OnePeople

US Bungled Turkey Diplomacy

The front page of the Washington Post has a piece on how the Bush Administration completely screwed up its negotiations with Turkey. The Administration was foolish, setting a number of fictional deadlines without consequences. It was clumsy, allowing Turkey to think that they were far more important than they actually were. Finally, it was arrogant, asserting that we didn't need Turkey anyway. This screwed up the war, the UN vote, and did permanent damage to the US relationship with Turkey -- who will be desperately needed as Iraq's reconstruction begins.

"One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said."

"Turkey's rejection not only forced a rewrite of the war plan, but it undercut the administration's broader diplomatic efforts to win international support for an invasion. Diplomats said the image of Turkey resisting U.S. pressure emboldened smaller countries on the U.N. Security Council to reject a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military action. The failure of that resolution in turn made it impossible for the United States to recruit such close allies as Canada and Mexico to join the fight against Iraq, since they had tied their support to a new resolution."