Ambassador's remarks and public events

Remarks by Ambassador Ross Wilson ATC-AFOT/DEIK/TAIK Annual Conference

Washington, DC, March 27, 2007

Thank you.  Ambassador Sensoy, distinguished guests.  I am honored to be here and to attend this annual conference a second time.  My remarks here last year consisted of some initial observations about Turkey and US-Turkish relations based on my first few months in Ankara.

Looking back now over the past twelve months, it’s a pleasure to say that we made significant progress as strategic partners.  General Scowcroft touched yesterday on the Shared Vision articulated by Secretary Rice and Foreign Minister Gul.  We are working well on an agenda that includes many, many issues.

My remarks today will lay out some thoughts regarding relations between the United States and Turkey as we look to the rest of 2007 and beyond.  As the American baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “It is tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”  Clearly there are some critical hurdles ahead for US-Turkish relations and for Turkey itself.  Both our countries have as an objective managing these challenges as mutually supportive partners and in ways that will enhance stability, prosperity and democratic institutions throughout the region.

Nature of the US-Turkish Partnership

I want to focus on the nature of our partnership; how we leverage that partnership to mutual advantage on issues from Iraq to the Middle East and Central Asia; and how we work through a couple of the most complicated issues in this very political year for Turkey and the region.  Let me start with a walk down memory lane.

On March 12, 1947, almost exactly sixty years ago, President Harry Truman made an historic address to Congress that had the effect of transforming both US policy in the post-World War II era and our relationship with Turkey.  The context:  Soviet threats against Turkey and Communist-led unrest in Greece.  The Truman Doctrine proclaimed that:

“… it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures… (and that) we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.”

President Truman called for large-scale assistance to Turkey and Greece and, later, Europe as a whole when the Marshall Plan was proposed in June 1947.  In the six decades that followed, our countries became treaty allies.  To support a strengthening Turkey, we provided some $57 billion in economic and security assistance (when measured in 2005 dollars).  Turkey emerged as an increasingly important partner in the region and bulwark in the struggle against terrorism, for democratic development, and in fostering prosperity throughout the region.

Turkey’s importance to the United States at the outset of the Cold War was defined by its location.  Sixty years later, the Soviet Union is gone, but Turkey’s location may be even more critical than it was.  Consider its neighbors.  But if Turkey still matters in part because of where it is, today it is also important for our interests because of what it is:  a stable, peaceful, prosperous, friendly and democratic Muslim majority country.

Our alliance of interests and of values is transforming and modernizing itself in response to the world of the 21^st Century that we face today.  If together we recognize that we cannot perhaps have everything we want with one another, there is a strong recognition – among political leaders I talk with, among government professionals, among our military leaders, and among many others in our two societies – that we need each other in order to advance our respective interests and for freedom, prosperity, stability and peace in the region and the world.

Key Regional Challenges

We are partners today on Iraq, on Iran, on the Middle East, on the Caucasus and Central Asia, on Cyprus, on Turkey’s efforts to accede to the European Union, on energy, in the fight against international terrorism and on many other issues.

No problem looms as large as Iraq – for my country, for Turkey, in US-Turkish relations and indeed for the world.  Iraq today is what it is – messy, conflict ridden, undermined by terrorists and facing an uncertain future.  It has been and in many respects remains the single most complicated problem in US-Turkish relations.  Think PKK, think Kirkuk, think of the implications of a further fracturing of Iraqi unity for our NATO ally Turkey – to say nothing of the implications for us and for the Iraqis themselves.

Despite this, Iraq is one issue where we are working effectively together.  We share the same goals:  Iraqi unity, territorial integrity, security, democracy, and prosperity.  Our two countries are working now on steps toward ending the use of northern Iraq as a base from which the PKK can launch terrorist attacks on Turkey, and we had good discussions earlier this month on possible PKK-related initiatives with the Iraqi authorities, as well.  Turkey has helped draw rejectionists, especially Sunnis, into the Iraqi political system.  It remains a supply lifeline to the people of that country.  Turkey has trained Iraqis, provided substantial direct assistance, and facilitated the largest foreign business presence in the country.  It is helping us engage more effectively with the regional players and played an important role in arranging an expanded Neighbors of Iraq meeting on March 10 in Baghdad.  A minister-level meeting should follow, and I hope it is agreed upon soon.

No more than Yogi Berra, I cannot predict the future of Iraq.  I can say with confidence that our partnership and collaboration with Turkey must and will be an essential element of our Iraq policy – and that we have a strongly supportive partner in Ankara based on commonly shared aims and aspirations for Iraq and for the future of the region.

Another challenge where Turkey’s involvement matters to us greatly is Iran.  Our countries agree that Tehran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would be dangerous and destabilizing.  Turkey has strongly supported US, EU and Security Council efforts on the issue.  The consequences of a nuclear-armed and missile-equipped Iran are surely as significant for Turkey as for us or anyone else in the world.

Many Turks, however, also express concern about sanctions or other steps that Turkey might pay a high price for.  Iran supplies about 16% of Turkey’s natural gas, sends one million tourists to Turkey each year (undoubtedly an exposure to freedom and prosperity that is in our interest) and transits tens of thousands of Turkish trucks each year to and from Central Asia – a key Turkish export market and a lifeline to those isolated countries.

Over the last year, the United States has consulted extensively with Turkey on the way forward, and we will continue this in coming months.  We agree on the urgency of a diplomatic approach to persuading Iran to change course.  Turkey has called on Iran to suspend uranium reprocessing, accept the offer of negotiations that is on the table, and cooperate fully and transparently with the International Atomic Energy Agency.  No one can predict exactly how the Iran nuclear issue will play out.  Having Turkey with us is essential.

The Middle East is another part of Turkey’s problematic neighborhood.  Although there have been some tactical differences, I would say that we are working in a complementary manner toward the goal we share of two democratic states, Israeli and Palestinian, living side-by-side in peace and security.  I think this was reaffirmed when Prime Minister Olmert visited Turkey last month and in separate discussions with President Abbas some months earlier.  It is also reflected in the Ankara Forum business initiative that Rifat Hisarciklioglu referred to yesterday and in progress that we should try to achieve soon on the Erez Industrial Zone.  We are working in a complementary manner in support of Lebanon, as reflected in Prime Minister Erdogan’s visit to Beirut early this year and his insistence – despite opposition at home – on a robust Turkish contingent the expanded UN peacekeeping operation in southern Lebanon that was so important to ending the fighting there last summer.  I should note, as well, Turkey’s cooperation and assistance in helping evacuate some 2000 American citizens and 15,000 foreign nationals overall out of Lebanon during the fighting there.  We were very grateful.

In the Caucasus and Central Asia, our two countries want the same things:  stability, democratic development, and economic growth.  Together, we made a difference as these countries achieved independence in the 1990s, and one element of our Strategic Vision agreement includes reviving and strengthening that collaboration in the years ahead.  I met yesterday with representatives of the US Chamber of Commerce on their exciting Eurasia Business Platform initiative to partner American, Turkish and Central Asian & Caucasus business together.  I see opportunities in this for many of you here.

Energy has long been a core element of our work together in the Caspian region.  I am proud of my country’s involvement in making the pipedream of BTC pipeline a reality.  It is today providing a secure route for Caspian oil to reach international markets.  We are working with leaders in Ankara now on a gas counterpart, the South Caucasus gas corridor to Turkey and across it to Greece, Italy and Central Europe.  The additions of a trans-Caspian pipeline and Iraqi gas for export via Turkey will further diversify Turkish and European energy sources of supply.  The key next step is developing an attractive commercial framework.

Another next step is to develop an alternative bypass route or routes for Central Asian oil not coming through BTC.  Turkey’s Samsun-Ceyhan route is one option on the table, and we welcome Turkey’s offering this alternative to the congested Bosporus Straits that has important advantages for potential investors and shippers.  Another next step is to foster regional cooperation.  We have worked to resolve the conflicts in the Caucasus and promote reconciliation, including between Armenia and Turkey.  It’s disappointing that more hasn’t been achieved.  Turkey, as the key regional leader and power, will have to show the way.  I hope we can work more effectively on these issues in the coming year.

In the fight against international terrorism, Turkey remains an essential partner.  We are in close touch on all matters related to the PKK, al-Qaida, and other groups who either go after Turkey or who seek to make use of Turkey as a stepping stone for violence elsewhere.  Turkey has stepped up its commitments over the past year to the success of Afghanistan.  It has increased its presence there, currently commands the ISAF Central Region around greater Kabul, and opened a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Wardak province last November.  Ankara is providing over $100 million in aid to reconstruct schools, assist the Afghan military, and train counter-narcotics forces.  These Turkish efforts are making a difference.

On many other issues we are supporting one another and working toward complementary, if not identical goals:  on Turkey’s accession to the European Union, on Cyprus, on Black Sea security and in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation forum, in addressing regionally problems such as avian influenza, narcotics trafficking, and trafficking in persons, in NATO and other multilateral fora, and elsewhere.

Economics and Trade

Side meetings yesterday and today are taking up economic and commercial ties between our two countries more effectively than I can here, but let me mention a couple of things.  We were pleased in February to host the first Economic Partnership Commission meeting in over three years.  Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs Dan Sullivan and Undersecretary Ertugrul Apakan led these talks, and we expect to finalize shortly an agreed action plan of steps our governments can take to facilitate increased trade and investment among our countries.

One of the EPC’s areas of focus was science and technology.  To accelerate our bilateral work in these areas, we hope to conclude soon a new, more robust bilateral S&T agreement.  In conjunction with the American Business Forum in Turkey, TUSIAD, and other organizations and companies, we will host an innovation workshop in Istanbul in June.  Our aim is to focus attention on how Turkey can better develop innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship through education, strengthened university-private sector linkages, better regulatory policies and the like.

Looking Ahead

Many speakers have mentioned the draft Armenia resolutions now before the House and Senate, and I should say just a bit about this issue.

The most important thing to say is that the policy of the United States on this matter, as determined by the President, has not changed.  President Bush, like other presidents before him, as repeatedly recognized that among the terrible things that happened during World War I, many, many Armenians were forced into exile and death in what was one of the great tragedies of the 20^th Century.  We oppose attempts to make political determinations on this tragedy.  The late Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink wrote that “Turkish-Armenian relations should be taken out of a 1915 meter-deep well.”  He believed that Turkey and Armenia need to get away from the traumas of the past and search for reconciliation through dialogue and free debate.  As a friend of Turks and Armenians, I share that sentiment.  We call on both peoples and nations to come to terms with the past through free and unfettered dialogue and debate, and we urge the two sovereign countries of Armenia and Turkey to work on reconciliation and the normalization of relations.

Turkey will continue to be important to the United States and to make progress as a strong, secular and prosperous democracy.  Like Jeffrey Imelt, I am bullish about the future.  Thank you.