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Bomb blasts knock Turkey off balance

Blasts knock Turkey off balance - World - Times Online

Foreign Editor's Briefing by Bronwen Maddox
THE latest terrorist blasts in Turkey are more serious than many in the past because the stakes are now higher.

The Kurdish Freedom Falcons, the offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which claimed responsibility, says that it wants to destroy Turkish tourism. But it might trigger an even more destructive change, driving a wedge between Turkey and its allies in the US, Israel, Nato and Europe.

If you fly north from Baghdad to Turkey, the miles of brown scrubby land end sud- denly in the 10,000ft (3,050m) wall of the Kandil mountains. This is where the territory of Iraqi Kurds meets that of Turkish Kurds. To many there, this should be Kurdistan: a single, undivided country of its own.

For Turkey, the problem is hardly new. Its Kurds, in the southeast, have long felt allegiance to this notional “Kurdistan” rather than to Turkey. The PKK, in spasms of activity, has expressed this violently.

But the latest blasts come at a difficult time in Turkish relations with the rest of the world. Turkey, for so long valued by the West as a secular, Muslim ally, as a member of Nato, as a pioneering Muslim ally of Israel — generally, as a bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia — is finding the ambivalence a strain. The European Union, which has long assumed that Turks craved membership, has only slowly become alert to the danger that, at some price, they would not — as polls now show.

One test will come later this week, when parliament will vote on the controversial decision by the Prime Minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan. to deploy peacekeeping troops in Lebanon.

Its passage is all but certain, as the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) dominates parliament. But the prospect has split opinion.

The Justice Minister, Cemil Cicek, has said that “Turkey cannot remain just a spectator, like a country which is distant from events . . . in the Middle East”. Those who want Turkey to the EU also see the deployment as essential.

But others (calling the move “neo-Ottomanist”) find it offensive. Turkey’s President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said last week that he did not believe the conditions warranted it.

Sezer’s role is largely ceremonia but he is a leading secular figure and has clashed with the Islamist-leaning Erdogan over several proposed laws. His opposition could still be costly to the Prime Minister.

The move will also show whether the Army is wholeheartedly behind the action; plenty of rumblings suggest it is not.

Monday’s blast in Antalya coincided with the swearing-in of the new chief of the Armed Forces, General Yasar Buyukanit. He has a reputation as a hardline secularist and has said cracking down on the PKK will be a priority.

The US’s appointment of General Joseph Ralston, former Nato Supreme Commander, as a special envoy on Kurdish terrorism should also help to warm up relations.

The frostiness in US-Turkish relations stems from 2003, when the Turkish parliament refused to allow the US to use Turkey as a base for a northern invasion of Iraq. US commanders have often argued since that much of the insurgency might have been avoided if they had fought their way to Baghdad from the north, through the “Sunni triangle”.

The past three years have not done a lot to repair relations, other than making this single decision seem less crucial, because of the proliferation of troubles in Iraq. Turkey, which feels taken for granted, says the US has paid too little attention to its fears of Kurdish separatism in giving its blessing to Iraqi Kurds’ efforts to run their own territory. Turkey also accuses the PKK of using northern Iraq to mount attacks in the Turkish southeast.

The PKK assault this week was carried out in the name of a territorial cause, not a religious one. But even so, they strain Turkey’s already fraught relations with the West.

August 29, 2006 at 11:43 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home