No Turkey
by digby
Via Buzzflash and A liberal Dose, I see that it’s being reported that Turkey has denied the US access to its bases for an air attack on Iran, even though the US promised to provide the Turks with their own nuclear reactor:
Turkey’s refusal to comply with the US request was another indication of the growing tension between the two nations, which, according to Gul, have not “seen a single day of positive stability since the Islamic party was elected to power [in 2002].”
The tensions, you’ll remember, were caused by this (from Josh Marshall, March 2003🙂
As we’ve noted here several times before, the administration thought muscling the Turks would pay off for the United States — a strategy that backfired terribly. I don’t even think I imagined, however, they’d be this clumsy. Buried in the last graf of this article in Saturday’s Washington Post comes this …
But one senior U.S. official acknowledged that U.S. pressure in recent months has backfired, saying that at one point Pentagon officials insinuated to Turkish politicians that they could get the Turkish military to back the request for U.S. troop deployments in Turkey. “It was stupid stuff. These are proud people,” he said. “Speaking loudly and carrying a big stick wins you tactical victories from time to time, but not a strategic victory.”
The backdrop here is that the military pushed out an Islamist government only a few years back. Going over the civilians’ heads to the Turkish General Staff would inevitably raise the spectre of a repeat of those events.
It’s the sort of tough guy tactics that’s worked for the Bushies at home but failed miserably abroad.
It hasn’t been working so well at home lately either.
If this article today from the Jerusalem Post is correct, the Bush administration tried to buy the Turks off this time, and didn’t get any better result.
You can see why the administration wanted a middle eastern country with airbases of its very own. You just can’t trust these anybody these days to allow you to use them as a launching pad for attacking their neighbors. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
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