Ambassador's remarks
Ambassador Ross Wilson Interview With A Group Of German Journalists
Ankara, November 1, 2006
QUESTION: Is it important to the US that Turkey will be a member of the EU and do you have the impression that it’s going, let’s say in the last year, too slow?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: The United States has supported Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union for many, many, many years. This was reaffirmed at the beginning of last month by President Bush to Prime Minister Erdogan. We believe it is good for Turkey; it is good for prosperity and stability in the region; it is good for the European Union. We are strongly in favor of it. I think Turkey made a lot of progress here to try to meet the criteria to open a session negotiations in 2003 and 2004 and 2005. Since last October the visible movement of passing legislation and that sort of thing may have slowed down a little bit. What some Turks have reported to us is that they worked on a number of the implementations issues – passing a law and getting it implemented in most countries are two different things – and that they have been engaged in those. We have encouraged Turkey to continue to push forward and push forward aggressively with a pro-reform agenda both on the economic side and on the political side. And we have encouraged Turkey strongly to make its case in European capitals about why it is in Europe’s interest, why it is in the region’s interest, that Turkey become a member.
QUESTION: Is there any possibility of the US to press Ankara a little bit to maybe solve the Cyprus problem?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: We have been engaged with the Turks and with our European partners in the last several weeks to try to encourage the efforts that the Finnish EU Presidency is currently engaged in to try to come up with a package that would help to ease the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots that would help to deal, perhaps on an interim basis, with Turkey’s port and trade obligations toward all of the EU members -- in particular Greek Cyprus -- and do so in a way that would allow the EU negotiations with Turkey to continue. On the broader issue of a Cyprus settlement, we have been engaged for decades to try to bring that to a conclusion. Our current efforts are primarily focused on supporting the work of UN Under Secretary General Gambari to orchestrate technical talks between communities on both sides of the island to deal with sort of nuts-and-bolts day-to-day issues that are not so political, but are important and effect the lives of the people there. Our thought in part is if we can get that progress going it will build some momentum toward talks and a final comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem.
QUESTION: I would like to know concerning Turkey’s talks with European Union on accession, how far is the American side aware that, of course, for the US it would have a lot of advantages if Turkey joined EU, but for Europe it is at the moment, from the present perspective, connected with a lot of problems. Are you aware that Europe gets the problems as the US the advantages?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: I think we are aware that, as is the case with all of the new members the European Union has already brought in, there are costs and benefits and there are pluses and minuses. There is no reason why Turkey would be any different in that respect. We have thought and think now that the European Union would benefit by having what is clearly the fastest growing large economy in Europe be inside the European Union as a source of growth, development, job creation and so forth. That’s good. Second, we have thought that the European Union will be stronger and more secure if there is a strong, stable, secure Turkey that’s firmly rooted or more firmly rooted in European institutions on its southeastern border. And I don’t think we are at all naïve about what some of the problems are. Clearly there are some issues in European public opinion that will have to be overcome in the coming years.
QUESTION: Second question, can you tell us – it concerns the happenings in northern Iraq like the Turkish Government being very upset about the PKK fighters hiding there, and also very concerned about plans to have their own state. So how are the negotiations between Turkey and the US on this point?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: On the general issue of Iraq, which I think you refer to in the second part of your question, our policy and Turkey’s policy is strongly in favor of a unified, democratic Iraq within its present borders. And we have been working I think very effectively over the last year and a half or so to try to help bring about that kind of Iraq. Turkey in particular played an important role in the politics during the second half of last year and early this year to broaden participation in the Iraqi political system to bring the Sunnis in to the constitution writing, the referendum on the constitution, the parliamentary election in December, the negotiations to form a new government and then ultimately that led to that government’s formation. So, I think both of us are working in the same way on behalf of a unified -- in a complimentary way certainly -- on behalf of a unified Iraq.
On the problem of the PKK, the issue is the following. The PKK has a significant number of personnel who live in bases or camps, facilities, in northern Iraq for the most part, close to the border and also on Kandil Mountain which is a little bit closer to the Iranian border -- several thousand. We believe and the Turkish authorities certainly believe that many of the attacks that have been launched on Turkey are supplied, organized and then launched from these bases -- people that go across. In 2006 there has been a very dramatic increase in terrorist violence. If you had casualty rates in the order of 40, 50, 60 a year in previous years, it is over 600 this year. That’s a big number. And it’s a big number for any democratic government to have to bear. In part reflecting that, we decided that we needed to step up the nature of our work on the PKK. We had previously been working with the government on the problem of the PKK in Turkey, on the problem of the PKK in Europe toward shutting down the front groups and shutting down the flow of money -- a lot of which is raised illegally in Europe through organized crime and so forth. And what we are trying to add now is a piece that focuses on northern Iraq to ensure that northern Iraq will not in the future be a base from which these terrorist attacks will be launched on Turkey.
QUESTION: Mr. Ambassador, we have learned that under the AKP government the main lines of Turkish foreign policy have changed. So there has been a certain shift, a slight shift, towards the other world and also towards Iran. So is this kind of Iranian link threatening or scaring you or do you think it can be helpful for the US?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: I think the world in which I deal is the world that I actually see and the people that I actually work with and on the Iranian front as in a number of other fronts the nature of the cooperation that we have with Turkey is frankly more important to me than what is sometimes talked about including maybe especially here as a sort of an eastern tilt by this government. It is true that this government has tried to improve what were very poor relations with Iran, with Syria, with some others. But this government has also worked with us especially over the last year that I’ve been here in a very significant and complementary way, complementary to what we are doing, what the EU 3 are doing, what the Perm5 plus Germany have been doing since the spring to try to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons programs. There is not a lot of difference in what we say and what we do vis-à-vis the Iranian nuclear problem.
QUESTION: What actually are the advantages or the interest of the US having Turkey in the European Union and not just in NATO because it is there and then it is a good partner for you anyway. So is it because you want to make the new Europe instead of the old Europe bigger or what are actually your interests?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: Your question probably deserves a long answer. But to give you a short one, in most of the countries that have joined the European Union, the process has provided a focus and a kind of a driving agent for political and economic changes that have been good in virtually all of the countries that have come in. Maybe there are some exceptions to this, like Finland and Sweden, but certainly if you look at east, central Europe, this was a kind of an organizing principle for reforms that have helped to foster a strengthened prosperity, that have advanced democracy and democratic governance. Those are things that we want to see further developed in this country. And the EU is one way to do that. Second, I think, we see a…I referred earlier to the sort of security and stability interest that we have here. Yes, it’s true. Turkey is obviously a part of NATO. And that’s a very, very important thing. But as we look at the world we are going to be living in in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years from now, the structures that already complement NATO I think will become more important. To have Turkey more firmly linked with the premier European organization we believe is in our interest and it is in Turkey’s interest, and will help to promote stability, including on Turkey’s borders which in a certain sense are already Europe’s borders.
QUESTION: I have a question is concerning Cyprus. The Turkish Cypriots are so isolated and the EU is not acting in any way, doing something for Turkish Cypriots. You started to send trade delegations to Northern Cyprus using the Ercan airport which was not very (inaudible) for the Greek Cypriots as far as I understood. So do you follow a special track of doing something for the Turkish Cypriots, like recognizing them?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: The United States’ spokesmen I think have made very clear; we do not recognize the Turkish Cypriot government. We have no plans or intentions to do so. We have felt and this in part I think is reflecting off the recommendations of Secretary General Annan at the time that the Annan plan failed in 2004 that it was necessary and important to kind of de-isolate the Turkish Cypriots. And so that’s reflected in several visits that American officials have made to northern Cyprus -- the trade missions that you referred to, Secretary Rice met with Mr. Talat in her office in Washington I think early this year or late last year. And there are a few other things. But the intention here is not to move us toward recognition in some way and it is an effort to de-isolate the north and it is an effort that in some measure has been reciprocated by some of the European governments. Jack Straw started this. Foreign Minister…Foreign Secretary Straw started this I think also early this year. There have been several other visits. I understand the Finnish Foreign Minister is supposed to meet with Mr. Talat in Brussels I think tomorrow. So, you know a number of us feel that this is the right and sensible thing to do.
QUESTION: Do you agree when I say that you are making the first step and the Europeans are following always?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: I don’t know that I’d necessarily want to characterize it that way. I think we are working together.
QUESTION: Does Turkish democracy satisfy the American idea of democracy or if not in which sense?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: I think the way I would answer that is to say that in most countries, maybe including our own, democracy is not a state of being. It’s a target for which we aim and for which we strive. In my country’s history and in many other countries’ histories we have worked over a long period of time to develop democratic institutions, to develop widespread respect for the rule of law, for human rights, for other things that we hold central to democracy. Turkey fundamentally is a democracy. Like most countries, it has got a number of things that it needs to work on. Those issues are…I think one of the most important things going on here is a lot of those issues are under debate in this country, which is the right place for those discussions to take place.
QUESTION: There have been several attempts in the Congress to pass an amendment or to recognize the Armenian genocide. What is the current position of the US regarding the Turkish so-called Armenian genocide?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: The US position on the matter is stated every year in a proclamation that the President has issued for a number of years going back to the at least the mid-1990s on the occasion of what we call the Armenian Remembrance Day, April 24. The most recent statements we can get for you they are on our website, certainly they are on the State Department website. What they essentially do is they recount the history of what took place in the period toward the end of World War I -- large numbers of deaths, widespread human suffering, great difficulty in the context of the war that was going on. Second, those statements call strongly for efforts to reconcile Turks and Armenians specifically for Turkey and Armenia to reconcile. It is our view there are some issues that need to be dealt with by historians and fundamentally this is one of them and for that reason successive administrations have opposed efforts to advance a resolution on the issue in the United States Congress.
QUESTION: The USA has some problems with Islamistic regimes. At the moment in Turkey there is an Islamistic government – that would be the AKP and Mr. Erdogan. How do you cope with this problem? Do you think that the AKP still has a so-called hidden agenda? They finally aim at an Islamistic state?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: Again, I deal in the world of things that I can see and observe. This government, the AK Party, has roots that come out of Islamist parties in the 1990s and the 1980s. Its platform, if you look at it, posits a somewhat different position. Its behavior in office has focused heavily on economic developments, on economic reform, on promoting small and medium size business development. This sort of business-friendly economic set of priorities I think has been one of the most noteworthy achievements of this government and kind of a hallmark of its actions. We, as I indicated previously, work closely with it on a wide range of issues including issues like Iran, like the Middle East. It is a strong, secular, democratic country that continues to be guided by sort of the founding principles that are Ataturk’s principles that as far as I can tell are still kind of the guiding post for government and governmental authorities in this country.
QUESTION: So there is no fear of a hidden agenda?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: Again, in the real world of the things that I see everyday, and that we deal with everyday, I think it’s our view that fundamentally Turkey is going in the right directions. There are important issues that get debated among Turks, and should be debated among Turks. But, as I said, on the economic side, in terms of the opening up of the political system here, opening up the public dialogue about a lot of subjects that have been very complicated and controversial in the past, Turkey has made a lot of progress and this government deserves some credit for that.
QUESTION: I would like to ask if you are sometimes scared of rejection from the European side that could lead Turkey to somewhere else than the west. Do you have some plans for such a case or something like that?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: Well, I don’t really like to deal with hypotheticals. Clearly there are some big choices here that are going to be made over the next five, six, seven weeks by Turkey, by the European Union, or they could be made, anyway, in that period, by Turkey and the European Union about the future course of negotiations with the EU. And I think it is in particular for that reason that we are strongly supporting these Finnish efforts. We are encouraging Turkey to move forward and we have encouraged, since well before I arrived here, to continue to move forward on that reform agenda here, to be very vigorous and as effective as possible in making the case for Turkey to make the case in European capitals and with European publics why it’s in Europe’s interest that Turkey become part of the EU.
QUESTION: I would like to come back to northern Iraq. I think there are plans for a referendum in Kirkuk next year with the question if Kirkuk wants to join the autonomous region of the Kurdish people. So in case Kirkuk says yes, what will the reaction and the plan in Washington and Ankara be?
AMBASSADOR WILSON: You are quite correct about what the constitution provides in term of resolving the future of Kirkuk and its status. It’s our view that, in one way or another, the status of Kirkuk also needs to be looked at in a somewhat broader context. It needs to be resolved in a manner that reflects a certain amount of consensus among all the key factions in Iraq and especially the key factions and groups in the north and the Kirkuk region. And there have been recently talks underway about this that I’m not at liberty to discuss here, but we recognize it is a very sensitive subject. For Turkey and even more importantly it’s a very sensitive subject for a lot of different groups within Iraq and for that reason we attach a lot of importance to some measure of consensus.
Thank you very much.