The Turkish president's visit to Damascus brings to an end an 87-year separation and conveys a clear message of defiance to Washington. Sami Moubayed deciphers the implications of the rapprochement As Turkish President Ahmed Nejdet Sezar entered the Hamidiyeh Bazaar in Old Damascus during his landmark visit to Syria last week he was greeted with warm chants and flowers from the people of the city. Syria's government and public alike grabbed at the opportunity to show the world they were not isolated entirely, praising Sezar's courage in defying American objections to his Syria visit. Sezar, meanwhile, came with a double agenda. First, he wanted to reconcile with Syria, seeing it in Turkey's national interest to build bridges with Damascus. Second, he wanted to voice his displeasure at how Washington has been treating Turkey since 2003. Nothing would achieve these objectives easier than a historic visit to Damascus replete with gestures to please the Syrians and just enough spice to pique the Americans. Syrian-Turkish relations were never good in the 20th century. Once liberated from the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Syrians developed a hatred for the Turks, although they continued to live in Ottoman-built buildings, work with Ottoman laws, and enjoy a large degree of Ottoman culture and language, left behind by 400 years of Turkish rule. Matters reached rock bottom when France ceded the Sanjak of Alexanderetta to Turkey in 1939 as an incentive for Ankara to support France during World War II. In the 1950s, Syria opposed, and worked vigorously against, the Baghdad Pact, in which Turkey was a member, to contain Communism in the East. In the 1980s, when Turkey was a member of NATO, Syria was an ally of the former USSR. And in 1984, Syria supported the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) rebellion against the Turkish government, orchestrated by separatist Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who operated from Damascus. The PKK established itself in Kurdish districts of Iraq, and allied itself with Iraqi Kurdish rebels who worked with Damascus against the regime of Saddam Hussein. This rebellion led to the killing of 35,000 people in Turkey, including 5,000 soldiers, and combating it cost the Turks $6-8 billion a year. Syrian-Turkish relations improved somewhat in July 1987, during a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal to Damascus, when a security protocol was signed between both countries. Syria got greatly annoyed when the Turks began constructing a number of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates, controlling much of the water flow of the Euphrates to Syria. Matters escalated once again in 1998 when the Turkish army mobilised on the Syrian- Turkish border, threatening to go to war against Damascus if Syria did not extradite Abdullah Ocalan. Syria's late president Hafez Al-Assad complied and Ocalan fled Syria, was captured in Kenya in November 1998 and deported to Turkey where he currently languishes in a Turkish jail. The PKK continues to operate, without any help from Syria and, largely, moved its operations to the Kurdish districts of Iraq once Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Encouraged by the United States, it did not renew a five-year ceasefire agreement with Turkey (signed in 1999), and US troops in Iraq have permitted its leaders to roam freely and have free access to the stockpile of ammunition spread all over Iraq since the downfall of Saddam's regime in 2003. A new page was turned in Syrian- Turkish relations when in June 2000 the newly elected President Sezar went to Damascus to attend the funeral of President Al-Assad. In January 2004, Sezar invited President Bashar Al-Assad to Turkey and the Syrian leader complied, being the first Syrian president in history to visit Turkey while in office. The two countries found potential allies in one another when they both strongly objected to the US war on Iraq in March 2003, fearing that US support for the Iraqi Kurds would encourage the Kurdish community in both countries to rebel against the established order. This was a view shared by the Baath Party in Syria, and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, which has been accused by the US media of encouraging anti-American sentiment in Ankara. On 1 March, 2003, the US's relations with Ankara plummeted when the Turkish parliament vetoed a proposal to allow the Americans to use Turkish territory to open a second front against Iraq from the north. Two years later, on 21 March, 2005, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke to Fox News, bitterly complaining: "Clearly, if we had been able to get the fourth Infantry Division in from the north, in through Turkey, more of the Iraqi, Saddam Hussein-Baathist regime would have been captured or killed." He added that had Turkey been more cooperative "the insurgency today [in Iraq] would be less." Relations further deteriorated when the US military detained Turkish Special Forces in northern Iraq in July 2003, accusing them of plotting to assassinate Kurdish leaders in Kirkuk. An article written by US journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker in June 2004 -- on Israel training peshmerga Kurdish militias in northern Iraq and involving itself in Kurdish affairs -- did little to calm the situation. As a result, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declined an invitation from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to visit Israel in 2004, and did not meet the Israeli Minister of Labour and Trade Ehud Olmert who visited Turkey in July 2004. Tension continued to rise between Turkey and the US over the Kurdish issue in 2003-2004. Turkey kept silent when the US began haranguing Syria over its role in Lebanon, passing UNSC Resolution 1559, after the renewal of President Emile Lahoud's mandate, in late 2004. It continued to strengthen its relations with its new friends in Damascus, despite US objections, and in December 2004, Prime Minister Erdogan visited Damascus. The US media slammed Turkey and on 16 February 2005 The Wall Street Journal ran a piece calling Turkey "the sick man of Europe, again". The Turkish press replied with Yeni Safak saying that the US army had used chemical weapons in Falluja and that its troops had raped and killed Iraqi women during the war. The Wall Street Journal rejoined that this was "anti- American madness in Turkey". Further, Turkey did not join the chorus of condemnation against Syria that began after the assassination of Lebanon's ex- Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Harriri in February 2005. It did not, like most of the US's traditional allies, call for Syrian troops withdrawal from Lebanon. In the midst of all the noise being made against Syria, a Turkish people's delegation visited Syria in March 2005, and gave a press conference at the gates of the Syrian parliament, expressing solidarity with Damascus, much to the displeasure of Washington. When coming to Turkey in February 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was greeted with massive anti-American demonstrations in Ankara. The US was not impressed with the Turkish welcome, to say the least, nor was its ambassador to Ankara, Eric Edelman, who in March 2005 had advised Sezar against making a visit to Syria. This was reacted to in the Turkish daily Yeni Safak on 17 March with a column saying that Edelman, who came to Turkey four months after the fall of Baghdad in August 2003, was acting "more like a colonial governor than an ambassador". He had no authority to tell the Turkish president what to do, the newspaper said. Labelling him as the least-liked and least-trusted American ambassador in Turkish history, the newspaper went on saying: "if we want to address the reasons for anti-Americanism, Edelman must be issue one." Edelman's resignation from his diplomatic post in March 2005 was seen by many observers as an objection to Sezar's insistence to end Syria's isolation and make his April 2005 visit. The State Department has denied any connection between Edelman's resignation and Sezar's visit to Syria, or the status of Turkish-US relations. President Sezar visit to Syria effectively notifies the Americans that an axis will be formed against them if they continue to encourage Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. This Kurdish autonomy can cause grave problems for both Ankara and Damascus. That the Kurds emerged from the January 2005 elections in Iraq with 75 seats in the National Assembly, and now have Jalal Talabani as president, raised more than a few eyebrows in both countries. The Iraqi Kurds have also demanded that the peshmerga remain armed, to defend Iraqi Kurdistan, that they be given 25 per cent of oil revenues and control over the city of Kirkuk, which is an oilfield city. The Syrians and Turks fear that Kurdish power and ambitions in Iraq would revive the Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey and trigger one in Syria. On another level, Sezar's visit can be seen as a pure reflection of Turkish national pride and anger at being told what to do, and whom to visit, by the Americans. One Turkish journalist in Yeni Safak sums it up saying, "don't our government and people have the ability to decide which countries we should visit? Is our foreign policy decided by [US ambassador] Edelman? Is Turkey not an independent nation?"
