BY DOUG LORIMER
Despite the March 1 vote by Turkey's parliament against allowing 62,000 US troops to be deployed in Turkey, the Pentagon has pushed ahead with preparations to use bases in eastern Turkey as part of its planned invasion of Iraq.
US military convoys have been ferrying military equipment for the US Army's 4th Infantry Division from two dozen cargo ships in the eastern Turkish port of Iskenderun to a new base near Kiziltepe, 160 kilometres from the Iraqi border. Some 3500 US troops are involved in the "pre-deployment" operation.
The 4th Infantry Division remains at Fort Hood, Texas, awaiting Turkish approval to deploy to the bases being prepared in eastern Turkey.
Three days after the Turkish parliament's vote, General Hilmi Ozkok, Turkey's top military officer, gave the green light for the deployment of US military equipment to bases in eastern Turkey.
Acknowledging that the parliamentary vote had come in response to massive public opposition to Turkey's participation in a US-led war against Iraq, Ozkok declared: "They say 94% are against war. It is wrong — 100% of the public is against a war... Our choice isn't between good and bad. Our choice is between bad and worse."
Ozkok argued that "Turkey is not capable of preventing the war on its own", but if it refused to co-operate with the US invasion plans, it would lose the US$15 billion aid package Washington has agreed to grant Turkey if it allows the deployment of the US invasion force.
Furthermore, without its consent to the deployment of the US invasion force, Ankara "won't ever have a say" in the running of post-war Iraq, said Ozkok.
Kurds targeted
Once the US launches its war against Iraq, the Turkish generals want to invade northern Iraq to crush any move by the Iraqi Kurds to seize control of the oil-rich cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, which lie just south of the semi-autonomous areas controlled the main the Iraqi Kurdish factions — Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
There are an estimated 4 million Kurds living in northern Iraq. Turkey's rulers fear that if Iraqi Kurds succeed in taking control of Mosul and Kirkuk, this will encourage Turkey's long-suppressed 12 million Kurds to press for the recognition of their national rights. It will also stymie Ankara's territorial ambitions to one day seize northern Iraq's oil.
On March 11, Agence France Presse reported that, during a visit to northern Iraq, French senator Aymeri de Montesquiouhad been told by KDP leader Massoud Barzani that "he prefers Saddam Hussein in Baghdad rather than the Turks here".
The March 13 New York Times reported that the KDP had begun mobilising soldiers armed with artillery, rocket launchers and heavy machine-guns pointed toward the Turkish border to resist any Turkish invasion of northern Iraq.
Referring to the build-up of Turkish troops on the northern border of Iraq, General Babaker Zebari, the KDP commander in the border region, said: "We will strike them as soon as they arrive".
Three-cornered war
The Pentagon's plans for a northern front against Iraq could be thrown into chaos if it cannot deploy a large US invasion force from Turkey. "In the north, you have the prospects of a three- or four-cornered fight between the Iraqis, the Kurds, the Americans and the Turks. Without [a large US force] on the ground, it would be very risky to control that", Dan Plesch, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, commented to Associated Press on March 3.
"America's allies could be too busy disemboweling each other to take on Saddam's troops", commentator Nicholas Kristof warned in the March 12 International Herald Tribune.
The US military has amassed more than 220,000 soldiers, sailors and aviators in the Persian Gulf area in preparation for an invasion of Iraq from the south; Pentagon officials repeatedly declared that they are ready for war. However, some Western military analysts say Washington might be willing to delay its date for launching its blitzkrieg against Iraq until the beginning of April in order to be able to open a northern front using the heavily armoured 4th Infantry Division.
"We don't have a good alternative in northern Iraq to putting our troops on the ground via Turkey", Martin Indyk, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Associated Press on March 10.
Washington is hoping that Turkey's newly appointed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will engineer a new parliamentary vote to approve the deployment of the 4th Infantry Division to eastern Turkey.
Erdogan, the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party and a strong advocate of collaboration with the US war against Iraq, was sworn in as prime minister on March 11 after being elected to parliament in a by-election on March 9.
According to a March 10 United Press International report, "Erdogan assured ... Bush's special envoy Zalmay Khalizad that he would get the 4th Infantry Division through to open the northern front on Iraq" and that, as a sign of his "good faith", he would sack the five ministers in his government who voted against the US troop deployment.
From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
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