Ambassador's remarks and public events

US Ambassador Ross Wilson Answers Questions at the Turkish Contractors Assosiation Dinner

Ankara, September 19, 2006

QUESTION:  First, I  want to ask you about the map of East Anatolia and Middle East Asia, and message from Ms. Rice on the Middle East.  The second question, what do you think about the Great Middle East Project?  Thank you very much.

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  Thank you very much.  On the first question, the map in no way reflects US policy.  Colonel Peters is a retired military officer.  He is a private citizen.  He writes and he says what he thinks.  It is not our policy.  Nobody in a position of authority in the United States Government is thinking like that -- least of all, when we are talking about a country that has been an ally of the United States for 50 years, and to whose defense we are committed by treaty.  On Secretary Rice’s remarks -- and it’s related to your question about the Broader Middle East North Africa Initiative -- when she talks about the Middle East, she is talking about democracy.  She is talking about something that Turkey embraced many years ago for very good reasons that you know and appreciate at least as well as I can.  We believe, she believes, strongly that the absence of democracy or the weakness of democracy in many of the countries of the Middle East is one of the reasons for the ongoing problems there and the instabilities there, and that democracy will be the key to promoting long term stability.  There are other things you do, too, but that’s key.  The Broader Middle East North Africa Initiative was launched by the G-8 countries a couple of years ago.  All it purports to do is to aim to support democracy and democratic development in these countries through helping to promote the strength of the political parties and their sophistication, the strength of non-governmental organizations like this one, to help to develop and promote a strong and independent media like Turkey’s.  These are all things that reflect the success of Turkey.  There are a lot of people in the Middle East who want to replicate Turkey’s experience in these areas, in their own ways, and in accord with their own traditions.  And the G-8 countries including the United States agreed that we will try to help them. 

QUESTION:  Mr. Ambassador, we have heard once again from you tonight that the PKK is a terrorist organization.  Why can’t Turkey use its right stemming from UN resolutions to conduct hot pursuit in northern Iraq? 

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I said in my prepared remarks that what Turkey has endured over the last 20 years, what Turkey has been enduring in the last seven, eight, nine months of this year is something that no country can really be expected to tolerate.  I have said before that every country has the right to defend itself, and indeed I think governments have an obligation to defend their people.  And if they are not doing it, voters in a democratic society have a pretty good reason to ask what they are doing.  In the context of developments in Iraq, we have felt for some time that the most important contribution that we can make, and that the international community could make in Iraq to deal with the problem of terrorism there, including Turkey’s PKK problem, was to work as diligently as we possibly could to help the Iraqis stand up a strong and democratically elected government of a unified country.  That kind of government would be an effective partner of Turkey in eliminating the problem of the PKK that this country faces.  Broadly speaking, that still reflects our approach.  Now there is a government; it is still developing its capabilities, but there is a government in Iraq.  We want to work, if we possibly can and to the extent that we can, together – the United States, Turkey and the authorities in Baghdad -- to eliminate this, to ensure, as I said earlier, that northern Iraq will no longer in the future be a base for the PKK.  When General Ralston was here, in the remarks he made to the press, he was very direct in saying what he said privately.  He doesn’t rule out any options about how we are going to work together – the United States, the United States-Turkey, the United States-Turkey-Iraq.  And I think he meant it when he said that.  He had good discussions in Iraq.  There is already a little bit of a result that I referred to.  Let’s see what further results we can produce.  I would appeal to my friends, many friends in this room not to prejudge the results of his work until he has had a little bit of time to do it.  We are committed to this and his appointment reflects a serious American purpose to support Turkey in defeating PKK terrorism, and that’s what we are committed to.

QUESTION:  As an American citizen, not as the Ambassador, do you support Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy?  Second question – do you think that by engaging in wars you can bring democracy to the related countries?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  Let me answer the first question.  I am sure that you didn’t invite me here because I’m just some American that’s visiting.  You invited me here because I am the Ambassador of the United States.  I am the President’s personal representative in this country.  Of course I support his policies.  On the second question – of course democracy cannot be produced at the end of a gun. I think that’s really what you’re asking.  Of course it can’t.  There are a variety of reasons why we went into Iraq in 2003.  We thought pretty much everybody in the international community believed, on the basis of what we thought was reliable evidence, that there were weapons of mass destruction that could threaten Turkey, threaten the United States, threaten Europe.  We believed that Iraq was a source of great instability.  And those of you who live here probably know about that instability a lot more than I do.  It was not a stable place.  We believed and we believe now -- having done what we did -- it is incumbent on us to support the aspirations of Iraqi people to control their own destiny, to be able to do what Turks do, to vote for their government, and change their government, express their views, and live in a certain amount of peace and security, which the Iraqi people were not able to do under Saddam Hussein.  We are trying to help them in doing that.  It is important.  Success will not come at the end of a gun.  It will come because the Iraqi people determine that they want to achieve this, and it will depend on Iraq getting help from a lot of different people including its neighbors.

QUESTION:  You said something in your speech about the assignment of the US Coordinator for countering the PKK.  I don’t know if I got that wrong, but you said that fighting against the PKK is to prevent northern Iraq from becoming a country from where the PKK can organize its terrorist attacks.  There is a debate going on about the demands for and thoughts about a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, is it possible to draw such a conclusion from your words?  How do you see this?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  If I understood all of the question correctly, I say that because first we are committed to the unity and the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Iraq. The Iraqi leadership including the President, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of Parliament, the Kurd, Shiite, the Sunni and all of the political parties that are part of the ruling coalition, strongly support, favor and want to see happen a unified Iraq.  All of those same political leaders are telling us that they also do not wish to see and will not accept the use of their territory, of northern Iraq, as a base to launch or organize terrorism here or anywhere else.  I take those statements at face value.  It doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot of work to do. 

QUESTION:  The US has been in a war in Afghanistan for a long time.  Following its entering Afghanistan, it entered Iraq in the name of taking democracy to Iraq.  And now there is, and will be for a while, a war in Lebanon.  Now we see news reports that the US might be preparing for some operations in Iran and that war ships are on the way. Which other countries are you planning to bring democracy to after this?

AMBASSADOR WILSON:  I think yours is a statement, not a question. 

Thank you very much.