The Reasons Turkey Rejected U.S.

Early last month, Vice President Dick Cheney phoned Turkey’s prime minister with an urgent message: The Bush administration wanted the country’s parliament to vote within days -- just before the Muslim holiday of Bayram -- on a request to base U.S. troops in Turkey for an assault on Iraq.

The timing of the pressure struck a raw nerve here, one that was still aching when Turkish lawmakers finally took up the request Saturday and dealt it a surprise defeat. As Turks offered explanations Sunday for this stinging defiance of their strongest ally, tales of American insensitivity were high on the list.

Religious feelings run deep here before and during Bayram. It was going to be hard enough for Washington to persuade one predominantly Muslim country to join in a war against another. But Cheney was making his pitch to a government led by an Islamist party as its lawmakers were about to head home to join pious constituents for several days of feasting and prayer.

Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, a reluctant supporter of the U.S. request, told Cheney that a vote in parliament would have to wait, according to Turks familiar with the conversation. But word got around, adding to a series of blunders by the Bush administration and Gul’s 3 1/2-month-old government that now seem to have doomed the Pentagon’s goal of a northern front against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

“We don’t like the way we were pushed around by the Americans,” said Emin Sirin, one of dozens of lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development Party who defied its leaders and voted against U.S. deployment.

“The Americans kept giving ultimatums and deadlines, asking Turkey to jump into a barrel of fire,” he said. “They seemed to think we could be bought off, but we had real security concerns about what Iraq would look like after Saddam. They never addressed those concerns.”

Saturday’s vote, which fell three short of the majority required by Turkish law, was a study in miscalculation. The ruling party’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, joined Gul in endorsing the deployment resolution, and they had good reason to predict its passage. The party had swept 363 of the parliament’s 550 seats in November elections.

But the party managed just 264 votes in favor. The rebellion by more than a quarter of its deputies, whose support had been taken for granted, and a unified stand by the opposition yielded 250 votes against the plan and 19 abstentions. The other 17 lawmakers were absent.

The plan would have authorized 62,000 U.S. troops, 255 warplanes and 65 helicopters to move through Turkey to bases along its border with Iraq, creating a force that could advance on Baghdad from the north while a larger U.S. force based in the Persian Gulf region moved up from the south. Such a two-pronged assault, American officials say, would shorten any war to disarm Hussein, minimizing U.S. casualties.

American officials said Sunday that they would keep an armada of U.S. warships waiting off Turkey with tanks and equipment, in the hope that Turkey will soon reverse its decision. They warned, however, that the Pentagon is running out of time to decide whether the vessels -- and the troops they would supply -- should change course and head for the gulf.

Parliament’s decision left the Turkish government stunned and discredited. Some analysts said a rush to a new vote would be risky because a second defeat would further weaken the government’s hold on power.

“The proposal has been delayed for an open-ended time,” Eyup Fatsa, the Justice and Development deputy chairman, said Sunday after a closed meeting of the party’s governing board.

The government has been under relentless U.S. lobbying since taking office, forced to choose between Turkey’s powerful benefactor and a public that opposes war on Iraq by a 4-1 margin in surveys. Turks historically are averse to large numbers of foreign troops on their soil and fear a repeat of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when half a million refugees poured across the border from Iraq and Turkey’s economy was devastated. Some analysts say antiwar rallies across Europe last month hardened popular sentiment here.

Turkey’s armed forces, which usually dictate policy behind the scenes but are divided over the prospect of war, left the decision to the civilian leadership.

Gul and Erdogan responded with mixed signals. After making no secret of their distaste for American war plans, the two men began arguing in recent weeks that Turkey might benefit by cooperating in a war -- for example, by gaining influence in the affairs of postwar Iraq and by being able to restore trade with a neighbor freed from international sanctions.

“Their U-turn came too late,” said Mehmet Ali Birand, a leading Turkish columnist and television commentator. “They failed to bring the public and their own party with them. It was a classic case of miscommunication between leaders and the grass roots.”

American officials believed that the Turks could not afford to turn them down. On the assumption that Turkish leaders thought the same, U.S. officials led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz kept pressing hard for a decision. When Turkey balked, American officials, in private comments to reporters, often questioned the country’s value as an ally.

“The disinformation campaign against Turkey played a big role in upsetting national feelings,” Erdogan said Sunday.

In the end, Washington tried to bargain for Turkey’s loyalty with the promise of a $15-billion aid package that would include $6 billion in grants. The deal nearly fell apart last week when Turkey balked at one of the conditions -- that it agree to strict International Monetary Fund guidelines for reform of its economy.

By week’s end, the government had accepted the condition, but it had no time to explain and sell the accord to lawmakers, many of whom felt that Turkey had been shortchanged.

“The time pressure put on Turkey did not help the Americans’ case,” a senior Turkish diplomat said, because it forced the government to call a vote prematurely.

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Special correspondent Amberin Zaman contributed to this report.