ONUR OYMEN’S SPEECH AT THE SEMINAR ORGANIZED BY ATAA AND DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION
Washington, 16 May 2003
Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished guests,
I would like first of all to thank ATAA and Democracy Foundation for their kind invitation. Before entering into the substance of our seminar I would like to express my heartfelt condoleances to the American people for the losses of life of American citizens and others in a suicide bombing attack that took place in Riyad a few days ago. We condemn all terrorist attacks irrespective of their targets, perpetrators and motivation. We believe that nothing can justify terrorism. Terrorism has no nationality, no religion. When we discussed in NATO Council, right after the 11th of September attacks, how best we can combat with terrorism, our common understanding was that we should not add any adjective to terrorism. Therefore we should refrain from speaking about Islamic terrorism, as we do not qualify for example ETA terrorists in Spain as Christian terrorists. We agree with President Bush when he says that “there is no gray area in fighting terrorism, either you are with us or you are against us”. There is no such a thing like “light terrorism” or “justifiable terrorism’. We will continue to fight against terrorism together with our American friends and all civilized nations until the final eradication of this scourge of mankind from the earth.
Mr. Chairman,
I believe that this seminar is very timely. We need to prove that democracy and Islam are perfectly compatible. We cannot and we should not penalize people born from Muslim parents to live all their life under non-democratic regimes. Democracy is not a privilege of Christian societies. This issue is very timely since we are now talking about a new regime for Iraq. There is almost unanimity on the necessity to establish a democratic government in Iraq. But the question is: how?
Turkey’s own experience may provide an answer to this question. Because the republic we have founded 80 years ago was based on democratic principles. The motto of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkish Republic was that “The sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people” These words are engraved behind the rostrum of our parliament. Turkish experience shows that a country with overwhelming Muslim population can create a western style democracy.
You should not forget that when we have established our republic, great number nations in Western Europe and other parts of the world were living under totalitarian regimes. For example 1923 is the year of the proclamation of the Turkish republic, but it is also the year when Hitler took over the government in Germany. It was a period where Mussolini was in charge in Italy, Franco and Salazar were becoming notorious dictators of Spain and Portugal respectively. Greece was on and off under military regimes. During the Second World War even France, the cradle of European democracy was under the dictatorship of Vichy regime, an ally of Hitler.
Throughout these turbulent years Turkey successfully progressed towards a western style democracy. Although the military intervened three times into political life in Turkey in 1960, 1971 and 1980, the purpose of these interventions was not to establish an authoritarian regime but to eliminate the threats to democracy by some anti-democratic or terrorist groups. Each time the military transferred the government to the civilians in a relatively short time and democratic elections were organized giving the right to the people to decide who is going to govern the country.
Since we started multi-part regime in 1946 the government has changed many times trough elections. This is the proof of the existence of a vibrant democracy in Turkey.
Samuel Huntington says that to claim that democracy exists in a country, the power should be changed at least two times trough free elections. Professor Bernard Lewis affirms that among 51 Muslim countries only Turkey passed this test. A few others tried once but they failed to organized democratic elections for a second time.
I can tell you that today another Muslim country passed the test as well. This is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Although no other country than Turkey recognized formally TRNC so far, this has not prevented this small republic to live in a democratic society with its parliament, opposition, trade unions, free press and free elections. Turkish Cypriots have changed their government several times after free elections.
Coming back to Turkey, I should add that, while progressing towards a full democracy Turkey was among the first countries in Europe to give in 1934 the women the rights to vote and to be elected. France gave this right only 11 years after Turkey and Swiss women enjoyed this democratic right as late as 1975.
Turkey has also adopted a secular system already in 1920’s. Since then the affairs of the state and the affairs of the religion are totally separated from each other. Everybody can freely profess his or her religion in Turkey but we do not have a Muslim clergy, like Ayatollahs of Iran. The imams are paid by the state to perform their duty in accordance with religious rules but they have to observe the rules of secular constitution and legislation of the country. There is no sheria law in Turkey since 1927. I believe that the adoption of secularism has contributed enormously to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey. I should add that in Turkey secularism is among few articles of our constitution that cannot be modified. It is even prohibited to propose an amendment to the basic pillars of our constitution like republicanism and secularism. Don’t forget that even today there are some European countries like Greece where the state has an official religion.
Don’t we have problems in our democratic parliamentary system? Yes we do. But who doesn’t? In Turkey we still need to further improve our legislation to adopt every detail of European Union’s standards. But the good news is that the government and the opposition perfectly agree on the need of more democratic reforms and as the opposition party we have supported so far all proposals of the government aiming at upgrading our democratic standards within the framework of our membership process to the European Union.
How this democratic and secular nature of our society affects our foreign policy? I can tell you that the democracy was a key element in shaping our foreign relation in the last half a century. We joined the Council of Europe, an organization based on democracy and human rights in 1948. Afterwards we signed the European Convention of Human Rights and later we accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. We signed a great number of UN and Council of Europe conventions to which only democratic countries can participate. We joined NATO in 1952. We signed an association agreement with the European Union in 1963. We became later an associated member of Western European Union. Turkey is also a signatory of 1975 Helsinki Final Act aiming at better security, confidence and cooperation and improvement of human rights and fundamental freedoms. All these could not be materialized if we were not a democratic society. Turkey today is the only country with a Muslim population and member of all these western organizations or initiatives.
Turkey is at the same time the only NATO country that is also a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference. We are playing an important role in the OIC. For example Turkish President is the permanent chairman of the Economic and Social Council (ISEDAC) of the Islamic Conference. How we manage to be an active member of this organization whose basic concepts are based on Islamic values and not that of western democracies? The answer is that while joining the Islamic Conference we have put a blanket reservation which says that Turkey can accept the resolutions of the OIC only in case they are compatible with the Turkish Constitution and the basic lines of the Turkish foreign policy.
We have tried to inject some concepts of the Helsinki Final Act to the Organization of Islamic Conference. In 1988, during a ministerial meeting of the OIC in Amman Turkey has proposed “a confidence and security building system” among Muslim countries, inspired by the Helsinki Final Act. The general reactions were rather positive and at the end of the meeting we were able to pass a resolution in these lines. We have established a sort of wise men committee composed of five personalities. A former Turkish foreign minister was also elected to that committee. They met a few times but at the end other political issues dominated the agenda of the OIC and it was not possible to materialize our proposal.
We still continue to believe that the spread of democracy among the Muslim countries will be beneficial for the peace and the stability in the region. It will serve particularly the security interests of Turkey since we are the only NATO nation having as neighbors’ non-democratic governments by western standards.
The lack of a democratic environment around us was one of the reasons why we have to maintain a strong army. I would like to remind you that Turkey has the second strongest army of NATO after the United States. As a result of this non-democratic environment Turkey is among very few NATO allies who have not profited from a peace dividend that most of the other NATO countries enjoyed after the end of the cold war. For example Germany’s defense expenditures today are less than two per cent of her Gross National Product. It is also the case for Canada and several other NATO countries. Whereas Turkey has to spend for defense over four per cent of her national income. There are of course other reasons of this high cost of security for Turkey. However I believe that the democratization of our neighborhood may help Turkey to reduce her defense expenditures to a reasonable degree.
In the last 20 years democracy has spread to a number of areas of the world. We have seen new democratic countries emerging in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. But the Middle Eastern peoples were not as lucky as the citizens of these new democracies. Some experts argued in a meeting organized by Aspen Institute a few months ago that it is the fault of their religion. Some well-known scholars like Samuel Huntington believes that democracy can develop as a rule in Christian societies. If it is so, how you can explain the democratic developments in Turkey, Japan and in India. We believe that democracy can well develop in Muslim countries as well as other non-Christian societies. If so far there was little progress in the Middle Eastern countries in the field of democracy it is not necessarily the fault of the peoples of the region.
Now there is an opportunity in Iraq. We notice with satisfaction the commitment of our American friends to bring democracy to Iraq. This will change completely the political and social environment in the area. Today there are only two countries in the region governed by western style democracies: Turkey and Israel. More democratic countries in the region mean more stability, more cooperation, and more welfare.
I believe that Turkish democracy can well serve as a model to our neighboring countries in case they want to use it. In 1930’s two countries tried to profit from Turkish experience: Afghanistan and Iran. The Emanullah Khan of Afghanistan and Reza Shah of Iran decided to start some democratic reforms after visiting Ankara and seeing the achievements of Turkey as a result of the reforms introduced by Ataturk. Unfortunately both initiatives failed because of the resistance of some extremist religious groups. Another attempt also failed in Iran in early 1950’s. Mosaddik’s nationalist government who took power from the Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the same Shah who enjoyed the assistance of some Western powers. Obviously at that period the main objective of Western powers was to have easy and secure access to oil resources of these countries and the main political preference was to have a dependable ruler than a democratic government. We all now the end of the story.
Now the chances of success in Iraq are much higher than previous experiences in the region. Although ethnic and religious composition of the Iraqi society may create some problems in the beginning I believe that democracy may prevail at the end, since Iraqi people have lived bitter experiences of a totalitarian regime.
At this point some may ask us why than you have not participated to the war against Iraq? The short answer is because of our democratic regime. This may seem to some of you as paradoxical. But it is not. Because our constitution in its article 92 allows the Parliament to authorize the government to engage the country into a war or to invite foreign troops to Turkey or to send Turkish troops abroad only if there is a situation justified by international law. Probably no other country has such a stipulation in its constitution. The reason why we have such a stipulation in our constitution goes to early decades of the last century. Having the experience of the last period of Ottoman Empire where we lost millions of people and important territories during the wars, the founders of the modern Turkish republic choose a policy of “peace in the country and peace in the world.” This was the motto of our foreign policy since the foundation of our republic and it still is. When you enter today the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs you will see these words engraved on the wall of main entrance.
We all know the discussions around the world about international legitimacy of the military operation against Iraq. In Turkey the prevailing view of leading constitutional scholars was that to make this operation legitimate a specific resolution of the UN Security Council was necessary. Our President who was a former President of our Constitutional Court expressed the same view. I believe that most of the parliamentarians in Turkey who rejected the motion of the government had in their minds this legal restriction of the constitution. A number of western governments, leading politicians, legal experts defended the same opinion as well.
In fact to be a truly democratic country we have to respect our constitution and act accordingly. I don’t believe that the American Congress would choose to violate the American Constitution no matter are the merits of the arguments and motivations of those who might suggest your Congressmen to do so.
I believe that while working for the democratization of other countries, particularly of the Muslim countries in the Middle East, we should realize that these new democracies might not always act in line with our expectations. Democratic countries usually take decisions in conformity with the will of their people. If they take decisions disregarding their constitution, disregarding the feelings of their population they are no more democratic countries. In Turkey a similar situation happened. The parliament, while voting against the government proposal, which might lead the country into the war and to invite American troops to open a front from Turkey, it has not taken into consideration only the legal restrictions of our constitution but also the feelings of our population. According to opinion pools 94 % of our people was against the war. In no democratic country the politicians can overlook such a strong tendency of the population.
Having said that I don’t mean at all that our people and our politicians so decided because they were supporting Saddam regime or they have anti-American feelings. Just the opposite. As far as may party is concerned for example, I can tell you that we have always condemned the government of Saddam Husseyin. We could by no means have sympathy for a regime that used chemical weapons against her own citizens let alone the other atrocities that she has committed.
We have not expressed anti-American feelings. Because we believe that we have strong ties of friendship and common interests with America. We recognize the support of American people and the Government to Turkey in many fields, particularly in upgrading the standards of our armed forces and particularly in combating terrorism. We also believe that many Americans recognize the contributions of Turkey to America and to the free world for more than half a century. When I was asked by Turkish and American journalists about our feelings toward America, I always said that although for legal and humanitarian reasons we voted in the parliament against the motion of the government we value Turkish American friendship. I also said that the best friends of America are not those who always say “yes” without assessing their own national interests. I said the best friends of America are those who consider first their national interests and they support close cooperation with the United States in line with their national interests. We are the believers of friendly ties and close cooperation with America because, before everything we care our national interests and we sincerely believe that it will be in our national interests. But if in some cases our national interests necessitate a decision, which might not be totally in line with the suggestions of our American friends we should have the courage to disagree with our friends on that issue. This is a price to be paid in case you are a true believer of democracy. We had the same experience with America and other friendly countries when you and others took some decisions that were not in line with our expectations. In such cases we tried to limit this problem within its own context and we tried not to damage the overall common interests. I believe that under such conditions we have to refrain from a public language that may hurt the national feelings of each other. Because it is easy to loose a friend but difficult to rebuild friendly ties.
I will conclude my remarks with an optimistic note. I believe that democracy will spread throughout the Muslim world and particularly in the Middle East. No iron or bamboo curtain may resist to the wish of the peoples to live in a free society. Democracy will be an insurance policy against terrorism and against the clash of civilizations. Democracy will be a facilitator for better understanding among peoples of different religions, peace, stability and economic cooperation.
Turkey and United States of America will continue to be the defenders of democracy in the world. For reasons I explained you a moment ago we were not able to fight together to win a war but we will definitely fight together to win the peace. This fight will aim to win the hearts of the peoples of the region. I am confident that we will win the peace and we will make the Middle East an area of mutual trust, confidence and democracy.
Seminar Organised by ATAA and Democracy Foundation (İng.)
ONUR OYMEN’S SPEECH AT THE SEMINAR ORGANIZED BY ATAA AND DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION
Washington, 16 May 2003
Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished guests,
I would like first of all to thank ATAA and Democracy Foundation for their kind invitation. Before entering into the substance of our seminar I would like to express my heartfelt condoleances to the American people for the losses of life of American citizens and others in a suicide bombing attack that took place in Riyad a few days ago. We condemn all terrorist attacks irrespective of their targets, perpetrators and motivation. We believe that nothing can justify terrorism. Terrorism has no nationality, no religion. When we discussed in NATO Council, right after the 11th of September attacks, how best we can combat with terrorism, our common understanding was that we should not add any adjective to terrorism. Therefore we should refrain from speaking about Islamic terrorism, as we do not qualify for example ETA terrorists in Spain as Christian terrorists. We agree with President Bush when he says that “there is no gray area in fighting terrorism, either you are with us or you are against us”. There is no such a thing like “light terrorism” or “justifiable terrorism’. We will continue to fight against terrorism together with our American friends and all civilized nations until the final eradication of this scourge of mankind from the earth.
Mr. Chairman,
I believe that this seminar is very timely. We need to prove that democracy and Islam are perfectly compatible. We cannot and we should not penalize people born from Muslim parents to live all their life under non-democratic regimes. Democracy is not a privilege of Christian societies. This issue is very timely since we are now talking about a new regime for Iraq. There is almost unanimity on the necessity to establish a democratic government in Iraq. But the question is: how?
Turkey’s own experience may provide an answer to this question. Because the republic we have founded 80 years ago was based on democratic principles. The motto of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkish Republic was that “The sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people” These words are engraved behind the rostrum of our parliament. Turkish experience shows that a country with overwhelming Muslim population can create a western style democracy.
You should not forget that when we have established our republic, great number nations in Western Europe and other parts of the world were living under totalitarian regimes. For example 1923 is the year of the proclamation of the Turkish republic, but it is also the year when Hitler took over the government in Germany. It was a period where Mussolini was in charge in Italy, Franco and Salazar were becoming notorious dictators of Spain and Portugal respectively. Greece was on and off under military regimes. During the Second World War even France, the cradle of European democracy was under the dictatorship of Vichy regime, an ally of Hitler.
Throughout these turbulent years Turkey successfully progressed towards a western style democracy. Although the military intervened three times into political life in Turkey in 1960, 1971 and 1980, the purpose of these interventions was not to establish an authoritarian regime but to eliminate the threats to democracy by some anti-democratic or terrorist groups. Each time the military transferred the government to the civilians in a relatively short time and democratic elections were organized giving the right to the people to decide who is going to govern the country.
Since we started multi-part regime in 1946 the government has changed many times trough elections. This is the proof of the existence of a vibrant democracy in Turkey.
Samuel Huntington says that to claim that democracy exists in a country, the power should be changed at least two times trough free elections. Professor Bernard Lewis affirms that among 51 Muslim countries only Turkey passed this test. A few others tried once but they failed to organized democratic elections for a second time.
I can tell you that today another Muslim country passed the test as well. This is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Although no other country than Turkey recognized formally TRNC so far, this has not prevented this small republic to live in a democratic society with its parliament, opposition, trade unions, free press and free elections. Turkish Cypriots have changed their government several times after free elections.
Coming back to Turkey, I should add that, while progressing towards a full democracy Turkey was among the first countries in Europe to give in 1934 the women the rights to vote and to be elected. France gave this right only 11 years after Turkey and Swiss women enjoyed this democratic right as late as 1975.
Turkey has also adopted a secular system already in 1920’s. Since then the affairs of the state and the affairs of the religion are totally separated from each other. Everybody can freely profess his or her religion in Turkey but we do not have a Muslim clergy, like Ayatollahs of Iran. The imams are paid by the state to perform their duty in accordance with religious rules but they have to observe the rules of secular constitution and legislation of the country. There is no sheria law in Turkey since 1927. I believe that the adoption of secularism has contributed enormously to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey. I should add that in Turkey secularism is among few articles of our constitution that cannot be modified. It is even prohibited to propose an amendment to the basic pillars of our constitution like republicanism and secularism. Don’t forget that even today there are some European countries like Greece where the state has an official religion.
Don’t we have problems in our democratic parliamentary system? Yes we do. But who doesn’t? In Turkey we still need to further improve our legislation to adopt every detail of European Union’s standards. But the good news is that the government and the opposition perfectly agree on the need of more democratic reforms and as the opposition party we have supported so far all proposals of the government aiming at upgrading our democratic standards within the framework of our membership process to the European Union.
How this democratic and secular nature of our society affects our foreign policy? I can tell you that the democracy was a key element in shaping our foreign relation in the last half a century. We joined the Council of Europe, an organization based on democracy and human rights in 1948. Afterwards we signed the European Convention of Human Rights and later we accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. We signed a great number of UN and Council of Europe conventions to which only democratic countries can participate. We joined NATO in 1952. We signed an association agreement with the European Union in 1963. We became later an associated member of Western European Union. Turkey is also a signatory of 1975 Helsinki Final Act aiming at better security, confidence and cooperation and improvement of human rights and fundamental freedoms. All these could not be materialized if we were not a democratic society. Turkey today is the only country with a Muslim population and member of all these western organizations or initiatives.
Turkey is at the same time the only NATO country that is also a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference. We are playing an important role in the OIC. For example Turkish President is the permanent chairman of the Economic and Social Council (ISEDAC) of the Islamic Conference. How we manage to be an active member of this organization whose basic concepts are based on Islamic values and not that of western democracies? The answer is that while joining the Islamic Conference we have put a blanket reservation which says that Turkey can accept the resolutions of the OIC only in case they are compatible with the Turkish Constitution and the basic lines of the Turkish foreign policy.
We have tried to inject some concepts of the Helsinki Final Act to the Organization of Islamic Conference. In 1988, during a ministerial meeting of the OIC in Amman Turkey has proposed “a confidence and security building system” among Muslim countries, inspired by the Helsinki Final Act. The general reactions were rather positive and at the end of the meeting we were able to pass a resolution in these lines. We have established a sort of wise men committee composed of five personalities. A former Turkish foreign minister was also elected to that committee. They met a few times but at the end other political issues dominated the agenda of the OIC and it was not possible to materialize our proposal.
We still continue to believe that the spread of democracy among the Muslim countries will be beneficial for the peace and the stability in the region. It will serve particularly the security interests of Turkey since we are the only NATO nation having as neighbors’ non-democratic governments by western standards.
The lack of a democratic environment around us was one of the reasons why we have to maintain a strong army. I would like to remind you that Turkey has the second strongest army of NATO after the United States. As a result of this non-democratic environment Turkey is among very few NATO allies who have not profited from a peace dividend that most of the other NATO countries enjoyed after the end of the cold war. For example Germany’s defense expenditures today are less than two per cent of her Gross National Product. It is also the case for Canada and several other NATO countries. Whereas Turkey has to spend for defense over four per cent of her national income. There are of course other reasons of this high cost of security for Turkey. However I believe that the democratization of our neighborhood may help Turkey to reduce her defense expenditures to a reasonable degree.
In the last 20 years democracy has spread to a number of areas of the world. We have seen new democratic countries emerging in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. But the Middle Eastern peoples were not as lucky as the citizens of these new democracies. Some experts argued in a meeting organized by Aspen Institute a few months ago that it is the fault of their religion. Some well-known scholars like Samuel Huntington believes that democracy can develop as a rule in Christian societies. If it is so, how you can explain the democratic developments in Turkey, Japan and in India. We believe that democracy can well develop in Muslim countries as well as other non-Christian societies. If so far there was little progress in the Middle Eastern countries in the field of democracy it is not necessarily the fault of the peoples of the region.
Now there is an opportunity in Iraq. We notice with satisfaction the commitment of our American friends to bring democracy to Iraq. This will change completely the political and social environment in the area. Today there are only two countries in the region governed by western style democracies: Turkey and Israel. More democratic countries in the region mean more stability, more cooperation, and more welfare.
I believe that Turkish democracy can well serve as a model to our neighboring countries in case they want to use it. In 1930’s two countries tried to profit from Turkish experience: Afghanistan and Iran. The Emanullah Khan of Afghanistan and Reza Shah of Iran decided to start some democratic reforms after visiting Ankara and seeing the achievements of Turkey as a result of the reforms introduced by Ataturk. Unfortunately both initiatives failed because of the resistance of some extremist religious groups. Another attempt also failed in Iran in early 1950’s. Mosaddik’s nationalist government who took power from the Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the same Shah who enjoyed the assistance of some Western powers. Obviously at that period the main objective of Western powers was to have easy and secure access to oil resources of these countries and the main political preference was to have a dependable ruler than a democratic government. We all now the end of the story.
Now the chances of success in Iraq are much higher than previous experiences in the region. Although ethnic and religious composition of the Iraqi society may create some problems in the beginning I believe that democracy may prevail at the end, since Iraqi people have lived bitter experiences of a totalitarian regime.
At this point some may ask us why than you have not participated to the war against Iraq? The short answer is because of our democratic regime. This may seem to some of you as paradoxical. But it is not. Because our constitution in its article 92 allows the Parliament to authorize the government to engage the country into a war or to invite foreign troops to Turkey or to send Turkish troops abroad only if there is a situation justified by international law. Probably no other country has such a stipulation in its constitution. The reason why we have such a stipulation in our constitution goes to early decades of the last century. Having the experience of the last period of Ottoman Empire where we lost millions of people and important territories during the wars, the founders of the modern Turkish republic choose a policy of “peace in the country and peace in the world.” This was the motto of our foreign policy since the foundation of our republic and it still is. When you enter today the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs you will see these words engraved on the wall of main entrance.
We all know the discussions around the world about international legitimacy of the military operation against Iraq. In Turkey the prevailing view of leading constitutional scholars was that to make this operation legitimate a specific resolution of the UN Security Council was necessary. Our President who was a former President of our Constitutional Court expressed the same view. I believe that most of the parliamentarians in Turkey who rejected the motion of the government had in their minds this legal restriction of the constitution. A number of western governments, leading politicians, legal experts defended the same opinion as well.
In fact to be a truly democratic country we have to respect our constitution and act accordingly. I don’t believe that the American Congress would choose to violate the American Constitution no matter are the merits of the arguments and motivations of those who might suggest your Congressmen to do so.
I believe that while working for the democratization of other countries, particularly of the Muslim countries in the Middle East, we should realize that these new democracies might not always act in line with our expectations. Democratic countries usually take decisions in conformity with the will of their people. If they take decisions disregarding their constitution, disregarding the feelings of their population they are no more democratic countries. In Turkey a similar situation happened. The parliament, while voting against the government proposal, which might lead the country into the war and to invite American troops to open a front from Turkey, it has not taken into consideration only the legal restrictions of our constitution but also the feelings of our population. According to opinion pools 94 % of our people was against the war. In no democratic country the politicians can overlook such a strong tendency of the population.
Having said that I don’t mean at all that our people and our politicians so decided because they were supporting Saddam regime or they have anti-American feelings. Just the opposite. As far as may party is concerned for example, I can tell you that we have always condemned the government of Saddam Husseyin. We could by no means have sympathy for a regime that used chemical weapons against her own citizens let alone the other atrocities that she has committed.
We have not expressed anti-American feelings. Because we believe that we have strong ties of friendship and common interests with America. We recognize the support of American people and the Government to Turkey in many fields, particularly in upgrading the standards of our armed forces and particularly in combating terrorism. We also believe that many Americans recognize the contributions of Turkey to America and to the free world for more than half a century. When I was asked by Turkish and American journalists about our feelings toward America, I always said that although for legal and humanitarian reasons we voted in the parliament against the motion of the government we value Turkish American friendship. I also said that the best friends of America are not those who always say “yes” without assessing their own national interests. I said the best friends of America are those who consider first their national interests and they support close cooperation with the United States in line with their national interests. We are the believers of friendly ties and close cooperation with America because, before everything we care our national interests and we sincerely believe that it will be in our national interests. But if in some cases our national interests necessitate a decision, which might not be totally in line with the suggestions of our American friends we should have the courage to disagree with our friends on that issue. This is a price to be paid in case you are a true believer of democracy. We had the same experience with America and other friendly countries when you and others took some decisions that were not in line with our expectations. In such cases we tried to limit this problem within its own context and we tried not to damage the overall common interests. I believe that under such conditions we have to refrain from a public language that may hurt the national feelings of each other. Because it is easy to loose a friend but difficult to rebuild friendly ties.
I will conclude my remarks with an optimistic note. I believe that democracy will spread throughout the Muslim world and particularly in the Middle East. No iron or bamboo curtain may resist to the wish of the peoples to live in a free society. Democracy will be an insurance policy against terrorism and against the clash of civilizations. Democracy will be a facilitator for better understanding among peoples of different religions, peace, stability and economic cooperation.
Turkey and United States of America will continue to be the defenders of democracy in the world. For reasons I explained you a moment ago we were not able to fight together to win a war but we will definitely fight together to win the peace. This fight will aim to win the hearts of the peoples of the region. I am confident that we will win the peace and we will make the Middle East an area of mutual trust, confidence and democracy.
Bu belge Konferanslar, Konuşmalar arşivinde bulunmaktadır.