- Dan Plesch reveals that, in return for supporting a new
Gulf war, Turkey could get Iraqi oilfields
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- Many countries have spoken out against the Bush
administration's
plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but it would be a mistake to suppose
that they will in fact cause trouble if the bombs start to fall. Washington
has a long record of bringing its allies into line.
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- Take Turkey. Its prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, continues
to oppose publicly the idea of attacking Iraq. But there is every reason
to believe that the US has already offered control of Iraq's northern
oilfields
to Turkey in return for its support in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what
informed sources in Washington tell me; and it is confirmed by press
reports
of what Richard Perle, an influential adviser in the Bush administration,
said while he was in Ankara with the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
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- The oil-rich Mosul area has been disputed since the
collapse
of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War. The British drew
the maps and invented the states that exist today. Turkey disputed the
British decision to give the Mosul province to the new Kingdom of Iraq,
but finally accepted it in a treaty signed in 1926.
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- The issue remained dormant until Iraq, under Saddam,
attacked Iran in the mid- 1980s. Weakened by the war, Saddam invited Turkey
to crush Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. At this time, a total collapse
of the Iraqi state seemed entirely possible and Turkish interest in the
oilfields revived, particularly in the Turkish media. Yet when George Bush
Snr raised the "Mosul option" in the wake of Saddam's invasion
of Kuwait, the government in Ankara declined the "invitation".
It feared an Arab backlash against redrawing the borders and it was not
anxious to acquire more territory populated by Kurds.
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- In 1995, however, 35,000 Turkish troops attacked the
Kurds in northern Iraq, an act ignored by the British and US governments
who had made much of their protection of the Kurds from Saddam Hussein.
As the Turkish troops withdrew, President Suleyman Demirel said: "The
border on those heights is wrong. Actually, that is the boundary of the
oil region. Turkey begins where that boundary ends. Geologists drew that
line. It is not Turkey's national border."
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- He retracted these statements after Arab protests. But
Turkish interest has continued, and today the Turkish national oil company
is drilling new wells in the Khumala field as part of a UN-sanctioned
oil-for-food
programme. Turning this commercial presence into a guaranteed supply of
cheap oil, courtesy of a new puppet regime in Baghdad, may be the carrot
that the US is offering Turkey. It would go some way to compensating for
the decade-long loss of trade with Iraq that has damaged the Turkish
economy.
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- But oil is not the only, or even the biggest, lever that
the US has over Turkey. It also funds half its IMF and World Bank
loans.
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- As it happens, the US is now less reliant than it was
on Turkish airbases, as it is taking over huge former Soviet airbases in
Bulgaria and Romania. But Turkey's army has a reputation for brutal
effectiveness,
and the US would like to make use of it. Turkish forces are already serving
in Kabul, and are set to take on a greater role. Such power-projection
fits into the nationalist objectives that Turkey has pursued in the
Caucasus
and Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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- One US option in Iraq - an alternative to the more
commonly
mentioned options, including an invasion through the Gulf and support for
internal uprisings - is to seize one or more airbases in the country and
use these to launch commando and larger ground-force raids. Such
"in-country"
bases are essential for special forces operations, as proved to be the
case in Afghanistan - you cannot perform effective missions on day trips.
And this is where the Turks come in: their forces could help to secure
a main operating base inside Iraq. If, in the process, they crush Kurdish
"terrorists", Washington will not complain.
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- The real objective of the US in Iraq is to destroy the
idea that anyone can fight America and get away with it. For US
conservative
strategists, this was Bush Snr's strategic failure in the Gulf war. Once
the US has bases in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, military operations
against Iran, next on the list of "axis of evil" countries,
become
more viable. This approach to the axis of evil may seem too reckless to
take seriously, and there is no certainty that the Americans will pursue
it, but we should not underestimate the White House's determination to
destroy its enemies.
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- So what should Britain and Europe do? In the short term,
if Europe offered more economic support, Turkey could afford to be more
flexible and independent in handling Washington's demands. In the longer
term, Europe should remove its dependency on Gulf oil, which leaves it
reliant on the US military's ability to control supplies.
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- Wind, solar and fuel-cell technology could provide our
energy and transportation needs. If we developed them, we would have
freedom
of action in the Middle East and be able to form a policy more independent
of the US. As we plan for 2010 and 2020, energy independence offers a far
more practical and - to use a fashionable phrase - "asymmetric"
strategy for reducing the sources of conflict and increasing our power
than an attempt to compete with the Pentagon by creating a European
army.
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- Dan Plesch is senior research fellow at the Royal United
Services Institute and the author of Sheriff and Outlaws in the Global
Village (Menard Press, £5)
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- http://www.newstatesman.co.uk
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