Ambassador's Remarks and Public events
Press Roundtable with Ambassador James Jeffrey
Washington, DC
June 4, 2009
Ambassador Jeffrey: -- a large delegation of Turks here in Washington. This is from an operational standpoint the first major follow-up to the President’s visit to Turkey. We have, as you know, Foreign Minister Davutoglu, the Defense and Transportation Ministers. We have the Chief of the General Staff, General Bashphu and a large delegation, and we’ve had a whole series of meetings. You’ve been briefed, I’m sure, by the Turkish press folks that are from the embassy and with the Davutoglu and other delegations on who they’ve seen, but a large number of people including many people in Congress.
Several themes have come out of this. One is the enduring importance of our strategic military relations. Thus both the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff in their very important meetings which covered such themes as the struggle against the PKK, defense modernization. This was mirrored as well by the very successful set of meetings we had at the ATC between the Turkish defense industry and leading Turkish military personnel, General Tasfalar and others at the operational level, and various American firms on the various options for further military modernization.
But a new theme has also come up based upon the President’s commitments to President Gul, and that is the economic relationship between the two countries. A model partnership in our view, and certainly in the view of the Turkish side, needs to involve economic, commercial and trade activities to a greater degree than we have today.
As former Under Secretary of State and former Ambassador to Turkey Mark Grossman pointed out several days ago in discussing this with his Turkish interlocutors, a relationship that is only based upon political, military and security shared values and interests lacks the kind of multiplier effect that cultural, educational, trade, economic and technical cooperation and exchanges have. Because they involve far more people. They involve many personal contacts.
We see some of this already. For example in the educational field America has been very very active, and to some degree in the cultural field with the universities that we have sponsored and schools over many many decades, and the advanced education that many Turks get in the United States. This builds up a core of people who basically have an understanding of the United States and to some degree an affection for the United States. The same thing applies to the many many Americans who have studied, worked, and had contacts in Turkey. Things even as basic as tourism can further these people to people goals, these people to people exchanges and strengthen, and as I said, complement the classic diplomatic, political, security relations that are so important for our two countries.
In looking at the trade statistics we are struck by, as is the Turkish side, by the leveling off and in fact slight drop in Turkish exports to the United States, around $4 billion a year. American exports to Turkey are somewhat stronger, a little bit over $10 billion a year. But for the state of the Turkish economy, almost $800 billion, roughly $15 or $16 billion in two-way trade is not particularly impressive. This is in comparison with trade with Russia which is now the single largest trading partner of Turkey with about $40 billion; and of course trade with the European Union in general which is many hundreds of billions of dollars taken as a whole.
So while we’re not in competition with anybody and we are delighted at Turkish success exporting to markets in the Middle East, exporting to markets in the Far East, exporting to Russia, exporting to the European Union, we want to do better. We’ve looked at various ways to do this.
As I mentioned in my remarks earlier this week, there are several things that need to be done. One is a series of agreements that we’ve been working on in agriculture, technology transfer, the agreement that we want to do on ExIm Bank and the Treasury. Then there are certain things we’d like to see the Turkish side do. Patents law, signing up to the WTO government contracting agreement, signing up to the to the Capetown Agreement on aircraft. In addition there are things that the Turkish side wants the American side to look at. These involve, for example, more facilitation of the GSP system. Turkey is one of the top users of it. Was number eight in the world last year with $1 billion in such purchases; will be seventh largest this year. But there are ways that we can do better.
In addition, Turkey is very interested in anything we can do to expand our TIFA, our Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, and to look at these opportunity zones for both Iraq and Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are bills in the Congress to move forward on these which would facilitate the import of products from them. Turkey, as you know, is very very active in Afghanistan in particular and has a long term relationship as well with Pakistan. There are billions of dollars of Turkish contracting work going on right now in Afghanistan. Since 2006 there’s been $200 million of Turkish aid pledged for Afghanistan. This is one of the largest aid packages for Afghanistan, and it’s the largest aid package Turkey has ever given. So Turkey is a major economic and assistance player in both countries and we want to see if we can develop that. That was a major theme in the discussions that Ambassador Holbrooke held with Foreign Minister Davutoglu earlier this week.
I think I want to stop there. There’s a lot more to talk about, but it may be better just to get to your questions.
Question: You didn’t touch on Turkey’s involvement in the Syria-Israeli track. Where is that at the moment and how involved is Turkey? Do you have a sense that that’s going to be relaunched soon?
Ambassador Jeffrey: A two-part question. First of all, I didn’t touch on Turkey’s relations with Antarctica, I didn’t touch on Turkey’s role as the UN Security Council Subcommittee Chief on North Korea, or many other things. The reason is that I would have spent the whole 40 minutes outlining all the things we’re talking about. I think it’s better to just skim over the surface, and then go back and talk about specific issues.
The Turkish brokered Syria-Israeli talks were very very interesting. They went very very far as Prime Minister Erdowan and others have spoken. Then, unfortunately, in December they basically were stopped with the Gaza incursion.
The question of whether to restart them is a question for the two sides. The Israelis and the Syrians in the first order to take a decision on. Turkey has indicated both publicly and privately that it is ready to function as a mediator again as it did in the past, and we’re generally supportive of all negotiations that would move the peace process forward. But on this specific one we’re waiting for the two sides to make their positions more clear.
As you know, we’ve had some contacts with the Syrians at the level of Assistant Secretary of State. The Acting Assistant Secretary of State and his NSC colleague. But we’re still moving forward step by step with Syria.
Question: Can I ask you about the term “model partnership”? In the eyes of the U.S. government, how different is it from the “strategic partnership”?
Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, you have to measure the nature of a relationship by what occurs. While we have had a strategic partnership for a long time we certainly didn’t have a partnership that saw the Secretary of State and the President in their first months in office coming to Turkey. So I think it is the level and intensity.
The other point I would like to emphasize is, and you see this suffused in President Obama’s speech that he gave today in Cairo following up on the speech he gave in the Parliament in Ankara. That is this attitude that we should listen to and work with major regional actors. Turkey is a major regional actor. We know of no single major regional actor that has its, just from geography alone, has so many contacts near or abroad as Foreign Minister Davutoglu has stated in several discussions that I’ve heard over the past few days. If you draw a circle a thousand kilometers in diameter, in radius rather, around his office in Ankara, you pick up some 40 or 50 countries. If you do 3,000 kilometers you pick up 77 countries. If you do 3,000 kilometers from the United States you get about a half a dozen countries. So Turkey is in a very special place just by its geography, but also by its size, by its military security, by its alliances and relationships, and by its historical ties.
Question: As you started the conversation with the economy I just wonder how you see the Turkish economy’s resilience in the face of this global crisis. And second, do you have any concern that there’s still no IMF agreement?
Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, the Turkish financial sector, the banking system, and Turkish government finances. An economy is, it’s a little bit like the four blind men and women who are feeling each different part of an elephant. Economy is the same way. Economy isn’t one thing, it’s many different things. You can have one or two elements of it working well and three or four elements of it not.
In the case of Turkey, importantly, particularly given Turkey’s past, the private financial sector, the banks and related institutions, insurance, and all of that, have done remarkably well in good part because of the IMF bailout program and the discipline that that injected into the system in 2001, 2002, carried forward by the Erdowan government. You’ll remember that now Deputy Prime Minister, recently Foreign Minister, and at the time Economy Minister, Babacan, played a very very important role in that.
Secondly, government finances. When I went out to Turkey, I don’t know what it is now, government debt as a ratio to GDP was down to about 38 percent, which is extraordinary. It’s going to be, by the time we finish with the crisis here in America at least double that in the United States, and of course in some countries like Italy it is well over 100 percent.
So the government situation in terms of its own flexibility and resilience, I think that’s the words you used, which is a way of saying they don’t have to raise taxes to keep the deficit from growing because they’ve got a lot of head room. They may decide that is the macroeconomic decision to take that many other countries do not have, that few other countries have to the extent that Turkey has. So those are two big pluses.
Because, the other side of the coin is because Turkey has been for the last decade an export-driven economy, largely, but not entirely to the European Union, the slow-down in demand in Europe has had a dramatic effect on Turkish exports that in some sectors are down 30-40 percent with unemployment up over 15 percent.
In terms of the IMF, our general feeling is IMF agreements are good things for countries that are facing, in the case of Turkey, not the financial sector and not the government sector, but the private real sector, is facing a massive roll-over of external debt over the next year. How much that gap will be, we don’t know, but an IMF program would seem to make sense. The problem is an IMF program comes with certain political and economic restraints. It’s the government that has to decide what it’s willing to accept and what it isn’t. Those talks continue.
Question: So in a sense you’re concerned that no agreement has yet reached with the IMF?
Ambassador Jeffrey: I would not say concerned. I would say this is a decision -- The IMF and the government of Turkey are continuing to talk. They will look at what the options are, continue to negotiate, continue to look at compromises, and they’ll take a decision. This has been going on, of course, for over six months. The economy has not collapsed. The economy continues to move forward in Turkey. And so I wouldn’t say it’s a matter of concern. I would say that we generally support IMF agreements for countries that are encountering difficulties, but at the end of the day each country has to take its own decision. At the end of the day the IMF has to decide what for its own payback and for its own macro-economic reasons, it is willing to accept, what it feels it has to assert as a quid for providing let’s say $25 or $40 billion of stand-by credit. So the talks continue.
Question: Mr. Ambassador, the other day we were talking about Turkey’s request to buy [inaudible], and that [inaudible] of the U.S. Marine Corps --
Ambassador Jeffrey: Right.
Question: New ones are not being produced.
Ambassador Jeffrey: That is correct.
Question: The Marine Corps administration or whatever, they already need those copters themselves. That’s the situation so far. Is there a chance for a change? Could the Marine Corps spread a few to Turkey [inaudible]? Is there any hope on behalf of Turkey on that matter?
Ambassador Jeffrey: There are several ways forward in terms of how our requirements for the Marine Corps, which like the Turkish military is involved in every day and life and death combat, and they need those combat aircraft, can meet this request from Turkey and continue to move forward. But it requires certain budget decisions, it requires certain decisions in activities with Congress.
There is a major effort underway at the highest levels of the Pentagon to look into this.
Turkey has made it very clear that this is a very very important priority. We’ve looked at the requirements and we can see that’s a very important priority, and if there’s a way to do this without stripping front line American Marines of their fire support, I’m confident we’ll do it.
Question: We know that the United States government values Turkish normalization efforts with Armenia. And the President himself personally got involved with this when he was in Turkey and later. But it seems to me that Turkey has linked the normalization to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Do you think this is a good idea? What is your view on that?
Ambassador Jeffrey: Well, I try very hard not to comment on decisions on close friends and allies with whom we have a model partnership as to whether Decision A, Decision B, Decision X is a good idea or a bad idea. I can tell you the U.S. position which we stated on the 22nd of April after the Joint Statement came out concerning the documents that Turkey is working on with Armenia with the help of the Swiss. That is we think these are independent processes and that there are not preconditions. But that’s the United States view. We’re not a party to this discussion.
Question: Ambassador Davutoglu will be visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan next week. We know, again, that Pakistan and Afghanistan is one of the top priorities for this administration. Actually in the dinner the other day General Mullen said --
Ambassador Jeffrey: Admiral Mullen.
Question: Yes, Admiral Mullen said Pakistan is the issue which he presses most when he’s dealing with the Turkish military.
Ambassador Jeffrey: Right.
Question: We know Turkey has been doing a lot of things in [inaudible]. What else Turkey can do in that area?
Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, Turkey is a major friend and brother country of Pakistan and of Afghanistan. We’re delighted with what Turkey is doing and in particular on the military and on the training front in Afghanistan. We think that Turkey’s outreach to the Pakistani and Afghani leadership with the series of high level summits recently reinforced by the military and intelligence chiefs as well are very very important. But we think that overall, regardless of whether we’re talking about the American effort, which is why President Obama is putting in 17,000 more troops, or NATO’s effort, Turkey’s efforts, the efforts of India, the efforts of China. We think everybody has to do everything possible, and that means in the case of everybody, more to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan, and to help the Pakistanis who are involved in a very very difficult fight.
Turkey, for example, has programs, training support programs, for Pakistani military officers. We would like to see some of those extended and expanded. Turkey has a great deal of experience, some of it working with us on use of aircraft in counterinsurgency operations, deployment of combat troops, clear, hold and build operations in the Southeast. Turkey had a lot of experience in the 1990s in actual fighting in Northern Iraq. Much of this is transferrable to other similar theaters. To us, Western Pakistan looks like a similar theater so we’re exploring those possibilities with the Turks right now. It’s a major reason why Ambassador Holbrooke has, as I said, met with Foreign Minister Davutoglu at the beginning of this week, and Holbrooke also came to Istanbul for a multilateral meeting, but he spent a good deal of that time talking with his Turkish colleagues on the way forward.
There hasn’t been anything concrete, other than the package of things that the Turks have announced in and about the President’s visit in Afghanistan, we’re just looking at what the possibilities could be.
Question: Just a follow-up to this. You said the Turkish community has very good fighting experience in Northern Iraq and clear and hold in the 1990s in the Southeast or whatever. I mean, how would you like to make use of this? Would you like to make use of Turkish troops in physical fights against Taliban or --
Ambassador Jeffrey: No, no, no. This is all a question of experience, of training, of train the trainer, of sharing things. We have a variety of programs, for example, with Pakistan. We do training of their pilots, we do maintenance training, we do some Special Forces training. But what we have seen with the size of the Pakistani military and their multiple challenges. It’s a conventional force oriented in one direction. It has a very serious counterinsurgency threat in the other direction. Thus it has to go from conventional mentality to counterinsurgency mentality. The Turkish military does that. As you know every year tens if not hundreds of thousands of troops are transferred from largely mechanized or conventional brigades and from the West of Turkey to the Southeast and back. Turkey, as I said, participated in heavy combat in Northern Iraq in the 1990s. So you have a cadre of officers, of NCOs, of technicians who know how to do things. We’re very impressed with this skill level so it’s a question of are there things where Turkey could be helpful.
This has not been fleshed out, as we say. We’ve just had the initial talks. Admiral Mullen made his point. The discussions continued in more detail in the Pentagon this week with Fijigunal and General Bashphu, but I haven’t seen any concrete agreements or results yet.
Question: So could se say that you would like Turkey to intensify training programs and --
Ambassador Jeffrey: If both sides are willing.
Question: If both sides.
Ambassador Jeffrey: There is no agreement, these are just ideas as part of the overall international -- The reality is we have almost 100,000 NATO troops committed in Afghanistan. As President Obama has pointed out, it is very very difficult to succeed in Afghanistan without stabilizing the situation across the border in Pakistan as well. Therefore as an alliance we’re working with the most important members of the alliance, and Turkey is certainly one of the most important members of the alliance. It certainly is a country with a major contribution to Afghanistan on how we can see the way forward to a victory. To a stabilized country. That involves working with Pakistan as well to deal with the threat they have from the same enemy or from a similar enemy.
Question: But to put it more directly, has the United States asked Turkey to contribute combat troops to Afghanistan?
Ambassador Jeffrey: Well, Turkey has 3,000 troops in Afghanistan. If you ask these troops as they lock and load their G3 rifles every morning, I bet they think they’re combat troops.
Question: But you are wanting more?
Ambassador Jeffrey: No. Our focus is not on more troops. The Turks have recently increased their troop contingent because they’re taking over the capital region and we’re very very pleased with that. We’re very happy with the Turkish contingent and we have not requested more troops or a change in mission. What we want is more training, and the Turks are looking into more of these what are called inelegantly, OMLTs. Also gendarme training and a variety of schools and other support for the Afghani security forces. Along with and complemented by both the Turkish government effort and Turkish NGOs, Turkish contractors, and other Turkish activities which is very extensive in Afghanistan.
Question: Has the figure reached 3,000 really?
Ambassador Jeffrey: Did I say 3,000? No. It’s --
Question: About 800, 1,000?
Ambassador Jeffrey: About, 1,800 or 1,900 is what it is slated to grow to.
Question: Are these just 1,000 but it should be 1,200 or 300 when it gets responsible for Kabul?
Ambassador Jeffrey: That’s my understanding, perhaps a little bit higher. But it’s the missions that they’ve taken over. Nobody has agreed on, as far as I know, a specific number. But my assumption is that they would about double the 800 troops they had two months ago in the course of taking over this command. But no, 3,000 is not the number.
Question: That number is incorrect then?
Ambassador Jeffrey: Yes.
Question: What’s the state of Turkish-Iraqi cooperation on the PKK? I haven’t heard much lately about hot pursuit into Iraq.
Ambassador Jeffrey: Well, the Turks are continuing their military activities against the PKK in Northern Iraq. This is coordinated closely with us and with the Iraqi authorities. This includes the possibility of ground incursions. There have been several, one major one in February of 2008. And several much smaller ones. But the main activity has been artillery fire and aircraft strikes.
The Turks, as I said, are working on a trilateral basis with us, with the Iraqi government, both the Kurdish regional government in the north and the Iraqi central government. This includes a trilateral liaison cell in Urbil that is being stood up now, and a variety of other actions.
If you ask the Turkish side they will say with considerable justification that they want to see the Kurdistan Regional Authorities where the effective security forces in the region to do more to cut off egress to these PKK strongholds in the Kanvil Mountains along the Iranian border and right up along the Iraqi border is very isolated terrain. The PKK are pretty isolated. But the Turkish desire, and it’s one that we share, is to see if we can finish off the military threat of the PKK.
Question: In terms of the training missions that you mentioned, where would you like to see more [inaudible]? On the Afghan side or the Pakistan side?
Ambassador Jeffrey: Well, we would like to see what the -- First of all we have made specific requests on the Afghani side. The Turks are responding to this. We’ve asked for another PRT. We’re awaiting an answer to that. We’ve asked for several more of these operational training teams. We think the Turks, well, the Turks have agreed to go forward with several of those. Then there is an initiative that the French are doing on gendarme training and the French recently invited Turkey to participate in the EU Gendarme Coalition. There are a number of areas that are already underway more or less agreed to, and I don’t want to get into the specifics because no matter what I say, somebody will say well, we actually just said in principle and we haven’t said the details.
The point I’m trying to get is, the Turkish side has responded in a very favorable and positive way. We are very happy with the cooperation and the progress. Where we are specifically in what comes down to at the end a deployment order and 40 troops in the field with an Afghanistani school or an Afghanistani military or an Afghanistani headquarters, I don’t know where we are on that point. But the Turkish side knows.
In terms of Pakistan, again, there’s been traditional training activities between the two. The idea of additional Turkish training of the Pakistanis is a new idea. It’s just been floated for the first time. It has not been staffed out the way the support for Afghanistan has been. That’s true.
Question: Is there a specific plan to boost Turkish-U.S. economic ties? We’ve been hearing a lot of things about this over the years but nothing really happens.
Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, a great deal has happened. The defense and aerospace sector has seen an extraordinary --
Question: Other than defense sector.
Ambassador Jeffrey: But you didn’t say other than defense sector. You asked, you made an accusation couched as a question, and I am rebutting the accusation by making a statement. [Laughter]. When I finish my statement I’ll handle the rest of the question.
In the defense and aerospace sector there has been an extraordinary amount of joint ventures, of co-production, of third country sales. Just recently I attended a ceremony with Sikorsky and with Under Secretary Vayar of the Ministry of Defense to inaugurate a program where major components of Black Hawks are being produced in Turkey for sales to third countries. There’s more and more of that. But that is one specific element.
The rest of this is not as conducive to government decisions. There is a certain confusion here and the confusion comes from the fact that we all in this room are kind of political people. Diplomats are political people. Political leaders, even if they once were business folks, are political people too. The idea is that there’s a number of levers.
As I mentioned the other day, President Bush took the decision to increase dramatically our cooperation, our intelligence sharing, and other activities in support of Turkey against the PKK. That is a political decision. It requires certain resources and priorities. It wasn’t an easy decision because these resources have other needs. The same thing with Turkey in 2004. It decided to take a decision to support the Anan Plan. That had certain political decisions, strategic implications, and reduction of troops on Cyprus and other things, not an unimportant, very strategic decision, but it’s one that a political entity can take and it is done because military decisions, diplomatic decisions, votes in the UN are concrete things that governments can do.
We’re not the Soviet Union in 1928. Neither Turkey nor the United States. Our economies flourish because we have taken our hands off of them. We, the governments. We let millions of business people in both of our countries make decisions based upon profit. Profit doesn’t know friends or enemies, it knows the best business opportunity. What this means is we cannot pull a lever. As the example I gave the other day, I can’t get a decision from the President to call the Commissar of the People’s Tourism Bureau to cancel two million cheap trips to the Caribbean and add two million trips to Turkey. That’s what the Soviet Union did in the 1950s, along with a steel plan here, and a refinery there. Using economic things for political purposes. The problem with that is what you get is junk, whether it’s a trip or it’s a steel factory.
In the modern world you get very efficient, very effective, very productive contributions to your economy and Turkey has boomed in the last 30 years because you’ve gotten rid of that thinking and trusted your entrepreneurs.
So we’re not going to turn around and say yeah, we in America, the fountainhead of the capitalist system, and you in Turkey need to go back to command economies and covertism and all of that mercantilist philosophy from the 16th Century and from Communism and basically decide let’s invest $50 billion in Turkey. We don’t do this. We don’t do it in any country.
What we do is three things. One is by organizing ourselves and organizing with our Turkish partners, we find ways, as I said, to come up with agreements. A good example of that is the Customs Union with the European Union. Another good example of this is Under Secretary Bayar in his initiatives in SSM, your defense industrial organization, to promote joint ventures and co-production. These kind of general framework agreements don’t produce specific deals but they produce an environment in which deals get done by people searching for profits, searching for markets.
The second thing we can do is share information. Once again, we’re going to have for the first time ever OATA, which is the Organization of American Tour Agents, having their annual meeting in Turkey in 2010. This is a way of getting information out about Turkey because it could well be -- Certainly I’m a consumer of Turkish tourist activities in Antalya, Bodrum and elsewhere. The more information we can get out about the quality of that product and its comparative price advantage, the more likely we will get hundreds of thousands more tourists. So the second thing is information.
The third thing is also at the micro-level, facilitating specific deals, facilitating specific initiatives, removing obstacles to this or that or the other thing. And in conjunction with that we’re looking at two areas -- pharmaceuticals -- I am looking at two areas -- pharmaceuticals and the energy sector where we’ve made considerable progress but where we think that with a few tweaks here and there, we can be making a lot more investments in Turkey, Turkey can make be making a lot more sales in the United States, and we will have strengthened our relationship.
But more generally we also need a coordinating mechanism. This is one of the things that Foreign Minister Davutoglu has stressed in his visits here. We are in agreement. We need to have some way to coordinate the various efforts. Because this is extraordinary. It involves almost every ministry in Turkey and almost every department of the United States. As I said, that’s just to set the framework of information, of facilitation, and of agreements. Below that there are the hundreds of thousands of economic activities.
What I’m trying to say is, as gently as I can, this is very important for us. It is very very correct to focus on it. But it is different than us being unhappy at Turkey for not making a certain vote in the Security Council or Turkey being unhappy at us because of something we’ve done on the Syrian track. Those are things that governments can control. Governments can’t control trade relations. They can help, but they can’t control.
Question: Two Turkish general, [inaudible], said that the combat against the PKK and the cooperation with the U.S. should go beyond intelligence sharing. What could the U.S. do more? How can the cooperation be expanded?
Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, we have considerable coordination, considerable contacts with both the Malaki government and the Kurdish Regional Government in the North. And so one request that has come in repeatedly is to work more closely with that government to encourage that government in the various ways, particularly the --
Question: The Iraqi government.
Ambassador Jeffrey: The Iraqi government but also the Malaki government, to take further steps on its own. These would include things as basic as road blocks around the Kondo Mountains to control of the flow of money. Joint efforts which we are very deeply involved with with Turkey and with the folks in Northern Iraq on combating drugs because the smuggling of drugs is one of the major sources of funds for the PKK, cooperation in Europe, and to see how our own military support can be more effective. There’s both hardware and as I said operational issues. We constantly review how we are working with the Turks on these strikes and what more we can do.
Question: I’m not sure of a good way to phrase this question, but do you see eye to eye with the Turkish government on the Iranian nuclear issue? And how do you see Turkish efforts to dissuade Iranians to proceed on the nuclear [inaudible] program?
Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, every indication we have is that the Turkish government A, is as opposed as we are to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability; and B, Turkey not only on this issue but on many others, adhere strictly to UN Security Council Resolutions, of which there are now five that are addressing the Iranian nuclear issue including a set of sanctions. Turkey has been very effective and very helpful in enforcing the sanctions.
In terms of Turkey’s efforts to persuade Iran, they are high level, they are repeated, they are insistent, as are ours, as are the European Unions, as are the Russians, as are the Chinese, but they have not been successful. That’s not a criticism of Turkey any more than it’s a criticism of us. It simply is an indication of how difficult this problem is.
Question: You have given an interview to a Turkish paper to a colleague of mine about what you would like to do with Iran, the dialogue. Have you gotten a response? We understand that they have taken the transcript of your interview and studied it very carefully. Have the Iranians in Ankara responded to you by any way?
Ambassador Jeffrey: No, we have had no contact in Turkey with the Iranians.
Question: Are they coming to your July 4 barbecue?
Ambassador Jeffrey: That’s a good question. I don’t know. Everyone else seems to be invited.
Question: Have you extended the invitation to the Iranian Ambassador in Ankara?
Ambassador Jeffrey: We have been encouraged to do so. I don’t know exactly where that thing is because if I say no, and two hours later he says, but here it is and I say yes, because I’m here and I’m there. But our posture is worldwide that we’re going to be inviting these people.
Question: Thank you.
Ambassador Jeffrey: Thank you all.