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Cheney to visit Turkey on Mideast tour next week |
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Written by Zaman
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 |
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United States Vice President Dick Cheney will visit the Middle East next week and meet with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian West Bank and Turkey, the White House announced yesterday.
"President [George W.] Bush has asked the vice president to travel to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey for discussions with these key partners on issues of mutual interest. The vice president will meet with ... President [Abdullah] Gül and Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan of Turkey," the White House said in a brief written statement announcing the visit.
Both officials at the US Embassy in Ankara and at the Turkish Foreign Ministry headquarters declined to comment on content of the visit and exact date of Cheney’s arrival in Ankara. The vice president’s tour will kick off on March 16, the White House said.
Cheney’s visit will come only weeks after a Turkish ground incursion into northern Iraq. The Turkish military began a ground offensive against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq on Feb. 21 and announced that troops were being withdrawn on Feb. 29. The offensive, the biggest anti-PKK operation in a decade, apparently had US consent, but Washington underlined repeatedly that it must be limited in length and scope to avoid damaging Iraq’s stability. Turkish officials said the US provided intelligence support for the operation.
The most recent Cheney visit to the Turkish capital was in March 2002 in the run-up to the US-led invasion of neighboring Iraq. In March 2003, the Turkish Parliament narrowly rejected a government motion asking for permission to militarily cooperate with the US in opening a northern front from Turkish territory in the war on Iraq. The event sparked a deep crisis with the US, which has only recently been overcome due to concrete US help in Turkey’s fight against the PKK based in northern Iraq.
Over the last few years, both Cheney and former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who left the office in December 2006, insistently made statements in which they implicitly or explicitly blamed Turkey for the US failure in Iraq.
Cheney’s visit also comes ahead of NATO’s April 2-4 summit in Bucharest where the ongoing US pressure on reluctant European allies to take a larger role in combating a resurgent Taliban in the more volatile south and east of Afghanistan is likely to be one of the top items on agenda. In late February, when US Defense Secretary Robert Gates paid an official visit to Ankara, Chief of Turkish General Staff Gen. Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt reportedly rejected the US’ expected request for sending more troops to Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda terrorists there.
There has been speculation for a while that the US, which has been supplying real-time intelligence to Turkey -- key in accurately determining PKK targets -- might press Ankara to send combat troops to Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda terrorists. However Turkey had previously pledged to contribute with around 24 officers to train Afghan military personnel, refusing to send additional troops for combat missions. In early February, Gates said the NATO alliance was at risk if it became split between members willing and unwilling to fight as he appealed to Europeans to support the war in Afghanistan. |
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