Onur Öymen’in Roma’daki NATO Kolejinde Yaptığı Konuşma (İng.)

SPEECH OF MR. ONUR ÖYMEN AT THE NATO COLLEGE, ROME
4TH OF MAY 2004

Dear Commander,
Dear participants,
Ladies and Gentlement,

It is a particular pleasure for me to share with you my views on NATO core functions and the evolution of the Alliance with a particular reference to the new role and functions of NATO.

As you may know, I served in NATO as Turkish Permanent Representative between 1997 and 2002. During this period and in the following two years there was perheaps more transformation in NATO than during the entire history of the Alliance. We have practically redifined NATO’s role and responsabilities and we took major challenges in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. We have now a new vision and new ambitions.

NATO Summit to be held in Istanbul on 28-29 June this year will permit us to open new avenues in several fields. In Istanbul we will discuss future missions of the Alliance to confront new security challenges, we will launch an”Istanbul Cooperation Initiative”, we will promote a strategic partnership between NATO and EU aiming at developing a common strategic vision and we will try to further deepen our cooperation with the Mediterranean dialogue countries. We will also discuss the implementation of the decisions of Prague summit, particularly Prague Capabilities Commitment. We will focus on our deployment capabilities over long distances. Last but not least, in Istanbul we will discuss broadly NATO’s role in combatting international terrorism.

A particularly interesting topic in Istanbul will be the Greater Middle East Project and NATO’s possible role in the implementation of this project.

As you see our shopping list is quite big, but I still hope that the participants will have enough time to make some real shopping in the Grand Bazaar of İstanbul.

All started at the Washington Summit of April 1999. I had the priviledge to participate to that summit as a member of NATO Council and modestly contribute to the shaping of a new NATO.

In fact the new Strategic Concept that we accepted in Washington marked the end of an old era and paved the way for a totally new horizon for the Alliance. We have destroyed the the old taboos. Although we kept the core functions like Allied solidarity and collective defence, we added new responsabilities to our list of commitments. Geographical limits of NATO would not be any longer the borders of Allied countries. Our troops would be entiteled to operate in crises management operations in areas outside our traditional zone of responsability.

Indeed we have conducted very successfull operations in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. We as Turkey, are proud of participating such operations and commanding for a period NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Now is time to address new challenges. A substantial overhall of NATO command structures that we are realizing now, and new Rapid Deployment Force we have created will permit us to embark new missions. Turkey plays an active role in this newly establised Rapid Deployment Force that will be a major deterrent against terrorism and we hosted the first exercise of this new force a few months ago.

All what I said so far are quite positive and encouraging. I kown that the tradition in NATO College is to highlight mostly the positive aspects of  the achievements of NATO, but I believe that it is also our duty to mention one or two problem areas to give you a fair picture of the situation. More we discuss among us such problems more we will be successful in solving them.

Starting from the political field, I should said that one of the core functions is, as I said, Alliance unity and solidarity. I can not say that we were always successful in this field. We failed to adopt a common NATO position on major issues like Iraqi crisis. We believe that it would have been appropriate to have a more intensive and result oriented dialogue in NATO before taking a decision to intervene militarly.

I understand that our Kosova operation, conducted under the political responsability of the NATO Council has created some restrictions and limitation for the field commanders. I remember some complaints of our military during the meetings of the Council. But we should not forget that, at the end, the operation was a big success and perhaps for the first time in world history, we concluded an operation of such a magnitude with zero casuality amoung our troops.

Our operations in Afghanistan, altough conducted under different political and physical environment should be considered also as a succes. Why than we failed to consult and coordinate our policies on Iraq in time as effectively as we did in these to cases? I do not know the answer of this question. I remember however that we suggested the interested countries to embark a genuine dialogue in NATO on Iraq much before the intervention.

Now I am coming to another important subject. In the last couple of years the word we heard most in NATO meetings and corridors was “capabilities”. In fact to accomplish better our commitments, to fulfill beter our new assignments we needed new capabilities. Old European allies and the new members should have spend more many for defence and should improve their technical capabilities. Practically in all NATO Defence Ministers meetings we discussed this matter and heard justified criticism from some major allies on this issue. The assumtion was that once we reach to the expected levels of capabilities we would be able to accomplish successfully all the jobs that we are expected to realize, particularly in facing the challenge of the new risks and threats like terrorism.

In reality we have later discovered that what we needed was not only the capabilies but also the political will and solidarity in combatting terrorism. Although there was a full support and solidarity to our American friends immediately after the 11 of september attacks, we have seen later differenciated policies of some Allied countries in other fora. For exemple while Americans have accepted to include in their list of terrorist organizations, the ones that attacked other Allied countries like Turkey, we had to work for months and years to persuade other organizations like EU to include the same terrorist organizations on their own list. We should not forget that 11 out of 15 former EU members were NATO countries. In arresting and repatriation of terrorists we had and we still have similar difficulties.

More important than that, one year after the end of the military intervention to Iraq we are still waiting for the neutralization of 4 to 5 000 PKK terrorists deployed in Northern Iraq. No action has been taken so far against these terrorists despite the promise of our leading allies that they will fight and eradicate all terrorist groups around the world.

Coming back to the achievements of NATO, I must underline the fact that the new wave of enlargement has not only increased the number of the members of the Alliance, but also the strategic depth of NATO: In fact for the first time the central geographical mass of NATO is physically united with the south eastern flanck. There is now a geographic continuity, road and railroad connections among practically all European NATO countries.

There is also closer connections between NATO and the EU. Untill a few days ago there was 11 NATO countries among the members of the EU. Now we have 19. This will, I hope, create better understanding, better cooperation and better common strategic vision between the two organizations. Everybody should realize that NATO and the EU are not competitors  but convergeant and cooperative organizations. I hope that after the recents enlargements of both NATO and EU there will be a more fortcoming attitude in EU for Turkey’s membership. In fact, Turkey has been already declared as a formal candidate in December 1999 and the EU Copenhagen summit has decided to give a date to Turkey in December 2004 for the start of enlargement talks provided that we accomplish Copenhagen political criteria adopted in 1993.

Now I am coming to another interestic topic that we are going to discuss in Istanbul: The Greater Middle East Project and NATO’s possible role in this project.

Although we have not been yet formally informed about the parameters of this new initiative, from the statements of high level personalities and from some publications we have a broad idea about the intention of our American friends. We understand that one of the major components of this project woud be the democratization of an area extending from the Western most parts of the North Africa all the way to Afghanistan. As a matter of principle everybody should wellcome this intention. Turkey will be first to appreciate the expansion of democracy to the Middle East. Imagine that in our Eastern and South Eastern neighborhood the only democratic country is Israel. Therefore we would enjoy the democratization of the are which would bring also peace and stability. In fact no war took place between the democratic countries of the world after the second world war and according to the generally accepted doctrine, there will be no military confrontation among democratic regimes.

But how we can do that? All countries of the region, except Israel, are muslim countries and we know from our own experience that in a muslim country democracy can survive only when you accept the principle of secularism, that is to say separation of the affairs of the state from the religion and to govern the country according to positive law instead of the rules of sheria.

So far Turkey is the only country who accepted the principle of secularism. This principle is one of the pillars of our constitution.

Now the problem is that how we can persuade the countries of the region to accept secularism? The first case was Iraq and in the provisional basic law it is clearly stated that Islam will be the official religion of the country and no law may contradict with the rules of Islam.  Is it possible to expect reasonably the adoption of secularism by other muslim countries of the region as a basic principle of their constitution? This is a critical subject and I must say that in case we fail to introduce secularism we will not be successful in expanding democracy to this region.

Furthermore, you can not impose a democracy from the outside. We need a strong support from the countries of the region and more importantly from the peoples of these countries. We notice that there is not yet a common understanding at this moment in the area and some attempts to organize high level meetings with this aim have failed.

We have also some comments about other dimensions of the Greater Middle East Project. I have already stated our views on combatting terrorism. On the eradication weapons of mass destruction, our views are similar with the positions adopted in NATO. Being the closest NATO country to the region, we feel the danger of WMD more than anyone else. Therefore we support strongly all actions against WMD, provided that our actions are based on reliable information and we follow an unbiast policy.

We support Greater Middle East Project’s perspectives on education. But to help the peoples of these countries to reach to the level of western civilization it is imperative that  the education also should be based on secular principles.

Trans-border development projects are also commendable. But for that matter we have to increase first the level of mutual confidence.

In short, we are ready to study the Greater Middle East Project at home and together with our NATO allies with an open mind and share with you our experience. As I said before, the key word for succes in this initiative is “secularism”.

Ladies and gentlemen,

To conculde my remarks, I would like to say that with its new vision and perspectives NATO continious to be a most relevant and reliable defence organization of our times. We are confident that it will maintain its credibility and trust worthiness in the future. We should all support the new functions of NATO with our national capabilities and political will while keeping intact the core functions of the Alliance.

Thank you for your attention.