WILL THE OLD ALLIES ENTER A "NEW ERA"?

Many foreign experts attach great importance to Turkish President Ab-dullah Gul's recent visit to the United States. There are serious reasons for that. Firstly, this was the first visit to the USA by a Turkish president in 11 years. Turkey's ninth president, Suleyman Demirel, paid an official visit to Washington in 1996 and Turgut Ozal in 1992. Bu the matter is not about symbols. Considering that the executive authorities in Turkey are headed by the prime minister, it is the prime minister's visits to the White House that show strong allied relations between Ankara and Washington. The frequency of these visits (once a year) complies with the nature of strategic relations between the two countries. The most important thing here is that experts draw attention to the fact that it is a symbol of the American-Turkish thaw after quite a lengthy (almost five years) period of what the Turkish press called "venomous" relations between the two countries, which were marked by numerous difficulties and contradictions related to the new Turkish authorities' pro-Islamic policy and Turkey's more independent and tougher policy in the region.

The Turkish delegation, which also included Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, Energy Minister Hilmi Guler and Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek, held meetings in Washington with President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, State Secretary Rice and Defence Secretary Gates. The meetings and talks focused on bilateral relations and the regional situation, specifically, the Middle East settlement, the situation in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as energy security, Tehran's nuclear programme and relations between Ankara and the European Union, the Turkish and US press reports.

Of course, the main attention was focused on the two presidents' meeting held on 8 January. It must be noted that the meeting was of special importance not just to the Turkish, but also to the US leader who flew to the Middle East on a seven-day working visit (during which he will visit seven countries - Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt) the next day and could take advantage of the Turkish president's advice and consider his position while meeting the leaders of these states.

Commenting on the results of his meeting with Gul, the US president first said that he welcomed his counterpart as the president of a country that is "a great strategic ally" of the USA. He also said that "both countries are facing common problems" and "are fighting a common enemy - the terrorists". At the same time, Bush described the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as a common enemy, saying that "it is an enemy of Turkey, Iraq and all people who want to live in peace". Such assessments were made by the US president for the first time, which can be certainly seen as a great diplomatic victory for Ankara. The matter is that it is exactly the Kurdish issue that caused some coolness in relations between the two countries. Having the second biggest army in NATO after the USA, Turkey concentrated about 100,000 soldiers on the Iraqi border last autumn and threatened to carry out a large-scale operation against militants if the US and Iraqi forces themselves did not curb the PKK. The United States persuaded Ankara not to do that, saying that an invasion would only cause even greater chaos in Iraq. Only after the Pentagon started giving Turkey intelligence information about the bases and movements of PKK militants in October, did tensions in bilateral relations subside. Using this information, Turkish aircraft carried out a series of missile strikes in December on the positions and bases of militants in Iraqi Kurdistan 100 km south of the Turkish border.

However, the two countries are still too far from full understanding on this matter. The point is that the Turkish air strikes on the positions of PKK militants in northern Iraq have put Washington in an awkward situation before the Iraqi authorities, The International Herald Tribune reports. Baghdad supports Turkey in its fight against terrorism, but is extremely irritated by the fact that Ankara's policy destabilizes the situation in northern Iraq. In this regard, US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly warned Ankara against actions that threaten stability in this region of Iraq and has called for Turkey's military operations against the PKK to be accompanied by political steps towards the settlement of the Kurdish issue. US State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Dell Dailey earlier said that Washington prefers a political solution to the PKK problem. However, it is hardly worth expecting Ankara, to put it mildly, to hurry it up.

The PKK problem was also raised by Gul during his meeting in Washington on the same day with a group of Turkish and US businessmen. He said that by carrying out strikes on PKK militants, Turkey helps promote stability in Iraq. At the same time, he said that Ankara respects the territorial integrity of Iraq and Turkey's only aim in missile strikes on targets in Iraqi Kurdistan is to sort the militants out once and for all. He said that Ankara is in fact doing the Iraqi people a favour, because Turkey "is not just countering threats from militants, but is also trying to do what the Iraqi government itself is unable to do at the moment".

Ankara's second biggest success in the meeting between the two presidents in Washington was the United States' clear position on Turkey's entry into the EU. Speaking to journalists after a meeting with Gul, Bush openly expressed his country's position on Turkey's membership of the EU, saying that Europe will only benefit from it. "I believe that for many countries of the world, Turkey is a fantastic example that democracy can successfully co-exist with such a great religion as Islam, and this is very important," Bush said. "I see Turkey as a constructive bridge between Europe and the Islamic world, which is why Turkey's accession to the European Union meets the interests of common peace," he added. It is difficult to say how much such a position will increase Ankara's chances to secure its successful entry into the EU, but there is no doubt that it will strengthen Ankara's position in its dialogue with the EU and in the European political arena as a whole.

Another important subject that was discussed during the negotiations in Turkey was energy and Turkey's role in oil and gas transit to Europe, the Turkish press says. As a major route for transporting energy resources from the Caspian region to Europe, Turkey is interested in strengthening its transit positions and becoming a full (Ankara sees this as a monopoly) regional energy corridor not just between the East and the West, but also between the North and the South. We think Ankara is trying to solve two issues here. First, Ankara is trying to enlist US support in its struggle against alternative transit routes bypassing Turkish territory, which are initiated by Moscow and supported by a number of European allies of the United States (Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and others). Ankara understands that without diplomatic pressure on these countries from Washington, success in this issue is impossible. Second, Ankara is trying to persuade Washington that the transit of Iranian energy resources through Turkish territory will not threaten US interests. Some Turkish experts believe that Ankara and Washington will be able to agree on the first issue, because both countries not only see eye-to-eye on the need to reduce Europe's dependence on gas import from Russia, but seriously worry about Moscow's increasing global and regional influence. This conclusion was drawn by the veteran of Turkish diplomacy, Ozdem Sanberk, who said that the presence of objective common interests between the two countries in the region is of benefit to Ankara, smoothing out and solving problems that emerge in bilateral relations from time to time. At the same time, he thinks that in order to secure the successful development of this tendency, Ankara should also take a number of return measures, specifically, get rid of its complexes and establish a direct dialogue with the administration of northern Iraq. As is known, Turkey not just refrains from any contacts with the leader of Iraqi Kurds, Masud Barzani, but also ignores attempts by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is Kurdish by origin, to get Ankara to invite him to Turkey on an official visit.

On the whole, Gul's visit was really a symbol of the restoration of traditional allied relations between Ankara and Washington. The results of the visit, or at least the part of the visit that was reported in the press and was open to analysts, do not confirm the statement that the Turkish president made in conversation with Turkish journalists on his way to Washington that "the new phase in the fight against terrorism and the development of events in Iraq showed that the period of difficulties [in relations between the USA and Turkey] has become a thing of the past, the atmosphere of trust has been restored and a new era is coming". The former Turkish ambassador to the United States, Faruk Logoglu, agrees with this. Sharing his assessments with The Turkish Daily News and noting the permanent complexity of the Kurdish and Armenian questions, he said that it would be a big exaggeration to say that "a new era" has come in relations between the two countries. We can only talk about a new positive impulse that may help bilateral relations develop in a more pragmatic way.