AMBASSADOR'S REMARKS AND PUBLIC EVENTS

Ambassador Ross Wilson Responds to Press Questions at the Ambassador’s Residence


Ankara, May 4, 2006

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  Good afternoon.  Welcome.  I arrived five months ago to the day yesterday.  We have done a lot of different things and I’ve gotten to know a lot of people here, become familiar with a lot of issues.  Obviously the most important recent thing is the visit of Secretary Rice here last week.  I think that has done a lot for us in furthering what I have been talking about since I got here, working to get past some of the difficulties that we had to reestablish and strengthen bilateral dialogue between our two countries.  Her visit, I think, was especially important in that I think countries help themselves when senior leaders can sit down and talk face to face, and as a result of those face to face conversations, have a different kind of and a greater level of confidence about what it is that the person on the other side really thinks than from just reading the newspapers or just reading diplomatic cables or some other indirect way.  So I think the visit here was helpful in furthering the confidence that Americans and American leaders have in Turkey.  I hope and expect that it worked the same in the other direction as well. 

That’s basically what I want to say at the outset.  I’ll be happy to take a few questions.

QUESTION:  Maybe you can talk about the strategic vision document.  What are the latest developments?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  Ok.  I’ll be happy to talk about that a little bit.  This is something that we have been talking about with the Turkish authorities for some time – months really – trying to both organize a little bit more systematically the dialogue between our two countries, and enumerate or identify what are some of the main areas that we really, truly, genuinely want to work on together. 

The United States presented a draft paper to the Turks I think at the end of March.  The Turkish Foreign Ministry came back three, four, five days before the Secretary came here with a very much revised, and, frankly, very much improved draft.  Several of us met with Undersecretary Tuygan and some of his people at the Foreign Ministry the day after Secretary Rice was here, primarily to go over this paper and discuss what we are going to do with it.  The first thing that we decided there was that we liked the Turkish draft, and we are going to work from that and refine it -- both the literal language and also what it says – over the coming period.  We talked about it for two, two and a half hours or so last Wednesday, and each side, and particularly the United States took that draft back to for further consideration and coordination with other parts of the Government. 

I can’t tell you what the timeline is for it.  I think both the United States and Turkey would like to conclude this and put it out soon.  But I can’t give you a precise idea when that will be.  What we do in this paper essentially, to repeat what I said earlier, is to define some of the key areas in which the United States and Turkey would pledge to work together and a little bit of why we pledge to work together on those issues.  And then second to lay out some elements of an improved and expanded and more structured bilateral dialogue than we have had in the past.  And this actually goes way back, building off of the high level defense group. Our ministries of defense and our militaries have met in that group for many, many years.  We have a couple of different economic groups that have met for a number of years.  The idea is to expand that and have more experts talk on more key topics, and work off of that to really have a more systematic, regular way of talking with one another.  Really, to come back something I said earlier, to enhance our mutual understanding of where each other, where the other country is, and find ways, building off of the confidence that we have in each other, to more effectively work together. 

QUESTION:  Can you tell us about the key topics for the dialogues?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I think the right thing to do is save that for when this paper is completed.  They are the logical topics.  There are a lot of important regional issues around Turkey where we have done work before.  And basically most if not all of those in some way, shape or form are referred to.  But I think that the right thing is to wait until this paper is finished.  And then we can talk about what's in there and I think it'll be clear to you.

QUESTION:  Will it cover anything with respect to the fight against terrorism?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  Yes, of course it will.

QUESTION:  You mentioned that there are some areas in which Turkey and the US want to work together.  Can you just say topic by topic at least?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  Again, I think the right thing is to save that for when we do make this paper public.  As I indicated terrorism is clearly one topic.  Our cooperation and partnership in the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, and promoting democracy and democratic development is another.  I don’t want to go through the whole list in part because I don’t remember them all, and in part because I think there does realistically need to be the right kind of coordination both within the Turkish Government and within the United States Government and about what exactly we are going to pledge to work on and that process is not complete.

QUESTION:  Some newspapers wrote that it will be two pages long.  Is that right?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  The current draft is two pages, yes.

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador (inaudible) Turkish-US relations.  Neither Secretary Rice nor you has ever defined it as a lack of confidence.  How do you define the problem that occurred between the two countries?  And on the other hand, the PKK is one of the main issues in the relationships lately.  Can you elaborate a little bit on Rice’s visit and the PKK issue?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I think on the second I’d like to have a more specific question.  On the issue of confidence, what we are talking about here is building and enhancing confidence at the highest levels of our Government.  The way that you do that is to have people at the highest levels of government, talk with one and another regularly.  And when long periods go by, and they don’t, because they don’t see each other or whatever, I guess to that extent you have a problem.  But I would not characterize the difficulties and some of the disappointments that the United States and Turkey had going back 2003, 2004, first part of 2005 as a lack of confidence.  What we are trying to do now is to enhance confidence and very specifically to ensure that our leaders at the senior levels have a clear understanding based on having recently spoken with one another of where the other side is.

QUESTION:  On the second question.  For example there was a story today in one of the newspapers mentioning the note from Iraq to Ankara and that it was actually at Rice’s visit that it came up and that Turkey actually was uncomfortable about it.  And that’s why Rice had a dialogue with Iraq.  Can you elaborate on that?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I am not going to comment too much about something that’s in diplomatic discussions or issues that could be in diplomatic discussions that we have with Turkey or Iraq.  The issue of Turkish forces that are stationed in Iraq and have been in Iraq for a long time is one that is well known.  Their activities are openly declared more or less; they are accepted by the Iraqi authorities; they are accepted by the coalition authorities.  There are not significant problems attached with the presence of those forces.  But I don’t think I want to go further in characterizing any conversations that we may or may not have about it.

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador, regarding the cross-border operations and incursion in northern Iraq, first of all, do you recognize Turkey’s right to have such an operation taking into consideration the PKK and so many people are being killed and bombs are being exploded around the country.  Do you recognize such a right according the international law and then a follow up to such a question, do you think such an operation can be accepted or be tolerated by both the Baghdad government and in Washington?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  You and others I think have several times heard me say what I'll repeat now.  We believe that that what is generally thought of as a cross-border operation would be unwise.  Yesterday Secretary Rice’s spokesman talked specifically about this.  He noted that we have an ongoing dialogue with Turkey about the PKK and about the PKK presence in northern Iraq.  He quite explicitly called on all of Iraq’s neighbors to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and to work with the Iraqi authorities on issues that they may have with respect to borders, and to ensure that anything that may be done is done transparently and as a result of mutual agreement.  That’s our policy. 

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador, in that paper, the common vision paper, will you make a statement about the Iranian threat?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I think I put that in the category of things where we’ll have to see exactly how this gets worded.  I think one of the issues where we have a long history of cooperation and that I am pretty sure will be reflected in some form in this, is cooperation to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  The concerns that the United States and frankly also Turkey have and share with respect to Iran and its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction I think are well known.  How we deal with non-proliferation in general and in Iran in specific in this paper I think I rather wait and see what the language is that we end up with.

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador, about Iran.  We are expecting an important visitor from Iran: Mr. Larijani will be in Ankara on Monday.  What kind of expectation do you have from Ankara?  What kind of messages do you want to them to convey to Mr. Larijani?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  In terms of our expectations, when Secretary Rice was here, Turkey’s leaders made clear that they do not want to see an Iran with nuclear weapons.  I think they made clear to us and this was discussed a little bit at the press conference last Tuesday that they believe that Iran needs to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency.  It needs to be fully transparent in its nuclear activities and research and so forth.  And it needs to return to negotiations with so-called EU3.  I would expect and certainly hope that those would be among the key messages that the authorities here would convey.

QUESTION:  Does this trouble the United States, because the United States wants to isolate Iran?  Do such visits trouble you?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I think Iran is isolating itself.  That's point one.  This is not a case of the United States isolating Iran although we think that Iran has isolated itself, and that it needs to take steps to de-isolate itself by coming back to cooperation with the IAEA transparency and returning to the negotiating table.  Turkey has a relationship with Iran.  To the extent that it clearly is part of the international consensus that believes that Iran needs to abandon what we and many others believe is a nuclear weapons program, and so to the extent that it conveys those messages, that’s probably the right general thing to do.

QUESTION:  Ambassador, regarding that strategic vision document. Many people believe that there is no strategic relationship because Turkey and the US have divergent views on many topics.  And also regarding Iraq, do you foresee the establishment of new mechanism for this dialogue?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:   On the first question, having sat through five or six hours of meetings that Secretary Rice had here a week ago with the Foreign Minister, with the Prime Minister, and with the President, I would disagree with the idea that we have sharply divergent interests.  Quite the contrary.  We have a sharply convergent interests and convergent views.  It doesn’t mean they are identical, but I think there is an enormous amount of convergence in how we see the world, and how we see this part of the world, and what it is that we want to see happen in this part of the world, whether it is the  development of democracy, democratic values, respect for human rights, the rule of law, market economics, open economies, or it is peace and stability along the borders of this country where there is plenty of instability and difficulty. 

We are allies for 50 years that signed a North Atlantic Treaty.  That expresses a common strategic view about the world, and, for all those reasons, we are strategic partners.  Secretary Rice doesn’t use those words lightly, she uses them repeatedly. I know she used them when she was here, I believe she did in the press conference.  So that’s my answer.  We see the world similarly, we want similar things including, specifically, in this region. 

In terms of new dialogue, mainly I think again the right answer is we’ll need to see what this paper looks like when it is finished.  A lot of it is done, but it isn’t done, and until it’s done I think it probably behooves us not to go too far in characterizing what it says.  As I indicated, we aim there to identify a number of areas where we want to work together, and we talk about having more frequent consultations and discussions among our experts who work on these issues.  We have had those kinds of experts talk – this is not necessarily qualitatively new -- but what we are saying here I think is that we want to have more of those discussions, we want them to be more regular, frequent, and we want to tie them back together so that the leaderships on both our sides can have a sense of how we are working together and what we might do to work more effectively together in the future.    

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador, do you think that Turkey’s ambition to enter the EU still continues?  Do you have any concerns?  And what is your position concerning the implementation of the customs union agreement and the opening of the ports? 

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  The Turkish officials that I meet with, the officials that Secretary Rice met with when she was here, all are quite clear that Turkey’s bid to join the European Union remains a very high priority for this country.  It is something that they wish to achieve.  Secretary Rice certainly made clear it is something that we continue strongly to support and that she continues strongly to support in her discussions with EU member state counterparts.   

On the second question,  I have a little bit of familiarity with the work that other countries have done to get into the European Union – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary were the first tranch, there was a second and I think the third was last year or the year before. For every country this is a difficult process. There is a massive amount of laws and regulations that need to be reviewed and need to be brought into harmony with European standards. That is a big, big process and it is not just a technical process. There are lot of issues that have very serious political overtones of one kind or another. It is a big job, it’s a complicated job and it’s hard. And it will take some time.

On the Customs Union, I think that Turkey will need to implement its customs union obligations in order to join the European Union. We gave support to the proposals that Foreign Minister Gul put forward in January, which were intend both to help get the Cyprus talks re-started, but also to deal with some of the issues related to the implementation of a customs union protocol. We thought that that was a good and constructive proposal and in fact it has helped to stimulate some discussion. We had some talks about that issue when the Secretary was here. We had some talks about it in March, when Assistant Secretary Fried and Deputy Assistant Secretary Bryza were here. It’s something we continue to work on and want to try to be helpful to our Turkish friends and allies, as well as to our European friends and allies.

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador the U.S. always supports democracy and secularism in Turkey and for democracy in the Middle East initiative you see Turkey as one of the best examples. But on the other hand there are criticisms coming from Europe. There are some worries about the democratic structure of Turkey. So, when you look at the domestic discussions, the current domestic discussions, do you see them as part of democracy or as a threat to Turkey’s democratic and secularist (inaudible)?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: There is a very hot and very interesting political debate going on here that I have been following. I do not think I want to get into the middle of it, however. And I think I’ll just leave it at that.

QUESTION: Is a secular Turkey, a Turkey with a secular system, important for the US?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: Turkey is important for a lot of different reasons. Turkey is important because of where it is -- in a complicated part of the world. And it is important because of what it is. A successful, democratic country that exists in this difficult part of the world. It happens to have a majority Muslim population that, as Secretary Rice indicated when she was here or maybe before she came here, puts to lie some in the world including in the Muslim world who say that democracy and Islam don’t go together. That’s nonsense.

Turkey’s history and accomplishments as a secular country are an important part of Turkey’s democratic success. They have helped to get this country where it is. To come back to the earlier question, there are a lot of issues that people are grappling with and that Turkey as a whole will grapple with. They are doing it through the democratic process. That’s good. We support that.

QUESTION:  Is there any invitation for President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to visit Washington? Why do you think he hasn't visited Washington?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: I’m not aware that there has been an invitation to him. I am not aware that he has expressed interest in going to the United States. I’m not aware that there would be a problem if he wished to do so. It has not been a particular topic of discussion. I’m sure we would welcome him if he chose to come.

QUESTION: The major basis of US-Turkish relations is the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement (DECA) and some in Turkey expressed in the last year to make some changes based on economic concerns. And now the U.S. has a new defense strategy? Do you also have a desire to make some changes to DECA?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: The paper that we are working on now is political in nature. As opposed to the DECA which is a highly technical agreement that facilitates some of the bilateral work that our defense establishments are engaged in primarily. I’m not aware of discussions that are ongoing at the moment to revise the DECA. I wouldn't exclude that there might be something out there in the future but it’s not on the agenda at the moment.

QUESTION: I don’t want to repeat the same question, but there are some real crucial differences between two capitals, policies regarding Syria, Hamas, Iran, Iraq and the other issues. To what extent can you describe such a relation as strategic and don’t you think that just the fact that there is a need to write a strategic vision paper is showing that there is something missing? I understand that United Kingdom and United States are strategic partners, but is it the same for U.S. and Turkey?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: First, I disagree with the proposition that there are such huge and marked differences in the way that we look at the world or in the way that we treat specific issues. I'll repeat something that General Pace talked about when he was here: 90% of the issues that are out there -- the things that the United States and Turkey care about -- we agree on; maybe ten percent, we don’t agree so much on. You can argue about what the percentages exactly are. But that picture is basically right. Sure, there may be tactical issues, there may be specific things that come along where we have a different tactical point of view or maybe we have different goals. That’s normal. That’s the way allies are. And that can be the way strategic partners are. We don’t always see eye to eye with the United Kingdom on every single solitary issue. And if you want some history, go look at the history of our civil aviation relationship, a little bit rarified for some, but that’s been a very good relationship in a certain sense, but there have been very hot and very heated discussions with the British over a very long period of time that I suppose you could say portray some great big differences.  They don't. You put them in the context of everything else, and you still have a strategic partnership and I think it is exactly the same with respect to Turkey.

On the second part of your question, one of the things that I’ve said a number of times since I got here and I said it at the ceremony when I was sworn in for this position at  the State Department, is that I thought, and I think, that we need to find some ways to talk about our strategic partnership, to talk about our common sense of purpose in today’s world and in the light of the contemporary problems that our two countries face -- whether it’s terrorism or difficulties on  this country’s southern border or any of the whole wide variety of other subjects that are different and make international relations different from what they were 50 years ago when Turkey signed on to the North Atlantic Treaty. We’ve not had a real clear idea of how we do this. This paper that we are working will not entirely do this. But it is a step in the direction of more clearly defining and publicly defining some of the areas where we share a common sense of purpose and we want to work together and then how we are going to work together through dialogue and by other things that we are engaged in.

QUESTION: To what extent does Secretary Rice represent a common position in Washington? For instance is the Secretary of Defense planning a visit to Ankara? You know there are so many different views in Washington regarding Turkey.

AMBASSADOR WILSON: I counted up a few days ago for some internal purposes of mine. Three dozen high level U.S. visitors have been here in the five months that I have been here.  The Secretary of State's party I think accounted I think for about three of those people. We had a number of senators. We had a variety of military people. We had some senior economic senior people from our economic ministries. We had the head of the CIA; we had the head of the FBI. We have had enormous diversity of people here in addition to that, Turkey’s Defense Minister went to the United States and met for 45 minutes or an hour with Secretary Rumsfeld. The Energy Minister, Mr. Guler, went to the United States and met with our Energy Secretary Bodman, met with people of the State Department, the Commerce Department and other places.

There is more diversity going on than one Secretary of State coming here a week ago. A lot has been happening over the last five months and a lot happened before that -- the. National Security Advisor just to take one example. There was some very general discussion when Secretary Rice was here about Foreign Minister’s Gul interest in going to the United States at some point and he has this ear issue that interferes with his travel. We would like to see him go. We would like to see other people go; we would like to have them come to the United States.

QUESTION: Sir, when we talk about strategic partners, when there is a partnership there is always the other. And Syria and Iran is the other countries in this scope, so do you believe that there will be no problem with respect to Iran and Syria?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: Well, the whole point of the dialogues that we are carrying out is to try to prevent problems by better understanding where the other is and finding areas in which our interests and our objectives and our goals overlap. On the fundamental issues, in particular with respect to Iran, I think we see things pretty much the same way. We do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons technology; we do want it to continue to adhere to its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty, transparency in negotiations and so forth. I don’t see a whole lot of difference there. And with respect to Syria we both would like to see more democratic development in Syria. We would both like to see Syria cooperate fully with ongoing U.N. investigation into the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister. On the essential things I think we are headed in the right direction together. It doesn’t mean we agree on everything out there. It doesn’t mean we are not going to have issues to resolve or to work through in the future. Of course that’s one of the reasons why we are expanding this dialogue, including because Turkey and the United States are very, very important to one another.

QUESTION: I know but it seemed that way on Iraq before the war as well.  Turkey and United States had the same concerns but when the issue came to sending troops, we had a very big problem. Are you expecting the same problems when it comes to Iran and Syria? Or are you pretty sure about the strategic partnership?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: The United States and Turkey are close allies. We had a very thorough discussion of all of these issues when Secretary Rice was here. The issues you’ve just referred to. We will continue to have a very thorough discussion of those issues and I do not want to speculate too much about what’s in the future out there. We see things in complementary ways on the important issues in this region. We are cooperating closely on Iraq. We are cooperating closely on Iran and strengthening that cooperation including ensuring that Iran gives up its nuclear weapons development programs. That’s exactly what we want to have happen.

QUESTION: There are some news stories regarding the United States concerns on Russia’s monopoly position in the energy market. Turkey is one of the key players in the region. Can you elaborate on this?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I would characterize our policy as aimed at promoting diversity of energy sources and supplies throughout this region and by this region I included all of Europe. Diversity of sources means energy that comes from a lot of different places. That’s what produces energy security. It doesn’t mean buying 90 % of your energy from one country. It is not that we are against Russia. We are not against Russia. We want to see Russia’s energy industries develop; the world needs those resources. But we think that diversity of supply helps to promote competition which is good economically and it helps to promote the right kind of development really in all of the various energy producing parts of the world. We also want to see and believe it is important that there be diversity of energy routes -- of sources, the origins and also the way that it is supplied. So, to the extent that you are relying on pipelines -- pipelines that go different ways; one pipeline is probably not necessarily in a given country's long term interest. Many pipelines make for diversity. If there is a problem in supply, maybe not for political reasons, maybe for other practical reasons if you have multiple routes and multiple sources of energy, we are all going to be better off. And we will certainly be better off if there is competition -- to the extent that there is more competition. This was something the Secretary talked about when she was in Athens; it's something she talked about here; it’s something we have talked with other European Governments about. We think it is important.

 

Thank you very much.