Turkey fights calls for greater Afghan role

By Delphine Strauss in Ankara

Turkey is “already doing what it can” in its dispatch of troops to Afghanistan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister, said on Sunday, signalling he would resist US pressure to send a bigger contingent to back the American surge.

He spoke before flying to Washington on an official visit intended to dispel suspicions of an eastwards drift in Turkey’s foreign policy, and show its value as a partner in addressing regional challenges – from stabilising Iraq to ending frozen conflicts in the Caucasus or containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Turkey, a long-standing Nato ally, insists its role in Afghanistan is humanitarian, and that its troops are non-combat. Barack Obama, US president, is likely to ask for more help at Monday’s meeting in the White House, but Mr Erdogan said Turkey, though it would continue training Afghan security forces, had already more than doubled its contingent to 1,750 and ruled out any further increase.

The decision may feed doubts in Washington that Turkey’s pursuit of closer ties with Muslim neighbours could dilute its support of western aims. Mr Erdogan’s visit comes soon after a crisis in Turkish-Israeli relations, and a defence of Iran’s nuclear programme as “peaceful and humanitarian”.

“The US side needs to impress diplomatically on [Mr Erdogan] how much his populist rhetoric in support of anti-western bugbears is damaging Turkey’s position with its key partners and ... in Washington and Brussels,” Hugh Pope, an author on Turkey, wrote in a paper for the Transatlantic Academy.

Despite the criticism, Mr Obama’s administration considers Ankara a vital partner in a difficult region. It supports Mr Erdogan’s drive to broaden rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, aiming to end a conflict that has deepened divisions within Turkey and also threatened stability in northern Iraq. The US shares intelligence with Turkey on Kurdish rebels operating from Iraq, and Mr Erdogan is accompanied on the trip by a senior general.

Mr Obama, who before his election promised to recognise Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians as genocide, is also likely to urge Mr Erdogan to speed ratification of a deal to normalise relations with Yerevan.

The agreement, signed after last-minute mediation by Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, is one of Mr Obama’s few tangible successes in foreign policy, but he will face pressure from Armenian groups if it does not take effect before April.

The real test of what Mr Obama has called a “model partnership”, though, will be Iran. Turkish diplomats say they share western fears of Tehran gaining nuclear weapons, and differ only in their approach to preventing it.

But Turkey, which imports gas from Iran and wants to expand trade ties, is against any new sanctions and abstained in last month’s United Nations vote condemning Iran’s nuclear activities, even though China and Russia joined the censure.

Ian Lesser, in a paper for the German Marshall Fund, said Turkish foreign policy was “in the European mainstream” on most issues, but warned its position on Iran’s nuclear programme “holds the potential for a damaging departure”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.