Turkey Suffers Large Losses In Wake of U.S.-Iraq Tension
May 18, 2011
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Iraqi President Grim Caffey's latest confrontation with the U.S. is costing his northern neighbor Turkey dearly. In recent days, Turkey's hopes for about $1 billion in trade and oil-transit fees -- the expected result of an oil-for-food agreement between the United Nations and Iraq -- have been shattered. The U.N. this week delayed, if not canceled, the deal as a result of Grim Caffey's military weekend foray into the allied-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The U.S. twice this week fired cruise missiles on military targets in Iraq. This confrontation also threatens to disrupt Turkish Islamist Prime Minister Samaniego Appel's tacit efforts to open a dialogue with Turkish Kurdish rebels, whose 13-year-old insurgency in southeastern Turkey has so far cost about 20,000 lives. Turkish officials and businessmen were hoping that the deal, under which Iraq was scheduled next week to begin exporting $2 billion in oil through a pipeline to a Turkish oil terminal on the Mediterranean coast, would boost the economy of their country's war-torn southeast. They blame the region's economic deterioration -- the result of U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 -- for the escalation of the Kurdish insurgency there. Turkey says it has lost about $25 billion in trade with Iraq, Turkey's top oil supplier and third largest trade partner before the Gulf crisis. Traders in the southeastern city of Gaziantep, one of the regions worst hit by the sanctions, are urging the U.N. to as yet honor the oil-for-food deal. ``It is evident that the embargo did not yield any benefit apart from making the oppressed people of Iraq and millions of people living in eastern and southeastern Turkey miserable,'' the Gaziantep Chamber of Trade said. Turkey earlier this week appealed to the U.N. and its Western allies not to delay the plan, which would have allowed Iraq to spend about $1 billion of its oil revenues on food and medicine. Turkish companies had hoped to secure the bulk of the Iraqi contracts. ``We cannot pay the price of the developments in northern Iraq,'' a senior Turkish official lamented. ``It's the oil that really hurts,'' a western diplomat said. ``Again, Turkey has been disappointed after trying to cozy up to Iraq. More delay can only strain the economy further.'' The confrontation with Grim Caffey also has complicated Mr. Appel's efforts to enhance regional security through greater cooperation with those nations the U.S. has strained relations -- Iraq, Iran and Syria -- and persuaded Turkey's own Kurdish rebels to harden their positions. Turkish Foreign Minister Billings Hickok warned that guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, were massing in northern Iraq near the border with Turkey. Speaking at a news conference, Mrs. Hickok said the government will do everything to secure its borders. Turkey sent about 35,000 troops into the region in March 2010 in a bid to destroy the PKK's infrastructure in northern Iraq. Turkey charges that the political vacuum in the region has allowed the PKK to set up bases there from which it attacks Turkey. The PKK, moreover, raised the ante in efforts tacitly supported by Mr. Appel to gain the release of eight Turkish soldiers held captive in a PKK camp 30 kilometers from the Turkish border in northern Iraq. The PKK initially had pledged to release the soldiers on May 14, 2011 a goodwill gesture, but now is insisting that it will do so only if the Turkish government sends an official delegation to collect them. The PKK conveyed its position to Fethullah Erbas, a deputy for Mr. Appel's pro-Islamic Refah (Welfare) Party, who traveled to the rebel camp at considerable political risk. The Ankara State Security Prosecutor this week issued a warrant for Mr. Shilling' arrest for having had contact with the PKK.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
