Ambassador's Remarks and Public events
Ambassador James Jeffrey’s Interview with Hakan Çelik, Posta
Ambassador’s Residence, Ankara
August 12, 2009
Hakan Çelik – Mr. Ambassador I read carefully the speech of Mr. President Obama and will also ask some questions in this speech and American policy. I know you don’t prefer to talk on the Kurdish issue and on those things and I also read the interview.
Amb. James Jeffrey – It is not a question or preference, it’s just that I will say nothing different. But I’m happy to say it again.
Hakan Çelik – Maybe at the end you will. Mr. Ambasador your country as far as I understand when I look at the last speeches and last statements of your country’s statesmen’s, politicians and leaders, did you abandon the use of ‘moderate Islam’ when you explained Turkey’s position?
Amb. James Jeffrey – We don’t talk about moderate Islam in the Obama Administration; we talk about our outreach to Islam. We talk about our respect for it. President Obama laid that out when he was here and in particular in Cairo. And because if you have moderate Islam then you’re projecting that there’s an extreme Islam. And we think that there are extremist acts and extremist people. And there are moderate people, and moderate actions. But you cannot take a religion and say a religion is x or a religion is y. A religion is a religion. It’s the given word of God as seen by their practitioners of that religion and it’s not something that can be put into a political category. I think that we are avoiding that phrase because it then led to some confusion.
Hakan Çelik – Do you think that those kind of explanations and using of both kind of terms esclated a sort of an anti-Americanism in Turkey in some circles?
Amb. James Jeffrey – I cannot explain why we have anti-Americanism in Turkey and I wouldn’t put it, I wouldn’t pick on a single reason. Our relations go back a long way, they are relations that have had many positive aspects and many aspects that either the United States or Turkey is seen as less positive and that’s quite natural.
Hakan Çelik – If you talk about again this anti-Americanism phenamanon, if you compare with couple of years before and today to these positions, situations how do you see the picture?
Amb. James Jeffrey – Well first of all it depends on the poll. But generally we had fairly good polling figures in the period from 1999 in the Clinton visit. Through the early years of this decade including after 2003, they then declined and I think that, I would say the single biggest factor was the PKK outbreak of violence. There is a very strong but very incorrect tendency in Turkey to blame us for the PKK either deliberately that we are somehow behind the PKK or support the PKK or happy that the PKK does its actions are indirectly that our policies in Iraq encourage the PKK or gave it a base of operations. I can’t explain why people think that way. That’s something for Turks to try to figure out. All I can say is it is wrong. We have always opposed the PKK. I was involved when we first were supporting Turkey against the PKK in 1980’s. The point is the PKK began its attacks on Turkey with support from several outside countries but frankly it launched these reports of these raids with large scale attacks across the border in Semdinli and Eruh, which if you look at the map are not hundreds of miles inside Turkey but, they are quite close to the Iraqi border because the PKK was operating out of Iraq in the 1980s, they were operating out of Iraq in 1990s and they still operate out of Iraq unfortunately.
Hakan Çelik – Today we are talking about the ‘Kurt Acilimi’ as we say in Turkey, on the other hand we don’t talk about what’s happening in northern Iraq especially in Kandil mountain area. If this process continues what will happen in Kandil area and will PKK give up this armed struggle?
Amb. James Jeffrey – I don’t know, I assume that the policy of the Turkish Government is to continue building on its security success in the South East and the success of its operations where we’ve been helpful against the PKK in northern Iraq and will continue with its efforts and people talk about a new Acilim, but we have seen this over the last few years as a much greater openness to discussing the problems of Turkey’s south east and so I think that the process is already well under way. The PKK is under tremendous military pressure and under a certain amount of political pressure as well. But, by the same token you still have fairly significant economic, social and political problems in the south east which means that the roots of this struggle have not yet been dealt with. And that’s important.
Hakan Çelik – How do you see the United States position in this process? Should we say that the US has been a faciliator or a very powerful country and a good friend of Turkey could help somehow in political way or militarily especially in this time when we talk about ‘Kurt Acilimi’?
Amb. James Jeffrey – Well, where the United States has been helpful and continues to be helpful is in dealing with the external threat. This was behind our efforts with (assisting the Turks in apprehending) Abdullah Öcalan in 1999. It’s behind our decision to provide very extensive intelligence support for the Turkish operations in northern Iraq which are now very, very successful and that support will continue. We’ve had experience with insurgencies in the past.
Hakan Çelik – Especially where in which areas?
Amb. James Jeffrey –In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, Central and in the South America we worked closely with a number of different countries and there is no formula that works in every country. The individual people and individual governments have to decide what they should do under those circumstances and there is no U.S. plan. We can’t really give specific advice because we don’t know the situation as well as for example the Turks do and we don’t know the political situation. What we do know is not only experience but the experience of the British, the experience of the French and others has been that you have to have social, political, economic, cultural, linguistic and diplomatic approaches to compliment your military and security approaches. The first thing you must have is security and thus the military operation is very, very important but also to ensure that that doesn’t create more enemies among a population you have to do these other things as well. Now, the problem is it’s easy for me to say this. What that means in the specific context of Turkey I really can’t tell you. My assumption is of the Turkish political system will work this out.
Hakan Çelik – I got many e-mails from readers, mostly Turkish people. They have a sort of fear of separation of Turkey. The breakdown of the borders and they think that most of the Kurdish people wants to create a separate country. When you look at this phenamenon how do you feel?
Amb. James Jeffrey – People are always going to worry about their future and worry about separatist tendencies but the truth of the matter is throughout all of the Middle east and throughout all of the Balkans over the past let’s say 30-40 years despite many, many wars and many insurgencies and many terrorist activities and everything else the only significant border that has a) been changed and b) been recognized has been Kosovo and we all know the very special circumstances of Kosovo. Apart from that, the International Community is quite clear that the last thing it wants is countries to be broken up. We don’t sense that among your citizens in the south east, we certainly don’t sense that among Iraqis from whatever background they are and therefore our assumption is and our belief is the idea of separatism is extremely destabilizing as it was in the Balkans.
Hakan Çelik – Does it mean that you don’t see a sort of possibility of Yugoslavia exampling inTurkey?
Amb. James Jeffrey – Frankly, no.
Hakan Çelik – How do you see the efforts of President Gul in this process?
Amb. James Jeffrey – I think your political process is a democratic process and your leaders are playing the role that they play as leaders. I mean it’s not my job as an outsider to compliment, critique or otherwise be specific on specific steps. I will only say that your political leadership including President Gul, the prime minister and other International players are very highly regarded in the International Community and in the United States. That’s a general comment.
Hakan Çelik – As far as I know you didn’t see Mr. Ahmet Turk yet right? But, you are planning to see him.
Amb. James Jeffrey- I’ve seen him several times. I saw him recently last week.
Hakan Çelik - What about next meeting with him?
Amb. James Jeffrey – From time to time we meet there is no meeting scheduled at present.
Hakan Çelik – I would like to ask about religious freedom in Turkey and especially not just Islamic people and Muslims, also some minorities and Halki issue. Do you think Turkey will open Hulki Seminary?
Amb. James Jeffrey – We certainly hope so. President Obama remarked on that during his public comments in the Turkish Parliament. And we think that there were two important reasons for that. First of all the Patriarchate is an important International institution. There are many millions of American Orthodox believers who look to the Patriarchate for their spiritual leadership. And secondly for us it’s a religious freedom and human rights issue. Our general approach anywhere in the world including in our own country is when in doubt make the mistake of being on the side of being more open, more tolerant, more facilitating rather than finding reasons not to allow people to do things that their religion asks them to do. We apply that to Muslims in the United States and we hope that others will apply that to various races and various creeds and various religions in their own countries.
Hakan Çelik - Are you hopeful? I mean for this Halki opening for example?
Amb. James Jeffrey – I think this is a Turkish internal decision and we hope that this decision will be taken but, there are some suggestions and ideas out there and we will see.
Hakan Çelik – And the United States officially supports this idea?
Amb. James Jeffrey – We support in principle the opening absolutely.
Hakan Çelik – What does in principle mean?
Amb. James Jeffrey – Well in principle means we don’t get into the details of what particular formula will work given Turkish Constitutional issues given because it was court case. It was a Constitutional issue that closed it in the first place. The specific formula is not our business. We just think that a formula should be found that meets the mutual needs for both sides.
Hakan Çelik – Do you think the Armenian President will come to Turkey for the soccer game?
Amb. James Jeffrey – Well as you know President Gul went to Armenia. I see no reason why the Armenian President should not come. He has of course laid down some conditions; he wants to be able to cross an open border. As you know, ever since the 22nd of April, the Turkish Government has publicly acknowledging that it is participating in an effort to reach an opening of borders and recognition mutually with Armenia and we support that very strongly.
Hakan Çelik - Are you also hopeful in when we look at the Nagorno-Karabakh issue can they solve the problem in these days?
Amb. James Jeffrey –They’ve made considerable progress in the last few months. There is more progress to be made. We see these as two parallel processes. We do not see them as linked as in the organic way. We would like to see progress made on each of them separate from the other. We understand that the Turkish Government has a different view.
Hakan Çelik –Both Turkey and Iran have very good level of relations and some officials in Tehran come to Turkey very often. What is your opinion on this issue? As we know that United States is not very happy Turkey has a very high level of diplomatic and financial and economic connections with Iranian regime. How do you see this?
Amb. James Jeffrey – It’s not the job of the United States to pass judgment on whether we are happy with Turkey’s policy. The first reality is that Iran is a neighbor of Turkey. You are going to have a high level of relations with your neighbor. That’s natural. The second reality is that Iran been repeatedly found to be in violation of the U.N. Security Council Chapter 7 requirements on the most serious problem we face in the world today which is the acquisition of nuclear weapons and technology. So, that’s an objective statement as well as Turkey’s status as a neighbor. So, Turkey like the United States has to carefully calibrate its policies towards Iran to reflect these two factors and a host of other facts that come up such as the current instability of the Iranian Government. The reaction of the public after the electoral fraud and so forth, this is very, very difficult. We are convinced that Turkey like everybody else in the region does not want to see a nuclear armed Iran and will support efforts that have the broad consensus of the International Community to take further steps against Iran. If and when that becomes necessary we recognize that Turkey wants to do this under the umbrella of the United Nations, other countries including the United States, go a bit further with sanctions with other actions, but that’s a sovereign decision of Turkey. It’s not something that we are happy or unhappy about here.
Hakan Çelik – On the other hand Turkey of course this is a peaceful aim but Turkey has to get it’s own nuclear power plant with maybe help of Russia, Russia Federation, how do you see this?
Amb. James Jeffrey – It is a very important for countries to diversify their energy. To diversify their energy sources. It is very important for counties to find environmentally friendly energy sources that do not send pollution into the atmosphere and further create very serious problems with global warming. So, therefore we welcome Turkey’s entry into the nuclear field. We hope in future plans if this first plan goes through we hope that in future plans American firms will be able to successfully compete along with firms from around world and thus we see this is a very positive step.
Hakan Çelik – Why we don’t see any American companies in the final stage? Was it just a financial reason? Because as far as I know Russia has not the highest technology in this business.
Amb. James Jeffrey – I don’t want to comment on that but what I would say is that if you make a request for a bid and only one company bids, you may take a look at whether the next time you do this you want to get more countries and companies bidding. There were specific reasons that I don’t want to get in to why some firms did not want to compete on this. There are legal questions, liability questions and other things as there should be, but it was just not seen as an attractive proposition.
Hakan Çelik – If you look at the issue of Turkey’s relations with other countries, especially I would like to ask a question in Turkey and Russian relations and it is not a correct comparison but with the United States, when I look at the trade figures of United Staters and Turkey’s relations it’s relatively low. When you look at Russia, maybe it’s neighbor and some other energy power plants (inaudible) I think the total amount becomes neraly 14 billion dollars. What do you think on this issue?
Amb. James Jeffrey – It’s roughly three times the size of the American trade. First of all this is an issue that President Obama and President Gul discussed after President Gul raised it and it’s an issue where we want to put more attention to see if there are ways to facilitate trade but, in doing this we make certain points. First of all governments can create frameworks for better trade. A good example of that is the customs union with the European Union. A much smaller example is the generalized system of preferences that we have for our trade with the United States where Turkey is a major participant. But, where there are also problems, there are many reasons why trade does not grow. One is you have to look at the exchange rate between the Turkish Lira and the American dollar. How competitive at a given exchange rate a Turkish product is, what are their prices in Lira for instance what their price would be in dollars. A second issue is that the American market is a very difficult market to get into because the economies of scale are very large. For example, even within the EU Turkey is an able corner market for example in Britain for white goods and other countries for televisions because, each of the sub markets even when they are denominated in the Euro are slightly different. In America its one market covering 300 million people and basically you are competing with people who are selling products say egg beaters to all 300 million people and the economies of scale of doing such selling are dramatic in terms of being able to reduce the price per unit. But on the other hand the amount of effort and know-how in investment to come up with a product that can cover all 300 thousand distribution networks and the other things is quite, quite significant. We can do two things to improve this. One is as I said take a look at the structural and framework agreements that we have between the two countries and see if there are ways that we can facilitate this. That we can use our current authorities better or have new authorities. The second thing is work at the micro level with businessmen associations here such as TOBB and DEIK and TUSIAD and the American Chamber of Commerce and ATC and others in the United States to which there are many on both sides, to see if there is not a way to help Turkish firms learn from other experiences and other successors because it’s not just China and the European Union that has broken the code to export in large amounts to the United States and frankly when I was in Kayseri I went down there in large part to talk to firms that are very successfully exporting to the United States. And they tend to have partnership relationships, they’ve tended to have made investments there and they have knowledge of how to work in the United States. That’s very important.
Hakan Çelik – What do you expect from Turkey about Afghanistan issue?
Amb. James Jeffrey – Turkey is one of the most important outside players in terms of international support for Afghanistan. Turkey has been a long term ally and a friend of Afghanistan’s. The Turkish commitment and military force and assistance programs, 200 million dollars in the last few years in terms of civilian donations for schools, hospitals, other facilitations has been really extraordinary. Basically Turkey is one of the top contributors to Afghanistan along with us. And we are very, very appreciative.
Hakan Çelik – And do you expect Turkey should send more combat forces?
Amb. James Jeffrey – We are always happy to have more combat forces. Every country has to decide how many forces to send. Turkey already does have a very large contingent there. Currently almost 2 thousand Turkish troops are there and they have assumed the command of the central region around the capital, so it’s doing a good deal. Our problem is we want everybody including ourselves to do more. This is a vital struggle in the war against terror. It is a vital struggle for NATO and it is essential for NATO’s health that NATO be successful.
Hakan Çelik – Do you think Mr. Rasmussen will be successful in this area? If you look at his background.
Amb. James Jeffrey – We are very confident that Mr. Rasmussen will be successful. He has shown a commitment to put his own country’s forces into heavy combat in Afghanistan. And he is an extraordinary Western leader and we are very proud of him as NATO Secretary General.
Hakan Çelik – When the Moscow Patriarch came to Ankara Mr. Kirill, when the generals asked a question about ‘one minute,’ did you follow the press conference when he talked with Prime Minister Erdogan? He said that the people were very happy on the streets in Russia. Because of this explanations and the statements of Mr. Erdogan, you remember ‘one minute’ phenomenon. Are there big differences in the American public opinion and if you compared to the statement of Mr. Kirill on this one minute. What is the damage?
Amb. James Jeffrey –There is no damage in the United States. The issue you have to ask yourself is what is the reaction is Israel. And I have a hard enough time trying to explain what the reactions of the United States are. I try to avoid explaining the reactions of other countries.
Hakan Çelik – but you said there is not damage for today in the United States political struggles in the public opinion.
Amb. James Jeffrey – There are groups in the United States that look kindly upon Turkey. There are groups that look less kindly on Turkey. That is just like there are groups in the United States that look kindly, or unkindly on any other country and that is a constantly shifting dynamic.
Hakan Çelik – Do you think Turkey could also contribute in a very positive way and Turkey still a key player in the Middle East after the one minute phenamons and other things?
Amb. James Jeffrey – I think Turkey’s is contributing. It is playing a key role in Iraq with various parties, doing various things. It is working hard to ensure that Syria has options. The Foreign Minister Mr. Davutoglu was recently in Lebanon. You remember a little over a year ago Turkey was very important along with Qatar and arranging a compromise on political solution after the fighting between Hezbollah and what we call the March 14th forces. And, Turkey has very good ties with many actors and Turkey is in very close consultation with the U.S. on various specific issues and the overall way forward in the Middle East.
Hakan Çelik – Your country thinks that Afghanistan is a more complex issue to solve if you compare with Iraq right?
Amb. James Jeffrey – I am very reluctant to make comparisons between which is more difficult, which is the more complex. Iraq is very, very important for the entire Middle East. Pakistan and Afghanistan when you take them as a whole are equally important for the Middle East and for South Asia.
Hakan Çelik – Again the Kurdish problem. When you look at the reports in Turkish media 15th of August it’s expected to get some reports from Imrali. Any comments on this issue?
Amb. James Jeffrey – This is clearly an important Turkish domestic political engagement. It’s an engagement that in general terms we and, I think, the international community supports and we will see what happens.
Hakan Çelik – The visa issue. I see some feedbacks and some information from Turkish people. Their names in the central (inaudible) when they come to the embassies or general consulate they get refusals. Are there some complex regulations recently?
Amb. James Jeffrey – First of all, any time we get complaints we are concerned. Because, we owe it not just to Americans but to everybody else who have contact with us to ensure that we are doing the best job we can and it is of great importance to us for Turks to travel to the United States for study, for work, for tourism or whatever. So, we are concerned. Secondly, the problems that we’ve encountered that we look into tend to be problems that are not Turkey specific. That is not just a Turkish regime; it’s a regime generally where we are issuing visas. We have millions and millions of people in these computers and sometimes names or dates or other figures kick out and then it becomes like with all bureaucracies fairly long and slow before you can get an answer and this is understandably very irritating to Turks who essentially always, almost always in a sense with every case I know of it turns out that it was what we call a ‘false hit.’ So, the Turks you’ve talked with were frustrated and we worked to reduce the percentage of people who fall in to this category. We think we are being successful, but even if we reduce it to one percent with many tens and thousands of Turks going every year there will still be people who will be very concerned.
Hakan Çelik – (inaudible) tens and thousands of Turkish people (inaudible)
Amb. James Jeffrey –We can’t always do a bureaucratic process that is complicated and expect that problems won’t crop up, problems do crop up.
Hakan Çelik – Would you like to add something, other issues? Would you like to say or give a messgae?
Amb. James Jeffrey – The message to Turkey was given by President Obama. My job is to ensure that we are doing everything we can to carry out the commitments that he made and to ensure that our very close cooperation flourishes and that we can move into other areas such as the ones you mentioned on economics and trade. That’s our hope.
Hakan Çelik – So do you believe that we solved many problems during Obama’s visit?
Amb. James Jeffrey – He didn’t come out to solve a specific problem. He came out to create a different atmosphere within which we could solve problems and then to point out the things that will strengthen Turkey’s overall position with the outside world. While he was speaking in particular about the American agenda of course, the American agenda is not all that different from that of the European Union or of many of your neighbors in the region and such. All want a strong prosperous, democratic, stable Turkey that is playing a major diplomatic role in the region.
Hakan Çelik – Why Sarkozy and some other European leaders try to block Turkey’s way into the European Union? What is the real reason behind this?
Amb. James Jeffrey – To quote President Obama in Istanbul, “Ask President Sarkozy.” As I said it’s difficult for me sometimes to explain why my leaders and my citizens say and do the things they do. I can’t be responsible for the rest of the world.
Hakan Çelik - Thank you for the interview, Ambassador Jeffrey.
Amb. Jeffrey - And thank you.