Turkey Smarting Over U.S. Arrests

ANKARA, Turkey -- The head of Turkey’s army expressed anger Monday over the arrest last week of 11 Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq by the United States, making it clear that even though the soldiers have been released and flown back to the area where they were detained, he does not consider the incident over.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with outgoing U.S. Ambassador Robert Pearson, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok described the arrests Friday as the “biggest crisis of confidence between Turkish and U.S. forces.” He said the incident touched on the “national pride and honor of the Turkish armed forces.”

A Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkey expected an official apology from the Bush administration.

Media reports have quoted unidentified U.S. officials as saying that the Americans acted to stop a plot by Turks and members of an ethnic Turkish militia called the Turkmen Front to assassinate the ethnic Kurdish governor of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Turkey has rejected those claims. Turkish officials accuse the Iraqi Kurds of providing false intelligence to the U.S., prompting the raids.

In Washington, the Reuters news agency quoted State Department spokesman Richard Boucher as saying that U.S.-Turkish relations were “very strong” and that the United States acted because of “reports of disturbing activities that [Turkish soldiers] might have been involved in.”

Reuters quoted a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying, “We had substantial intelligence information that they might have been up to activities involving local leadership.”

In an interview with CNN-Turk, a private television news source, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani denied any involvement in the raids. The PUK controls the city of Sulaymaniyah, where the Turkish soldiers were detained.

A committee of officials from Turkey and the United States is expected to convene today in northern Iraq to investigate the incident.

The detentions have cast a further pall over the strained relations between the two NATO allies. In March, before the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Turkey’s parliament rejected a bill that would have allowed the United States to station thousands of troops in Turkey to open a northern front against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“Turkey has to realize that the rules of the game have changed in Iraq,” said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Turkey has a new neighbor. It’s called the United States and it’s a superpower, and if Turkey wants to disregard the new reality on the ground, it will suffer. Bilateral ties with the United States will suffer.”