Ambassador's Remarks and Public Events

AMBASSADOR ROSS WILSON INTERVIEW WITH KANAL 32

LAKE EGIRDIR, ISPARTA
MAY 18, 2007

QUESTION: How do you find Isparta? I think you didn’t get a chance to go around much, but as far as what you saw did you like it?

AMBASSADOR WILSON: Well, we have had a very good day here. We arrived a little bit before noon. We had an opportunity to walk around the center of town a little bit and then went to Suleyman Demirel University, where we had a good discussion with the Rector and some of the professors about relationships that the University has and would like to develop with the United States and a little bit about what students think and what professors think about current events.

I had an opportunity to visit Suleyman Demirel Museum, which is not yet open to the public, but we were able to talk our way in. Suleyman Demirel was a great statesman, great friend of the United States and so it is very interesting to see a little bit of his history and his life.

And then we visited two different companies here that are doing business with the United States -- one that produces the Rosense products that also exports rose oil to the United States and the other a marble manufacturer that is doing a very good business in our country. It was good to see very successful companies and talk with them about some of the factors that make for their success.

So I think my overall sense of Isparta is that there is a lot of good business going on there, a lot of hustle and bustle in the town, an energetic and interesting university. Isparta has a lot going for it, just like Turkey does.

QUESTION: Did you know about Rosense or the Gulbirlik before you came here?

AMBASSADOR:  I’d not heard of the marble manufacturer, but yes I definitely was well aware of Rosense. My wife uses their products and I see them at our house all the time.

QUESTION: I understand this is not an official visit and you did not pay any calls on the Mayor or the Governor.

AMBASSADOR: This is definitely an official visit as far as I am concerned. I understand that the Mayor and the Governor had some other commitments on their time so I did not have the opportunity to meet with them today. I did meet with the Mayor in the locality where the Suleyman Demirel Museum is. He was part of our conversations there and I appreciated that.

QUESTION: If you have any further comments, Sir, on Isparta, we are happy to receive them. If not, I will switch to other questions on broader areas.

AMBASSADOR: I would only say that I have enjoyed my visit here so far, we have got a couple of other things yet to do later today and I hope to have some more time to walk around the city if the weather permits. I’ll look forward to coming back here if the opportunity arises.

QUESTION: The United States and Turkey have been good allies. And right before you arrived, there was a tension period and it continued maybe during your first days. How would you evaluate the status of the relationship between Turkey and the United States right now?

AMBASSADOR: I think the United States and Turkey are two governments that have been working hard over about the last two years or so to try to improve our relationship, to try to find ways that we can cooperate productively on issues that are very important to us. And in general I think we have made a lot of progress on many different fronts.

I think this is reflected in a very active high level dialogue that we have had among our heads of government, among our respective foreign ministers, our defense ministers our military chiefs, our energy ministers, our commerce ministers and other senior officials.

Some times we have a different perspective or take different tactics on this or that specific issue.  That’s quite normal in our relations with all of our allies, but we our two countries that very much want the same things, the same overall objectives. We are working effectively together; we have a good a relationship that reflects a very important alliance, I think, for both of us.

QUESTION: How about the Turkish public. We read in the regional newspapers that there is some increasing negative reaction against the United Stets and we understand that you get a chance to go out and visit different cities. What’s your perception of the reaction against the United States in Turkey?

AMBASSADOR:  I will answer your question in a couple of different ways. The Turkish people are extremely hospitable. Where ever I go I am treated very, I believe, very well, people are very friendly. They want to talk to me. They express their views on topics of concern, but the tone that I personally get and I think that most American officials here get is extremely positive on a person to person basis.

Second, there are a lot of people here who object to this or that specific policy that the United States is pursuing. Iraq is clearly very difficult for a lot of people in this country and in a lot of different countries and in fact including in my own. There are other subjects, Iran, the Middle East, Cyprus that from time to time raise public anxieties here in part because people don’t necessarily understand and the media does not always accurately reflect what it is that we are doing, what it is that we are trying to do. I deal with that by trying to get out and talk to people. I deal with that by trying to talk with the press whenever the opportunity arises.

As I said earlier, I think we have a good relationship that is improving really at all levels – government to government and people to people.

QUESTION: For years as you know we have been struggling against terrorist organizations or the problem of terror and we lost million of people because of this issue. The United States has faced this danger as of September 11th. And has taken some concrete steps to fight against it. And in northern Iraq Turkey is still trying hard to fight against this particular terrorist organization. What kind of support is the United States providing to Turkey in this sense? The Turkish public is very interested to know the answers to these questions. Are you planning an intervention in northern Iraq?

AMBASSADOR: I think the problems of terrorism are not unique to the United States, they are not unique to Turkey, they are not unique to the last five or six years in which we have been particularly focused on this. They predate the attacks on the United States in September 2001, both in the United States, in Turkey in a whole range of other countries.

The attacks of 2001 on the United States, I think, certainly focused our attention, though, in a much different way from the manner in which we had been focused before. And in particular it focused us on -- and it focused many countries on -- this unique threat that al-Qaeda poses not just to the United Sates, not just to Turkey, not just in North Africa, not just in the Middle East, not just in the Philippines, not just in Indonesia, but all over the world.

And so we have given a lot of attention and time to focusing on al-Qaeda, whether it’s in Afghanistan, or in Iraq or in the various other countries that I have enumerated. Turkey has been a key partner of the United States and many other countries in fighting al-Qaeda and we appreciate that.

Every friend of Turkey understands that this county has paid a terrible price as a result of PKK terrorism going back for twenty or more years – 35-37,000 people, maybe more, who’ve lost their lives in connection with PKK violence. That may be on a scale that is almost unprecedented elsewhere in the world.

And we have been working with Turkey for many years, including long before September 11, 2001, to try to help it deal more effectively with the problem of the PKK. Turkey is the single biggest recipient of counter terrorism assistance by the United States Government in the world. We have providing and are providing a range of assistance -- both material as well as information, intelligence -- we could say -- to Turkey in its struggle with the PKK within the territorial limits of this country. We have been working very hard for about the last two years to try to assist Turkey in its efforts to go after the PKK in Europe -- in particular, to close down funding, the flow of money from activities, many of which are illegal activities in Europe, to finance PKK activities here in northern Iraq and elsewhere.  And as an indirect result of our efforts, many of the governments within Europe now take the PKK problem much more seriously then they have and they have been acting against the PKK and that is good.

The problem of northern Iraq is clearly an important third element of going after and defeating the PKK terrorism. We have believed that the best way to address that is cooperatively -- the United States, Turkey and Iraq -- to close off and end permanently once and for all the use of northern Iraq as a base from which terrorist attacks can be launched in this country.

And so we have been aiming to put together the basis of a trilateral initiative to deal with the PKK in northern Iraq. We haven’t quite got an agreement among all the players to make this possible, but we are committed to it, we think it’s important.

QUESTION: Right now the military forces, Turkish military forces are conducting some border operations on the Iraqi border. But the United States is not supporting cross border operations and we believe this threatens the existence of terrorist activities in northern Iraq, threatens territorial integrity in Turkey. Why is not the United States supporting this?

AMBASSADOR:  As I indicated earlier we believe that the best way to deal with this problem is cooperatively among the three governments that are involved. And we take that position in part because there are already a heap of problems, many, many problems and many, many instabilities in Iraq. We do not wish to see and we do not believe that Turkey wishes to see instability worsened in that country. On the contrary our interest and Turkey's interest is to promote stability in Iraq, to work with the authorities there, to solve problems here including in particular the PKK.

QUESTION: I would also like to ask you a question on the United States support for Turkey’s EU membership. There was a tension in the relationship and after all that what is your perception of EU?

AMBASSADOR:  The United States has strongly supported Turkey’s efforts and interest in joining the European Union I think for at least 20 or 30 years. We worked very hard in 2004, in 2005, in 2006 to try to help keep that process on track, to get the formal negotiations opened in October 2005 and to deal with the issues that arose at the end of 2006 in a way that could ensure that negotiations would go forward.

We think that a Turkey in the European Union is good for Turkey; it’s good for Europe; it’s good for this entire region. And that’s why we support it.

QUESTION: What are your views about the political agenda in Turkey?

AMBASSADOR: There is not much I can say about domestic politics here. We are not involved in partisan political issues, but it has been a pleasure to talk with you.

QUESTION: Thank you.