Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan was quoted yesterday as saying Turkey would not open its bases to US troops unless Washington gave written guarantees on aid and Turkey's role in any Iraq war.
As Ankara sought to drive a hard bargain with Washington, Turkish military officials said thousands of Turkish troops had entered northern Iraq in the last few days to head off feared incursions by Turkish Kurdish guerrillas encamped there.
NATO ally Turkey has dragged its feet on a parliamentary vote to allow American troops to deploy on its soil, throwing into doubt US plans to launch a secondary northern front against Iraq, accused of building weapons of mass destruction.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"This will not happen without a signature," Erdogan told Yeni Safak, an Islamist-leaning newspaper. "We don't have a date in mind. Only when we reach agreement will we send the [troop deployment] request to parliament."
Washington has expressed frustration over Turkey's delay in accepting a multi-billion-dollar aid package in exchange for US access to bases and sea ports, which could serve as staging posts for a war against neighboring Iraq.
Turkey wants a formal assurance the US Congress will act quickly to release financial aid, Erdogan said.
He also said fears of social upheaval and instability in the region outweighed Turkey's concerns over whether its crisis-hit economy could withstand the shock of an Iraq war.
"It's ridiculous to call this bargaining for dollars. The political and military dimensions are far more important, the economic dimension comes after these," Erdogan said.
Turkey argues that its economy lost more than US$30 billion after the 1991 Gulf War and that it had too little say in the new political order in the area, especially northern Iraq.
The White House said on Wednesday night its latest offer, of US$6 billion in grants and up to US$20 billion in loans, was final. Official sources here said contacts overnight with Washington had brought some progress, but gave no details.
Later in the day Prime Minister Abdullah Gul was due to meet Turkey's top general and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who argued this week that no parliament vote on US troops was possible without a second UN vote authorizing use of force against Iraq.
Military officials and local authorities in southeast Turkey said that up to 7,000 Turkish troops, with armored vehicles and tanks, had rolled into north Iraq in recent days in response to a perceived threat by Turkish Kurdish guerrillas there.
"The intelligence that has reached us in recent days shows KADEK militants moving toward the border and preparing for action. We have been forced to take military precautions," a military official said.
KADEK, formerly called the PKK, is a separatist movement that waged an armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey that killed 30,000 people, mainly Kurds, in the 1980s and 1990s.
The military says a war next door could reignite unrest in the impoverished area bordering semi-autonomous northern Iraq, administered by Iraqi Kurds since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
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