Turkey Likely to Pull Out of U.S. Aid Effort in Northern Iraq

In a move partly designed to distance Turkey from the United States, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan is expected today to end his nation’s involvement in the security and humanitarian relief effort in northern Iraq, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The White House expects the announcement to be made as Erbakan, the prime minister from the Islamist Welfare Party, briefs parliament on the U.S.-orchestrated effort known as “Operation Provide Comfort.”

Turkish leaders must regularly renew their role in the operation. Turkey is one of the primary bases for overflights and aid programs to the oil-rich Kurdish stronghold in northern Iraq.

U.S. overflights of the region will continue, however, and some will go out of bases in Turkey.

Erbakan is expected to announce an alternative mission, tentatively code-named “Operation Northern Watch.” It will allow for a scaled-back air reconnaissance and perhaps use of Turkish facilities for some U.N. relief and private aid efforts.

“No matter what happens, we’re still going to be patrolling northern Iraq,” a White House spokesman said Tuesday.

The Turkish decision would reflect a foreign policy shift by Erbakan’s government, which took office in June. The announcement would come just days after Turkey, a long-standing U.S. ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, defied American pressure by signing several agreements with Iran--among them an accord that effectively makes the two countries, both with Islamist leadership, most-favored-nation trading partners.

The Clinton administration has been trying to persuade Mideast leaders and trade partners of Iran to isolate Tehran politically and impose economic sanctions against the Iranians for supporting extremist movements and rejecting Mideast peace efforts. Congress this year passed legislation that could sanction foreign companies or countries that opt to trade with Iran.

The deals, which will double the volume of trade between Turkey and Iran to $2 billion, were the highlight of a four-day visit paid by Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani. They also encourage further investment and create a joint Chamber of Commerce.

“One of the main aims of the Erbakan government is to chart a more independent course from the United States,” said Henri Barkey, a regional specialist at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University currently in Turkey. “The Turks say they don’t want to break away from the West and United States. But they clearly want to balance it with stronger ties to Islamic countries and East Asia and the Asian tigers. They think their economic future is in the Far East, not in the West.”

A senior U.S. official agreed, saying, “This is one way for [Erbakan] to say he is not a lackey of the United States.”

*

Various Turkish governments have also long wanted to end or decrease the size of Operation Provide Comfort, launched shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled toward the Turkish and Iranian borders in response to Baghdad’s retaliation for postwar Kurdish and Shiite Muslim uprisings.

The mission was never popular with the majority of Turks, largely because of suspicions that the United States and other Western nations were prepared to accept a de facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Turkey’s greatest internal security threat is from its own Kurdish rebels, many of whom operate out of northern Iraq.

Every time the mission came up for renewal previously, the Bush and Clinton administrations managed to persuade Turkey to sustain a robust program in northern Iraq. Washington finally engaged in talks to end Operation Provide Comfort this fall after the coalition government in northern Iraq collapsed and the two Iraqi Kurdish parties began to fight, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The role of France and Britain, which have also patrolled the north as a deterrent to the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is expected to diminish in the new mission, U.S. officials said.