So fundamental rights and freedoms have been violated in the name of "counter-terrorism."

After September 11, the Turkish army and government tried to link all sorts of peaceful actions - i.e. political dissent, opposition, criticism and questioning official state policies - to Osama bin Laden. People very much opposed to terrorism and fundamentalism were immediately accused of supporting Osama if they dared to criticize any U.S. policy or that of the Turkish government. Even some liberal economists probing the Enron and Worldcom scandals were "shown" to be in support of al Qaeda.

Palestinians and Iraqi people

No one wants war or terrorism. Turkey learned the difficult lesson that war is impotent against terrorism. Neither the Turks nor, especially, the Kurds, against whom Saddam has waged war in the past, have a natural affinity for the Iraqi regime. Nor, with the exception of those few elite surrounding Saddam, do most Iraqis benefit from his cruel rule.

However, this still does not justify an outsider's occupying or invading Iraq. But imagine if the huge amounts spent for arms were spent, instead, to reduce poverty and inequality and to ensure justice.

That could well undercut the appeal of terrorists. Should Washington pursue its war against terrorism so that it eliminates the conditions that inspire and nurture terrorism, perhaps neither Palestinian children nor Iraqi women would die. Likewise, just maybe, there would have been no September 11 attacks. (RD/NM)

* Ragip Duran lives in Istanbul. He is the Turkey correspondent for the French daily Liberation, a media ethics lecturer at Galatasaray University, and in 2000, was a Nieman fellow at Harvard.

* USA daily Hartford Courant published the article in September 8, 2002.