Doğuş Üniversitesinde NATO Konferansı (İng.)

CHP GENEL BAŞKAN YARDIMCISI ONUR ÖYMEN’İN DOĞUŞ ÜNİVERSİTESİNDE VERDİĞİ KONFERANS – 15 MAYIS 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests,

It is a great pleasure for me to share with you my views today on the occasion of 60th anniversary of NATO about future challenges. I followed the previous speakers with outmost interest and admiration. I remembered my own days in NATO when we were hearing highly sophisticated, professional and admirable presentations.

I will try from my side to share with you my experience and views, bearing in mind that I spent 40 years in NATO business in Ankara and in Brussels, and I spent last five years of my diplomatic career as Turkish representative in NATO. So perhaps I can tell you one or two stories, which will help you to better understand NATO.

The questions to be addressed are the followings: the first one; was NATO a successful alliance? My answer would be yes. NATO was the most successful security alliance perhaps in the whole history; there is no doubt about that. The second question: after the end of the Cold War is NATO still relevant? Yes. The proof is that twenty years after the end of the Cold War so many countries still want to join the alliance. The third question is the key word in NATO. The answer is solidarity. If there were no solidarity there would be any success stories during the Cold War period and in the future there will be no success stories if we cannot maintain the solidarity.

Are we satisfied today about the level of solidarity in NATO? The answer is no. We are not satisfied today with the level of solidarity because of the reasons that I will explain you in a moment. While talking about NATO’s success stories I have to tell you that we have to make a distinction between the period of the Cold War and afterwards.

During the Cold War our main success was to deter the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact without firing one ballot. It was such a successful political deterrence that the Soviet Union was not able to start even a limited war against NATO countries; so it was obviously a success. After the end of the Cold War, curiously enough, after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO entered a new phase where we effectively used power. We started with Bosnia, which was an out-of-area issue. At the beginning of the Serbian aggression against Bosnia, Turkey proposed NATO to start a limited air operation. It took us two years to persuade the other allies to effectively engage to such a limited air operation. In the meantime, almost 200,000 people had lost their lives because we gave too much time to diplomacy, which was proven to be unsuccessful at the end.

Afterwards we conducted a war in Kosovo and I was then in the NATO Council. This war was important for three reasons. First, we were quicker in reacting to the Serbian aggression. The number of causalities was about 10,000. Second, we were fully in command of the operation, so we were successful in limiting the operation to the selected targets avoiding collateral damage. Of course it is not possible to completely avoid collateral damages because even the most advanced ammunition of NATO may deviate about 2% from the original target. Still we did our best. Perhaps NATO commanders were not extremely happy because of such a strict political control of the NATO Council. If you read the book of our former SACEUR West Clark you will see that he was a little unhappy because of political control in NATO.

The interesting thing is that some claim that NATO as an organization defending Christian interests against Muslims, the Bosnian operation claims the opposite. Among members of NATO only Turkey is a country where the majority of the population is Muslim. Other countries’ population is Christian. But in Bosnia, in order to protect a Muslim country we fought against a Christian country. In a sense, it was a proof that NATO was unbiased as regards to security and religion. It was an important success story to prove the Muslim countries of the Mediterranean that have some cooperation agreement with NATO that NATO is not defending Christian interest against Muslim interest because there are such fears among Mediterranean countries.

The other important aspect is that for the first time in world history we waged a war in Kosovo using only air power. We have not used one single land soldier during the operation; we were successful to win the war by only using air power and with zero causality, which is another first in history. So these are success stories.

But the problem starts afterwards. When the Americans were planning a war in Iraq, they invited the NATO Council to Washington and we had talks with top representatives of the American government. We got the impression that the Americans will engage themselves militarily against Iraq. As far as Turkey is concerned we proposed Americans to bring the matter to NATO so that eventually we can think together on how to operate in Iraq. But they did not want to make it a NATO operation; they preferred to make it a secret coalition of the willing parties. So NATO was somehow sidelined; we had no authority whatsoever in the conduct of operations in Iraq whereas these operations were very much interesting for Turkey’s security as she is the only NATO country neighboring Iraq.

Therefore we faced then very serious problems, which created question marks about the basic concept of security because there was a fear at the beginning that Saddam could retaliate with his missiles. That is why, we asked NATO on a temporary basis to have Patriot missiles to defend ourselves against possible Iraqi aggression. We persuaded all NATO countries, only one NATO country objected to give Turkey Patriot missiles: France. At the very end we were unable to persuade France to agree to send Patriot missiles to Turkey. The solution was that we went to Defense Planning Committee (DPC) where France was not a member at that time. We were able to pass a solution from DPC about Patriot missiles.

After the return of France to the military wing when we faced a similar situation France had the same position. I am afraid that this will seriously affect Turkey’s security interest.

The second point is fighting terrorism. My distinguished colleague talked about the Strategic Concept. I had participated to the preparation of the actual Strategic Concept. We negotiated it in 1999 in Washington Summit. In that meeting and in the preparatory work we insisted that we should mention terrorism as one of the main targets to the security of the Alliance, which should be cover by Article 5. It says that an attack against a member country should be considered as an attack to all the members. We were not successful about that. If you read the Strategic Concept of today you will not find terrorism among the targets covered by Article 5.

What is more curious is that after the terrorist attacks in September 11 in New York we had an urgent meeting in NATO. In half an hour we decided without discussion that these attacks should be considered under Article 5 although in the Strategic Concept they refused the concept of terrorism as a source of threat to be covered by Article 5. In reality we did just the opposite and in the history of NATO this is the only case when an Article 5 situation was declared and it was on the occasion of terrorism.  During my time in NATO we insisted so much to discuss about terrorism in NATO Council but each time unsuccessfully. I do not remember one single agenda of NATO Council where terrorism was appearing in the agenda. After the 9/11 attacks against America I don’t remember one single late of Council meeting where terrorism was not memorial item on the agenda.

So those were such paradoxical situations. Terrorism is important and everybody agrees how it is so important but in reality I cannot say that cooperation in NATO against terrorism is a success story. I am sorry to say that even today a TV channel supporting PKK terrorists against the NATO ally Turkey is broadcasting from a NATO country. Despite all efforts of the Turkish governments we were unable to persuade these NATO countries to stop broadcasting pro-terrorist channels. So this is the big fear.

Second, which is more important than that, there is a unique situation in northern Iraq. In northern Iraq there is a terrorist organization but there is no security force in charge of combating them. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other example in anywhere in the world. Anywhere you have a terrorist organization, there is security forces, police, military services that is in charge of combating this terrorist organization, with the exception of northern Iraq. This organization is attacking Turkey, a NATO ally. In Iraq we have 30,000 troops of the biggest ally, United States. How it happens that United States combat in Iraq all terrorist organizations with exception of PKK? Can you explain this? According to the 4th Geneva Protocol if a country possesses important military force in a country, it is responsible from the security of the country. So in this particular case, the Americans are responsible of the security of Iraq, whereas so far they refrained from checking and stopping these terrorist activities in northern Iraq.

The main responsibility belongs to the Iraqi government because according to the Article 7 of the Iraqi Constitution, Iraq has to stop all terrorist attacks from its territory, prevent the passage of terrorists etc. But they have not arrested one single PKK terrorist so far. Why Americans have not arrested one single PKK terrorist in northern Iraq? Bush has promised after 9/11 to combat all terrorist organizations in the world until the end. So why PKK is an exception?

Those are question marks in our minds, which also create questions marks in the minds of Turkish people as regards to the efficiency of the NATO response to terrorist attacks against member countries.  It is true that Americans have provided some intelligence to Turkish troops but it is also true that they are unwilling that Turkey makes an operation to eradicate terrorists in northern Iraq. For a couple of years they have not permitted even Turkish aircrafts to overfly Iraq. Not only they have not attacked these terrorists but also they have prevented Turkish forces to attack them.

At the end, last years they said we can make an air operation and that they will provide us with information but when we started the first and only land operation the American Defense Minister visiting Turkey said that, if you do not stop these operations in a couple of days we will stop intelligence sharing with you. Those are serious question marks that we have to address. If you consider NATO only from the positive side it will not help you to understand these problem areas.

Afghanistan is also an interesting story. The operation to Afghanistan has not started as a NATO operation. Perhaps everything would be different if it was a NATO operation. We have a long experience with Afghanistan and we were ready to share experiences with our friends. But they preferred to make it a coalition of willing type of operation. NATO have only a side role, like a side dish. NATO’s role at the beginning was to protect Kabul. Finally there were some NATO troops invited to engage in anti-terrorist operations in Kandabar and its regions; Turkey was also part of it. But the key issue in Afghanistan is that during the Soviet invasion Afghan Mucahidi was suggested by the leading NATO partners, starting with Americans to combat Soviet troops in the name of God. Afterwards, Afghanistan turned into a fundamentalist country.  They were successful in sending Russian troops to back but they turned Afghanistan into a fundamentalist country. We have started our cooperation in the early 30s with Afghanistan and our purpose was to make them a modern society. We have been very much successful. But now they became a backward society and there is no mission to make Afghanistan a modern, contemporary, secular and democratic republic.

Finally, I would like to share with you a story to help you understand how things happen in NATO. Once we were talking about the Turkish straits in NATO Council. A Greek colleague said they objected the word ‘Turkish straits’. We asked if they had any doubts about that. He said in Lausanne Treaty, it is called “straits”, not Turkish straits. I said I disagree with the idea of the representative of the Hellenic Kingdom. He said, “No, we are not a kingdom, we are a republic.” I said, “It is no written in Lausanne Treaty.”

A final story for those who think that NATO is an imperialist organization; NATO is not an imperialist organization because all decisions are taken by unanimity. Once in a summit they put an extreme pressure on Turkey and every member was against us. I said, “In NATO 18 is not bigger than one.” Finally they changed their position and we found a compromise between 18 and 1.