Turgut Özal, the Middle East and the Kurdish Question
Dr. William Hale*
Abstract
Biographers concentrate on their subjects, while historians tend to paint a broader
picture, taking in the subject’s environment, and the role of other actors and institutions,
as well as broad social, economic and cultural determinants, to explain historical events.
This paper aims to combine both approaches. It starts by assessing the role of Turgut
Özal’s own political development, personality and ideas, in so far as they affected his
actions in a crucial area of foreign policy, and the related question of Turkey’s Kurds. In
the subsequent section other factors which helped to determine his policies – in
particular, the relationship between Özal himself and the other domestic institutions and
groups which were instrumental in shaping Turkish policies, and the changing external
environment - are brought into the picture. The narrative component is divided into three
sections, covering the periods 1983-90, 1990-91, and 1991-93 respectively. This
periodization puts far more weight on the last part of Özal’s political career than on the
previous years, but this can be justified by the argument that his role in the Gulf crisis of
1990-91 was particularly critical, and raises a host of unanswered questions as well as
potentially significant conclusions.
Keywords: Turgut Özal, Gulf Crisis, Middle East, Kurdish Question
Turgut Özal, Ortadoğu ve Kürt Sorunu
Özet
Tarihsel olayları açıklamada; biyografi yazarları konularına odaklanırken, tarihçiler
kapsamlı resim yaparak, konuya önemli aktörleri ve kurumları da ekleyerek sosyal,
ekonomik ve kültürel faktörleri de dâhil ederler. Bu yazı bahse konu olan işin her ikisini de
yapmaya çalışacaktır. İlk bölümde Turgut Özal’ın kişiliği, fikirleri ve siyaset yolu; dış
politikayı özellikle Kürt Sorunu ile ilgili olan kısmını etkileyen yönleri ile ele alınacaktır.
Devam eden bölümde, Özal’ın siyasetini tanımlamaya yardımcı olacak; Türk siyasetini
şekillendiren ulusal kurumlarla ilişkileri resmedilmeye çalışılacaktır. Anlatı üç döneme
ayrılmıştır; 1983-90, 1990-91 ve 1991-93. Çalışma üç dönemde ele alınmış olsa da, Özal’ın
kariyerinin son dönemleri diğer dönemlerden daha fazla yer edinmiştir. Bu durumda 199091 dönemindeki Körfez Krizi ve Türkiye’nin bu krizde edindiği yerin öneminin etkisi
yadsınamaz. Çalışma, Körfez Krizinde Türkiye siyasetine ve cevaplanamayan sorulara
odaklanmaya çalışacaktır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Turgut Özal, Körfez Krizi, Ortadoğu, Kürt Sorunu
*
Emeritus Professor, E-Mail: wh1@soas.ac.uk
The Personal Factor
Turgut Özal was arguably the first national leader of Turkey for whom personal Muslim
belief and practice was an important part of his makeup. However, he was far from being
a dogmatic Muslim conservative, and before he entered politics his profession had
brought him into close contact with western ideas, of which he had a good understanding.
In the 1950s, he had spent some time in the United States, to complete his training as an
electrical engineer, followed by some three years in Washington during 1971-73, where
he worked at the World Bank as a special projects adviser in industry and mining. His
sojourns in America endowed him with a deep regard for American pluralism, and the
American understanding of secularism. In essence he believed that Islam as a religion
could be combined with modernity, within a liberal perspective. In the United States,
people of different faiths had sought and found religious as well as political freedom. Their
faith endowed Americans with a live morality. The state could be secular, but not
individuals,
who
were
left
free
to
practice
their
religions.
2
This principle could be equally applied in foreign policy. Politicians should not exploit
religion, in external any more than in domestic politics, but that should not prevent them
from personally adhering to religious norms, and allowing others to do so.
In an illuminating paper, Berdal Aral suggests that, since the days of Adnan
Menderes, the centre-right in Turkey had been committed to a blend of western and
Muslim values which rejected the systematic application of the Islamic state system or
international order, and was willing to embrace a western-oriented foreign policy and a
‘xenophobic nationalism that mistrusts most of Turkey’s neighbours’ (Aral, 2001). Özal
could be said to be an inheritor of this tradition, with the exception that his nationalism
was not xenophobic. In the classic liberal mode, he saw free trade and economic
cooperation as keys to the establishment of international peace. Moreover, the Muslim
nations should follow Turkey in adopting secularism, liberal democracy and pro-western
foreign policies. In the Middle East, as in other regions, he advocated the adoption of an
economic pact providing for free trade and economic cooperation. This approach may
have been unrealistically optimistic, but it seems to have been firmly held nonetheless,
and was combined with the belief that, in Turkey’s case, there were no fundamental
contradictions between Turkey’s interests and those of the West – the United States in
particular. In this way, Özal was willing to fit into US strategies which saw Turkey as a
bulwark against militant Islamism, headed by post-revolutionary Iran (Aral, 2001).
While Özal appears to have been committed to these broad beliefs throughout his
political career, it is also suggested that his attachments changed somewhat between the
2
See, for instance, his statement at a press conference of 9 March 1989, quoted at length
in Hasan Cemal, Özal Hikayesi (Ankara and Istanbul, Bilgi, 1989) pp.161-2, and M Sait
Yazıcıoğlu, ‘Özal’ın İslam Anlayışı ve Dini Özgürlükler’, in İhsan Sezal and İhsan Dağı, eds.,
Özal: Siyaset, İktisat, Zihniyet (Istanbul, Boyut, 2001) esp. pp.203-4.
early years of his premiership during the mid-1980s, and the final years of his life during
the early ‘nineties. Muhittin Ataman, in particular, suggests that during the early period he
was essentially attached to the ‘Turkish-Islamic Synthesis’ – the doctrine which acquired
some official support during the military regime of 1980-83, and which attempted to
reconcile Islam as a set of personal and moral values with Turkish nationalism by arguing,
among other things, that the Turks had been the main champions and protectors of Sunni
Islam, so that national and Muslim traditions were essentially the same. During the second
phase, Ataman suggests, Özal moved over to what was called ‘Neo-Ottomanism’. This was
not an attempt to recreate the political institutions of the Ottoman Empire, or the empire
as a geographical entity, but to re-establish the cultural diversity of Ottoman society
(Ataman, 2001). One can guess that Özal’s adoption of this doctrine probably derived less
from a priori intellectual conversion than the fact that, by the early 1990s, the Kurdish
question had moved to the top of Turkey’s political agenda, and that Özal wished to adopt
effective and innovative ways of addressing it. What is important in the present context is
that this shift was partly caused by, and was the cause of, important changes in Özal’s
policies towards the Middle East. Interestingly, also, several of these principles were taken
up and elaborated by Ahmet Davutoğlu, in his attempts to re-direct Turkish foreign policy
after 2002.
International and Domestic Political Determinants
Besides Özal’s personal beliefs, his policy towards the middle east, like that towards other
regions, was inevitably directed by other, more material determinants. These would have
affected the policies of any Turkish government at the time, whether or not Özal had been
at the head of it. The chief of these was the external environment, over which Turkey had
relatively little control. As a middle-ranking power, Turkey had some ability to determine
political outcomes in immediately neighbouring states. However, it was not until the end
of the cold war (which, it will be remembered, occurred several years after Özal assumed
the premiership at the end of 1983) that Turkey acquired more room for manoeuvre, in
this as in other theatres of policy. Even after the cold war ended, maintaining military,
economic and political links with the West was a major priority, partly because Turkey’s
economic dependencies mainly ran in that direction (a factor enhanced by Özal’s strategy
of integrating the Turkish economy into global markets), partly because Turkey’s
membership of NATO still had huge political and military advantages, and partly because
Turkish ambitions to eventually gain membership of the European Community were
revived by Özal himself (Özal, 1991). Turkey’s strategies in the middle east between 1984
and 1993 have to be seen in this context which meant, essentially that regional policies
still had to be determined in the light of the effects they were likely to have on Turkey’s
relations with the United States, and western Europe, as well as on its economy.
Naturally, Özal’s ability to map out and execute his own policies in the region – or,
indeed in any other – was shaped and frequently limited by domestic power structures. At
the beginning of his period as Prime Minister, he had to tread carefully. Democratic
government had only recently been restored, and no-one could be too certain that it
would be thorough or lasting. Once in office, Özal had to respect the military power and
retain at least the appearance of cooperation with it, while also attempting to extend his
authority within the state system. Besides the military, the professional diplomats in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had traditionally played a major role in foreign policy
determination. So far as one can judge, they continued to do so throughout Özal’s period
as premier – or at any rate, it does not appear that there were any major clashes between
the Prime Minister and his officials in the foreign ministry. As is usual in most
democracies, the Ministry’s role was probably greatest in those matters which did not stir
up domestic political passions, or were themselves of a complex or technical nature. This
pattern appears to have changed only during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91 when, as will be
seen, Özal attempted to strike out on his own, at the cost of stirring up opposition among
the more conservative officialdom.
Turgut Özal and the Middle East: The First Phase, 1983-90
At the time Özal came into office at the end of 1983, and until the end of the 1980s,
international politics in the Middle East were dominated by events of the previous four
years. In the Lebanon, the civil war dragged on until 1990. In 1982 the Israeli occupation of
Beirut had forced the Palestine Liberation Organisation to withdraw its headquarters to
Tunis. As leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat was obliged to revise his organisation’s previous
strategy of total opposition to the existence of Israel, a shift which eventually resulted in
his adoption of the ‘two-state solution’ as a Palestinian objective in 1988. Further east,
events were dominated by the after-effects of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Until his
death in 1989, Ayatollah Rouhullah Khomeini officially committed Iran to a policy of rigid
Islamisation at home, and the principle of exporting the Islamic revolution to other
regional states, besides vehement opposition to the USA and its regional allies. This
provoked conflict with Iraq, and Saddam Hussein’s rash invasion of south-west Iran in
September 1980. The seemingly endless and apparently unwinnable war between the two
countries dragged on, at appalling cost to both, until 1989, though fortunately without
pulling in any other of the Middle Eastern states as outright belligerents.
Turkish policies towards the Middle East were inevitably shaped by these events,
and its own experiences in the region since the 1950s. During the 1960s and ‘seventies,
successive governments adhered to the view that Turkey must avoid trying to take on any
regional leadership role, given the failure of the Baghdad Pact. Hence, Turkey attempted
to uncouple its alliance with the western powers from its regional alignments,
concentrating on the development of bilateral relations with the main middle eastern
states rather than multilateral alliances, and carefully avoiding involvement in either interstate or civil conflicts. The enhanced role of the Middle Eastern oil-producing states in the
world economy, flowing the dramatic leap in oil prices during 1973-4, and Turkey’s
international isolation after its intervention in Cyprus in 1974 also forced Turkish policy
makers to strengthen their relations with the regional countries (Bishku, 1992). The main
lines of Turkey’s policy towards the Middle East during the 1980s had been established
during the previous decade. In the context of the Arab-Israeli contest, these included a
more pro-Palestinian tilt in Turkish attitudes (Aykan, 1993). Turkey also became far more
reluctant than previously to support US actions in the Middle East, except where these
could be justified on humanitarian grounds. Thus, during the Yom Kippur war of 1973 it
refused to permit the US air force to use the key NATO air base at İncirlik, near Adana, for
anything more than routine missions. Similarly, the US was not allowed to use bases in
Turkey for the abortive attempt to rescue the US embassy hostages in Tehran in 1980
(Kuniholm, 1983). At the regional level, in 1969 Süleyman Demirel’s government also
began Turkish participation in the ‘Islamic summits’ organised by the Islamic Conference
Organisation (ICO) (Aykan, 1993).
This diversionary description of Turkish policy towards the Middle East before 1983
has been given primarily because it can be argued that, between 1984 and 1990, Özal did
not break with a trend which had already been well established since the late 1960s. On
these grounds, it seems difficult to sustain Muhittin Ataman’s proposal that Özal regarded
other Muslim countries as Turkey’s ‘natural partners’ (more ‘natural’, by implication, than
those of Europe or North America) or that ‘he was more of an “Easternist’ than a
“Westernist”, more of an “Islamist” than an “Americanist” (Ataman, 2001). Instead, he
preferred to play both cards at once, recognising that, initially at any rate, his own ability
to put his own stamp on foreign policies was limited by internal and external realities. As
he put it in a newspaper interview in January 1984, soon after coming into office, ‘It is
impossible for us to refrain from playing a role in the Middle East. [But] the extent of this
role will be determined, on the one hand, by our general foreign policy and on the other,
by the way the situation develops in the region’ (Aykan, 1993). Under Özal, Turkey
continued to play an active role in the ICO, but its appeals related mainly to issues other
than the middle east – in particular in opposing the Bulgarian government’s campaign
against the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in 1985, (Üzgel, 2001) or in demanding the lifting
of arms embargo against Bosnia-Herzegovina (in effect, against the Bosnian Muslims) in
1993 (Robins, 1994). Within the ICO, Turkey’s main achievement was to secure
‘community representation’ in the organisation for the Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus (TRNC) in 1991 (Aykan, 1993). In the event, none of these steps had any concrete
effect, since none of the other Muslim states took what would have been the crucial step
of granting diplomatic recognition to the TRNC, and none of them (except Iran) had more
than a passing interest in the problems of fellow-Muslims in the Balkans. In effect, Özal’s
policies towards the ICO could be seen essentially as a continuation of previous strategies,
and failed to produce any important or positive results for Turkish diplomacy.
Under Özal, Turkish policies towards the Israeli-Arab contest also followed the
pattern set previously, and hardly support the view that he had pronouncedly pro-Islamic
(by implication, pro-Arab) approaches. In fact, during the mid-1980s, his government
began to take the first steps towards a political re-accommodation with Israel. In 1985,
relations with Tel Aviv were quietly restored to mutual representation at the level of
charge d’affaires, the status they had had before 1980, and in 1987 the Foreign Ministers
of the two countries met at a meeting of the UN General Assembly – the first such
contacts for many years. Later, in 1991, the Turkish government continued its evenhanded approach by granting recognition at the ambassadorial level to both Israel and the
PLO simultaneously (Aykan, 1993).
At the bilateral level, Turkey’s most problematic relationship with the Arab world
was that with Syria. The problems which caused it dated originally from the Turkish
annexation of Hatay (Alexandretta) from Syria in 1939, but were intensified by events of
the 1980s. After the establishment of the military regime in Turkey, Abdullah Öcalan, the
leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which had been the most militant of several
armed Kurdish groups of the late 1970s, took refuge in Syria. In 1984, with logistical
support from the Syrian authorities, and using bases in the Bekaa valley of the Lebanon,
then occupied by Syria, his organisation began a campaign against the Turkish security
forces, with horrific terrorist attacks on civilian targets, which reached its peak in the early
1990s. Meanwhile, Turkey had commenced large-scale exploitation of the Euphrates
River, which flows from Turkey into Syria, and on which both Syria and Iraq are dependent
for an important part of their total water supplies, beginning with the Keban dam
(completed in 1975) and the Karakaya dam, completed in 1987. In 1983 work was begun
on the far bigger Atatürk Dam. This was to be the centre-piece of the giant South-East
Anatolia Project which, among other things, was expected to irrigate over a million
hectares on the Turkish side of the Euphrates basin, drawing off around 330 cusecs (cubic
metres per second) or around one third of the total flow, which would otherwise have
passed over to Syria (Kut, 1993). A clear conflict had thus been set up, with Turkey
accusing Syria of sponsoring terrorist movements causing thousands of deaths in Turkey,
and the Syrians responding that Turkey intended to throttle its southern neighbour by
cutting off essential water supplies.
In July 1987 Özal tackled this problem head-on when he visited Damascus, in the
first visit to the Syrian capital by any Turkish premier. In talks with President Hafiz alAssad, he appeared to have scored a diplomatic coup, by securing a protocol stating that
‘Both parties undertake to prevent the activities of organisations, groups and individuals…
carried out on their territories aimed and threatening or undermining the security and
stability of the other party’ (Alaçam, 1994).3 Strictly speaking, this was a mutual obligation,
but since Syria had been the only party clearly not adhering to it in the past, the
concession effectively came from the Syrian side. In return, Turkey agreed to maintain an
annual average flow of 500 cusecs into the lower Euphrates ‘during the filling up period of
the Atatürk Dam reservoir and until the final allocation of the waters of [the] Euphrates
3
Article 5 of ‘Protocol of Cooperation on Matters of Security between the Arab Republic
of Syria and the Republic of Turkey, Damascus, July 17, 1987’
among the three riparian countries’ (that is, Turkey, Syria and Iraq) (Alaçam, 1994).4
Unfortunately, this did not remove the basic mistrust between the two countries,
heightened by the fact that Hafiz al-Assad subsequently showed no sign of abandoning hıs
support for Öcalan (which he unconvincingly claimed he had never given in the first place)
until 1998 (Bölükbaşı, 1993).
Thanks to the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in
1980, handling Turkey’s relations with Tehran and Baghdad was a trickier problem, both
for the military government of 1980-83, and for Özal, than it had been for their
predecessors. On the first score, most Turks were unlikely to feel ideological sympathies
for the Islamic Republic of Iran, set up after the revolution of 1979, but Turkish
governments realised that they could not dictate the form of government in a
neighbouring state, and thus adhered to the traditional policy of not interfering in its
internal affairs. This policy was strengthened by the fact that Iran was a fairly important
trading partner, and that the Iranian government could have created problems for Turkey
if it chose to do so – by, for instance, giving all-out support to Kurdish rebels in Turkey, as
it did in Iraq. It was adhered to even when an Iranian hand was detected in terrorist
attacks by ultra-Islamist groups in Turkey in January-February 1993, near the end of Özal’s
life (Pope, 1998). Hence, for political as well as economic reasons, in 1980 Turkey refused
to follow the United States in enforcing a trade embargo on the United States, following
the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by Islamist militants.
Relations with Iraq had traditionally been closer, mainly because both governments
had a perceived common interest in repressing Kurdish nationalism. These considerations
governed Turkish policy during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, when both countries became
significantly dependent on Turkish goodwill for trade and transit traffic, due to the
difficulty of maintaining normal traffic through the Gulf. By maintaining strict neutrality,
Turkey won important economic benefits, as its total exports to the two countries
increased from $220 million in 1980 to $2,040 million in 1985, at which point they
accounted for over a quarter of Turkey’s exports. These figures fell back in 1986-88, but
this was due to the fact that the two belligerents began to run short of funds, rather than
any policy shift by Turkey. For Iraq, the pipeline running from its northern oilfield at Kirkuk
to the Turkish port of Yumurtalık, near İskenderun, was a vital connection, given the
closure of its normal export routes through the Gulf, and its capacity was expanded to 1.5
million barrels per day in 1987 (Barkey, 1989). Strategically, the Turks were also lucky that
neither of the belligerents were able to win an outright victory, which might have left
them free to adopt more aggressive policies towards Turkey (or, in the case of Iran, cut off
the Kirkuk-Yumurtalık pipeline, which was of value to Turkey as well as Iraq).
4
Article 6 of ‘Protocol on Economic Cooperation between Turkey and Syria signed by
Prime Ministers Turgut Özal and A.R.Kassem, Damascus, July 17, 1987’
On the other hand, the war gave an opportunity for the Iraqi Kurdish leaders to restart their armed struggle against Baghdad and thus, indirectly, allowed the PKK to use
bases in northern Iraq for attacks in Turkey. Accordingly, in February 1983, the military
administration had concluded a ‘Frontier Security and Cooperation Agreement’ with Iraq
under which the two governments were entitled to carry out ‘hot pursuit’ operations
against armed groups in each other’s territory. The Turkish forces made use of these
arrangements in 1983, 1986 and 1987 (Fırat & Kürkçüoğlu, 2001). However, Turkish
policies changed at the very end of the Iran-Iraq war. In March 1988, Iranian forces
captured the town of Halabjah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, raising fears on the Turkish side that
they might go on to take Kirkuk. In the following July, Iraqi forces recaptured Halabjah,
subjecting the town to a horrific poison gas attack in which about 5,000 innocent civilians
died. Iran then accepted a UN brokered cease-fire, and the war was formally at an end.
Saddam Hussein used this opportunity to wreak his revenge on the Kurds. In a savage
campaign, 800 Kurdish villages were destroyed, about 250,000 people were forcibly
resettled in the south and centre of Iraq, and the Turkish-Iraqi border region was left
uninhabited. In August, the Iraqi forces again used chemical weapons against remaining
Kurdish militia who were fleeing to the Turkish frontier. Initially, the Turkish authorities
refused to allow them into the country but then, realising they faced a humanitarian
catastrophe, they relented. The Iraqi government claimed the right to pursue the refugees
into Turkish territory, under the 1983 and 1984 agreements, but this was refused by Özal’s
government, which replied that they would be disarmed and prevented from carrying out
any further operations against Iraq. In response, Iraq unilaterally abrogated the ‘hot
pursuit’ agreements. By September 1988 some 63,000 Kurdish refugees had been settled
‘temporarily’ in Turkey, in twelve refugee camps in south-east Anatolia. Officially, they
were not given the status of refugees, and their treatment by the Turkish authorities was
a source of frequent criticism by western humanitarian organisations (McDowall, 1996).
However, the incident had forced the Turkish government into the realisation that the
Iraqi Kurds would not inevitably be enemies. It also seems to have produced an important
effect on Özal’s attitude towards Saddam Hussein. According to a later statement by
Güneş Taner, who was operating as Özal’s chief of staff at the time, the events of 1988
upset him seriously. Özal came to the conclusion that the Iraqi dictator was a despot
lacking in normal human values, and that he could use his horrific weapons against
anyone, including Turkey. He would eventually have to be ‘purged’ (Birand & Yalçın, 2001).
The Second Phase: Özal and the Gulf Crisis, August 1990 to January 1991
There can be little doubt that the crisis caused by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on 2
August 1990 was a turning point in Özal’s policy towards the Middle East, and his position
in international politics. The reasons are not too hard to identify. In the first place, it has to
be remembered that the invasion had not been generally expected (although Özal himself
apparently had some expectations of the kind several months previously). Even if they had
thought previously that Iraqi aggression against Kuwait might occur, none of the regional
or global actors appear to have decided in advance what their reactions would be, or how
they would coordinate their approaches. Policies had to be formulated rapidly and on the
hoof, with many previous assumptions hastily abandoned.
Second, as is usual in such situations, crisis management in unexpected situations
put a premium on instant decisions. Turkey’s traditional foreign policy making mechanism,
which assumed the forging of a consensus between the President, the government, the
foreign ministry and the armed forces commanders, was poorly adapted to coping with
this situation, especially if there were disagreements between them. As head of state, and
a more experienced politician than any other member of the government, Özal emerged
as a powerful foreign policy maker, whose frequent contacts with other world leaders
appeared to place him in the driving seat. This threatened to reverse the normal, and
constitutionally legitimate situation in which the Prime Minister and the cabinet, not the
President, are the final decision makers. Telephone diplomacy put Özal in constant
contact with President George Bush and other world leaders, who evidently expected him
to make decisions on behalf of Turkey. However, his policies were poorly coordinated with
other decision makers in Ankara. The result was that Turkish policies tended to be a
compromise between Özal’s visions, and the limitations and corrections imposed by
Turkey’s international situation plus the demands of other actors in the Turkish
government.
As Nicole and Hugh Pope remark, the crisis caused by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of
Kuwait was ‘a godsend for Turgut Özal’, since it enabled him to deflect attention from his
domestic failings at the time, and to inject into foreign policy the dynamism and ambition
which had characterised his economic reforms during the 1980s (Pope & Pope, 1997). It
also enabled him to demonstrate Turkey’s continuing strategic value to the western
powers, in spite of the ending of the cold war. Apparently, he hoped that full support for
the western powers in the crisis would strengthen Turkey’s case for gaining eventual
accession to the EU, and that Turkey would be able to play an important role in the postwar security of the Gulf. However, it is not fully clear how he intended to achieve this.
Inevitably, policies were formulated in accordance with the expectations at the time,
which were not always born out. In particular, it appears that by the late autumn of 1990,
both Özal and President Bush expected that military action to expel the Iraqi forces from
Kuwait would be inevitable, and that it would be successful. More crucially, according to a
later admission by Bush, they both expected that Iraq’s military defeat in Kuwait would
bring about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by his own people, and hence a radical
change in the Middle Eastern political system as a whole (Birand & Yalçın, 2001). Özal’s
actual and attempted policies towards Iraq during the crisis have to be seen in the light of
this unrealised expectation, which also helps to explain some his more controversial
ambitions. Throughout, however, Özal seems to have believed that there was
complementarity between Turkey’s national interests and the policies of the United
States. Since it was assumed that the western coalition would win a war against Iraq,
Turkey could best promote those interests by working with Washington, rather than
independently. Turkey must also play an active part in helping to deal with the crisis. As he
told the opening meeting of the Turkish parliament on 1 September 1990:
We should not turn a blind eye to events which could occur in the
region during the crisis, or the negative effects on our country of
potential changes which could emerge after the crisis. Hence, we
should apply a dynamic foreign policy, so as to arrive at a position
which will ensure that we have an effective [influence] over these
developments and changes... Otherwise, we will obviously lose the
chance of becoming an influential country in a situation involving
Turkey’s vital interests (Gözen, 2001).
It appears that, some months before the fatal events of August 1990, Özal warned
President Bush that Saddam Hussein would be a serious danger, and that he might invade
Kuwait. By late July, the Iraqi dictator was massing his forces on his border with Kuwait,
suggesting that an invasion was imminent. However, on 27 July Bush informed Özal that
the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had assured him that Saddam would withdraw his
forces without mounting an invasion, and that this was confirmed by intelligence reports
from the US embassy in Baghdad. On 1 August, at Bush’s suggestion, Özal left Ankara for
what turned out to be a brief holiday. The following day, when the invasion was
announced, he quickly returned to the capital with his advisers, and immediately called a
meeting of the National Security Council (NSC), bringing together the President, Prime
Minister, other government ministers, and the armed forces chiefs (Birand & Yalçın,
2001).5
Initially, and in spite of Özal’s later decision to adopt a more active policy, the
government’s reaction was hesitant. At meetings of the cabinet and the NSC between 2
and 6 August it was decided to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude. Meanwhile, on 5 August,
Taha Yasin Ramazan, the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, visited Ankara and tried to
persuade Özal that Turkey should oppose the expected economic embargo on Iraq. Özal
was unmoved, urging that Saddam should immediately withdraw from Kuwait, and
warning of the consequences to Iraq if he failed to do so. On the following day (6 August)
the UN Security Council passed Resolution 661, imposing an economic embargo on Iraq
until it withdrew from Kuwait. This prompted a positive response from Ankara two days
later, when Özal ‘officially’ announced on British and US television that the KirkukYumurtalık pipeline had been closed, and an embargo on trade with Iraq was applied
(Gözen, 2001).
The main events between then and the opening of ‘Gulf War II’ on 17 January 1991
can be quickly summarised. As the likelihood of a war between Iraq and the coalition
powers (essentially, the US) became ever stronger, it became apparent that the Bush
5
Statements by Güneş Taner and Kaya Toperi.
administration would make three main requests to Turkey, apart from the maintenance of
the economic embargo against Iraq: first, the use of air-bases on Turkish soil for attacks on
northern Iraq: second, a build-up of Turkish forces along the Iraqi-Turkish frontier, so as to
draw part of the Iraqi army away from the southern front: third, the participation of a
Turkish contingent in the coalition forces which were expected to be fighting in the Gulf
(Üzgel, 2001). If he had been able to decide policy purely by himself, Özal would have
been happy to accept all three conditions, and maybe more: as it was, he was only able to
apply the first two.
If Turkey were to take any direct military action against Iraq, or allow the coalition
powers to do so, then parliamentary approval would have to be obtained, under Article 92
of the constitution, unless Turkey were subjected to ‘sudden armed aggression’ when
parliament was not in session. On 12 August the assembly was hastily reconvened, and
Prime Minister Yıldırım Akbulut asked for these powers. However, the government faced
serious objections, not only from the opposition parties, but also an important part of the
Motherland Party’s parliamentary group, led by former Foreign Minister Mesut Yılmaz.
This reflected strong public reluctance to allow Turkey to get involved in a war in the
Middle East. Accordingly, parliament voted through the resolution, but only with the rider
that the government could only exercise these powers if Turkey were attacked. On 5
September, after parliament had reconvened for its normal autumn session, Akbulut
repeated the government demand for special powers under Article 92. This time, the
motion was passed, but, according to Akbulut, the government would only have been able
to send Turkish troops abroad if Turkey had been attacked (Birand & Yalçın, 2001).6
Hence, parliamentary opposition to direct involvement in a war in the Gulf had been made
clear.
The probability of such a war loomed closer during the following two months, as
the US built up its forces to around 400,000, and Saddam showed no signs of withdrawing
from Kuwait. On 29 November, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 678,
effectively authorising the US-led coalition to launch military action against Iraq if it failed
to withdraw by 15 January 1991. Meanwhile, Turkey increased its forces along the frontier
with Iraq to around 120,000 troops, and the US sent a detachment of Patriot missiles to
the main NATO air base at İncirlik, near Adana, to improve the Turks’ inadequate air
defences. The air war against Iraq began on 17 January. On the same day, the Turkish
parliament passed its own Resolution 126, drafted by the government, ‘to support UN
Security Council Resolution 678’ – in effect, to allow coalition air forces to use the İncirlik
and other bases in Turkey for offensive operations against Iraq (Üzgel, 2001). These duly
began on 18 January.
This bald narrative leaves many details obscure, and important questions
unanswered. On the first score, it is clear that, besides his frequent contacts with
6
Yıldırım Akbulut, statement in Birand and Yalçın.
President Bush and other western leaders, Özal and the government played an active part
in helping to persuade other Middle Eastern rulers to support coalition policies, or at least
not oppose them actively. Following the passage of Security Council Resolution 661, there
were reports that Iran, Jordan and Egypt were not enforcing the economic embargo
against Iraq, and Özal immediately contacted those governments, urging them to enforce
the UN’s decision. These contacts were followed up by the Foreign Minister, Ali Bozer,
who visited Syria, Jordan and Egypt in August 1990, arguing that the only way to secure a
peaceful resolution to the crisis was to ensure that the embargo was enforced. The
position of the USSR was also crucial. On this score, Özal was encouraged by a visit to
Ankara on 3 August by Soviet First Deputy Prime Minister Lev Veronin, who assured his
hosts that the USSR would cooperate with Turkey to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
As the prospect of war grew closer, the Soviet government did not oppose the stationing
of US forces in Turkey or the use of NATO bases against Iraq - a critical gain for Turkey
from the ending of the cold war (Gözen, 2001).
The problems which the government faced in persuading parliament to give it the
powers it needed to support the coalition campaign has already been mentioned. Besides
this, however, it is clear that there was widespread resentment of Özal’s tendency to take
matters into his own hands, and short-circuit the normal procedures. A public row erupted
at the end of September, when Özal visited Washington for talks with President Bush, but
without his Foreign Minister Ali Bozer. This provoked Bozer’s resignation on 11 October
1990, to be followed by that of the Defence Minister, Safa Giray, seven days later, and
finally, and most startlingly, that of General Necip Torumtay, the Chief of the General
Staff, on 3 December (Üzgel, 2001). Disputes continued up to the start of the Gulf war: as
Akbulut relates, Özal argued that it would not be necessary to go to parliament for a
special Resolution to allow coalition air forces to use Turkish bases for attacks on Iraq, but
the Prime Minister successfully overruled him on this (Birand & Yalçın, 2001).7 In his
resignation statement, General Torumtay explained rather cryptically that he had left his
command ‘because I see it as impossible to continue my service under the principles and
perception of the state which I believe in’ (Torumtay, 1994). However, it later became
clear that his resignation did not simply derive from the fact that he had been cut out of
the decision-making loop, but from real policy differences with Özal over Turkey’s reaction
to the crisis. His reservations were apparently shared by several members of the
government, including the Prime Minister. The first bone of contention was Özal’s desire
to send a detachment of Turkish troops to the Gulf, to join the coalition forces lining up
against Iraq. In a television interview in January 1991, Özal confirmed that he had wanted
to do this (Summary of world Broadcasts, 1991). On his side, Torumtay later related that
the government did not give any specific orders to that effect, but that Özal simply floated
the idea, and the likely gains and losses evaluated by the Foreign Ministry and General
Staff (to what effect is unclear) (Torumtay, 1994).
7
Statement by Yıldırım Akbulut, in in Birand and Yalçın.
A more controversial claim by Necip Torumtay is that Özal wished to open up a
‘second front’ against Iraq, by launching a land invasion of the north of the country if the
coalition was involved in military action in the south, with the objective of capturing and
occupying the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. According to Güneş Taner, who by this
stage was a Minister of State in Akbulut’s government, ‘Özal wanted a second front, to be
at the “table of the wolves” when they were dividing the spoils after the battle’, although
he personally opposed the idea (Pope & Pope, 1997). Torumtay’s claim is also confirmed
by Yıldırım Akbulut, and Hüsnü Doğan, who succeeded Safa Giray as Minister of Defence
(Birand & Yalçın, 2001).8 In his memoirs and subsequent statements, Torumtay makes it
clear that he strongly opposed any such operation, partly on these grounds. If Turkey
occupied Mosul, then it would be as guilty as Saddam of occupying the territory of a
foreign country. This would be opposed by the United Nations, which would force Turkey
to withdraw, leaving it with no gains. Militarily, the Turkish forces would have been
capable of capturing Mosul, he judged, but occupying the region on a long-term basis
would have been a different matter. The Kurds of the region would have mounted
resistance, worsening the problem which Turkey already faced in fighting the PKK.
Preparing for such an operation would have taken as long as three months, but since the
idea was only broached by Özal at the end of November 1990, the time was unavailable. It
would also have meant reducing Turkey’s defences against the USSR, opening up other
dangers. Finally, Torumtay strongly objected to the way the proposal was delivered. Two
days before his resignation, Özal had sent him a ‘directive’ (presumably about his plans for
operations in northern Iraq) but this had not been discussed or signed by the cabinet, and
ignored the fact that he had to take his orders from the government, not the President.
This short-circuiting of the constitutional procedures was evidently the straw which broke
the camels’ back for Torumtay (Torumtay, 1994). Significantly, it is clear that Akbulut and
his government also opposed the idea of an operation in northern Iraq, undermining the
common notion that the Prime Minister was no more than Özal’s puppet (Birand & Yalçın,
2001).9
Against this, some commentators argue that Özal did not intend to launch a
military operation in northern Iraq, and had no designs on the Mosul province. In an
interview in Tercüman newspaper, published on 8 December 1990, Özal dismissed the
idea for some of the same reasons as those advanced by Torumtay – that is, that the
major powers would never permit it, and it would upset the regional balance of power
(Gözen, 2001). This message was repeated in an interview with the German newspaper
Die Welt, published on 22 February 1991, in which Özal stated categorically that ‘we will
not enter the war so long as we are not attacked by Iraq. We are not thinking of taking
8
Statements by Necip Torumtay, Yıldırım Akbulut and Hüsnü Doğan in Birand and Yalçın,
eds. Nicole and Hugh Pope also relate that, in a visit to the Washington Press Club shortly
before the Gulf war, Özal ‘spent most of the evening briefing correspondents at his table
about Turkey’s rights to northern Iraq’
9
Yıldırım Akbulut, statement in Birand and Yalçın, eds.
even a centimetre of Iraq’s territory. Will Turkey take Mosul and Kirkuk? No, it will not’
(Gözen, 2001). In a separate conversation with the Turkish journalist Cengiz Candar, he
also pointed to the probable opposition of neighbouring states (presumably, Syria and
Iran) if Turkey tried to take over any part of Iraq (Gözen, 2001). Nor is there any certain or
direct evidence that President Bush asked Özal to open a ‘second front’ in the land war
against Iraq, although Özal did get permission from Bush to send Turkish forces into Iraq if
either Saddam, Syria or Iran invaded Turkey (Üzgel, 2001).10 It is hard to see how Özal
could have ignored this obstacle without losing the rest of his broad policy objectives.
To explain this apparently contradictory evidence, two proposals can be advanced.
The first would be that, during the November and early December of 1990, Özal did
seriously consider a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq with the occupation of Mosul and
Kirkuk, if a Gulf war broke out, but then abandoned the idea, in view of the objections
raised by Torumtay and others. The second derives from Özal’s apparent expectation that
Saddam would be defeated in Kuwait, and would then be overthrown in his own country.
This threatened to produce a power vacuum in Iraq, in which either one of its other
neighbours could intervene, or the Iraqi Kurds might try to establish an independent state,
either by themselves or with the help of another government. As Özal claimed in his
interview with Die Welt, a Turkish military intervention might be necessary to prevent this.
For Iraq, and for the Iraqi Kurds, the best solution would be a democratic regime in which
its different ethnic and religious communities could coexist (Gözen, 2001). The journalist
Cengiz Candar confirms this by relating that Özal told him in January 1991 that if Iraq fell
apart after the war, then Turkey should act to prevent Iran or Syria from filling the power
vacuum in the north of the country. Even if Iraq did not disintegrate, ‘then it will have a
new power structure, it will not be the old Iraq… I must establish what sort of Iraq it
should be, since it is my neighbour and I have security problems… At this testing time, I
must be on the inside, I must be active, so that I can have my say’ (Birand & Yalçın,
2001).11
The Final Phase: January 1991 to April 1993
Between 17 January and the middle of March 1991 events proceeded much as expected.
The coalition air forces made regular use of İncirlik and other bases in Turkey to attack
targets in northern Iraq, and the Turkey’s military build-up along its frontier with Iraq
pinned down about eight Iraqi divisions which could otherwise have been used against
coalition forces in the south. The coalition ground offensive began on 24 February, the
Iraqi forces were ejected from Kuwait, and on 3 March the two sides agreed to end
hostilities. After that, however, the crisis developed dimensions which neither President
10
However, Nicole and Hugh Pope quote Güneş Taner as saying of Özal’s plan to open up
a second front that ‘the Americans were all for it’: Turkey Unveiled, p.220. The writer does
not know of any clear evidence to confirm this.
11
Cengiz Candar, statement in Birand and Yalçın, eds.
Bush or President Özal had expected. Contrary to their predictions, Saddam was not
overthrown, and when rebellions broke out in the south of Iraq and in Iraqi Kurdistan, he
had enough remaining forces to repress them savagely. In the latter case, Saddam’s
counter-offensive drove around 500,000 destitute refugees to the Turkish border at the
beginning of April, with an even bigger number fleeing to Iran. As Özal admitted on 9 April,
‘The Gulf War has confirmed that even if wars solve problems, they also often create new
ones’ 12 The Turkish government did not want to admit the refugees into Turkish territory,
since, as Özal put it, ‘we do not want another Palestinian camp on our border’,13 and
because their presence would inevitably have exacerbated Turkey’s own internal Kurdish
problem. On the other hand, it could not ignore their desperate plight, which was shown
nightly on the world’s TV screens. According to his own account, on 2 April Özal
telephoned Secretary of State Baker about the crisis, and Turkey was instrumental in the
passage of UN Security Council Resolution 688 three days later. Among other things, this
required Iraq to allow ‘immediate access by international humanitarian organisations to
all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq’. On 15 April Özal called President Bush,
and urged that ‘As a first step these people should be temporarily settled in suitable flat
areas in Iraq, near the Turkish border, until security is provided.’ 14 Following an initiative
by the EU, originating from the British Prime Minister John Major, Özal’s original idea of a
limited security zone was expanded into that of establishing a larger ‘safe haven’ which
would allow all the refugees to return to their homes. Accordingly, on 17 April, the
coalition powers launched what became known as ‘Operation Provide Comfort’, under
which an international force of 20,000 troops was established at Silopi, near the border
with Iraq, and the ‘safe haven’ was established in the north-east of the country. This
allowed virtually all the refugees to return to their homes by the end of May. From July
1991 untıl 2003, coalition air forces, based at İncirlik, enforced a no-fly zone in northern
Iraq, as far south as the 36th parallel. This prevented Saddam’s forces from entering the
Kurdish area. The İncirlik operations were dependent on special permission from the
Turkish parliament which has been regularly renewed, normally at six-month intervals
(Kirişçi, 1996).15
12
‘President Turgut Özal’s Address to the Global Panel sponsored by the European Studies
Centre in Amsterdam’: text reprinted in Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations: Special Issue on
the Gulf Crisis (Istanbul, Foundation for Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations, annual, Vol.6,
1991) pp.206-8. The words quoted are on p.206.
13
Ibid, p.207.
14
‘President Özal’s TV Speech concerning Turkish Help to Iraqi Refugees’ (31 May 1991):
text in ibid, pp.209-11. The passage quoted is on p.210. For the full text of Resolution 688,
see ibid, pp.185-6.
15
See also Mahmut Bali Aykan, ‘Turkey’s Policy in Northern Iraq, 1991-95’, Middle Eastern
Studies, Vol.32, No.4 (1996) pp.345-6. Originally, the relief operation was referred to as
‘Operation Provide Comfort’, with the İncirlik-based operation known as ‘Poised Hammer’,
but ‘Provide Comfort’ was later used as the title for both. From the beginning of 1997, it
became known as ‘Operation Northern Watch’.
‘Operation Provide Comfort’ was highly successful in solving the immediate refugee
crisis, but it also raised several serious problems for Turkey. In the first place, the creation
of the safe haven, outside the control of the Iraqi government, went against the firm
Turkish principle that the territorial integrity of Iraq must be preserved. More
immediately, the power vacuum in northern Iraq certainly allowed the PKK to establish
bases there, from which it could attack targets in Turkey, much as it had done during the
Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. For Özal, also, the outcome of the crisis had a significant effect in
inducing him to reverse one of the previous ground-rules of Turkish policy, that Turkey
would maintain no contacts with the Iraqi Kurds. On their side, the Iraqi Kurds were
dependent on Turkey for essential supplies, and for maintenance of the ‘Provide Comfort’
operation which provided vital relief assistance and kept Saddam Hussein’s forces out of
Iraqi Kurdistan. In effect, Turkey was the essential middle-man in their links with the USA,
their main protector. On the other side, Turkey needed access to first-hand information
about what was going on in the region and, above all, wanted to prevent the PKK from
operating from bases in Iraqi territory. Given that Turkey could not take over direct
control of northern Iraq, these objectives could only be met by establishing a working
relationship with the Kurdish leaders who, it was correctly assumed, would not necessarily
see eye-to-eye with Abdullah Öcalan and his followers.
According to Cengiz Candar, who evidently played an important role as an
intermediary, Özal first raised the possibility of striking up contact with the Iraqi Kurdish
leadership in February 1991, while the war in the Gulf was still raging. About two weeks
later Candar met Jelal Talabani and Muhsin Dizayi, a representative of Masud Barzani, in
London. Talabani asked him whether a meeting could be arranged with between himself,
Barzani and Özal. This led to a visit to Ankara by Talabani and Dizayi on 10-11 March, in
which they talked with officials of the foreign ministry, although not to President himself
(Birand & Yalçın, 2001).16 Significantly, these contacts took place before the eruption of
the refugee crisis or the establishment of ‘Operation Provide Comfort’. At this stage, Özal
was evidently very cautious, since he only admitted that the visit had taken place some
days later, pointing out that ‘everyone else is talking to them, why not us? We must be
friends with them as much as possible’. 17 However, he had a direct encounter with
Talabani in June 1991, when the PUK leader paid a visit to Istanbul for a meeting of the
Socialist International, and then went on to Ankara. In early August 1991 a crisis erupted
between the two sides, when a PKK gang killed nine Turkish gendarmes stationed at
Samanlı, in the remote province of Hakkari, and carried off another seven to their base in
Iraq. In response, Turkish ground and air forces launched a counter-attack which lasted
until 19 August.18 Meanwhile, Talabani and Dizai returned to Ankara, evidently trying to
end the attacks as soon as possible and prevent further civilian casualties, and to secure
16
Statement by Cengiz Candar, in Birand and Yalçın, eds.
Quoted, The Independent (London) 15 March 1991.
18
The Guardian (London) and The Independent, 14 August 1991.
17
food and other supplies from Turkey. However, it was noticed that they did not publicly
condemn the Turkish operation, and undertook to prevent the PKK from launching further
raids from their territory. In effect, they appeared willing to trade material assistance for a
common front against the PKK.
These contacts developed during 1992. Within Iraq, the most significant step taken
by the Kurds was the election in May of that year of what was known as the ‘Kurdistan
National Assembly’, and a local government structure in which the KDP shared power with
the PUK. This naturally provoked strong suspicions on the Turkish side that the two
organisations were on their way to establishing an independent Kurdistan. To gain
regional support, Turkey organised a meeting in November 1992 with Iranian and Syrian
representatives, declaring joint opposition to establishment of a Kurdish state.
Meanwhile, Turkey granted Turkish diplomatic passports to the two Iraqi Kurdish leaders,
and later allowed them to open representative offices in Ankara. Moreover, relations with
the KDP improved markedly during the summer and autumn of 1992, after the PKK halted
the flow of trucks across south-eastern Turkey into Iraqi Kurdistan, prompting the KDP to
demand the withdrawal of PKK units from Iraqi territory. During October-November the
Turkish armed forces joined the peshmergas of the Iraqi Kurds in a campaign against the
PKK, after which its presence in Iraq was moved to a camp at Zalah, on the Iran-Iraq
border, and about 130 km south of the frontier with Turkey (Pope, 1992).
Meanwhile, in the course of a visit to Ankara in July 1992, Jelal Talabani tried to
develop his relationship with Turkey by suggesting that Iraqi Kurdistan might be brought
under Turkish protection, or even that it might federate with Turkey. As he put it at the
time, ‘either we become a part of Iraq or a part of another Middle Eastern government…
The Kurdish people will look for the best possibilities… We think that in this turning point
of history there is a very good historical chance to revive the historical relations between
the Kurdish people and the Turkish people’. 19 According to Kaya Toperi, Özal’s adviser,
Talabani had earlier suggested that if the Kurds set up an autonomous administration in
Iraqi Kurdistan, then Turkey might annex it, and asked Özal ‘are you our elder brother?’
(read, ‘protector’). This was apparently connected in Talabani’s mind to the belief that
Özal favoured some sort of federal structure, or at least devolution of power, in which
Turkey would be divided into a series of around 15-20 regions (eyaletler) each with its own
administration and parliament, although Talabani does not make clear whether he
thought Iraqi Kurdistan should be part of this new structure (Birand & Yalçın, 2001).20
Certainly, such idea can be seen as part of Özal’s contemporary conversion to the idea
that Turkey should abandon the commitment to monolithic Turkish ethnic nationalism,
opting instead for a pluralistic, multi-cultural identity, which would embrace the Kurds and
other ethnic groups (Ataman, 2002). However, later commentators like Ertugrul Özkök
argue that Özal never seriously adopted the idea of a federal structure for Turkey, but
19
20
Quoted, Briefing, (Ankara, weekly) 27 July 1992, pp.4-5.
Statements by Kaya Toperi and Jelal Talabani, in Birand and Yalçın, eds.
simply suggested that the idea should be discussed. On the question of a federal
relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, Kaya Toperi categorically denies that Özal approved of
the project. According to his account, when Talabani suggested it to Özal, the President
replied ‘Yes, you cannot survive without Turkey. Turkey is your only connection with the
outside world. However, Turkey has never had any idea of adding to its territory… My
advice to you is that, within Iraq’s frontiers, within a homogeneous [mütecanis] and
democratic Iraq, you should establish a similar system, respecting the rights of the
Turcomans in the north.’ (Birand & Yalçın, 2001).21
Apart from the establishment of ‘Operation Provide Comfort’ and of relations with
the Iraqi Kurds, the most significant effect of the Gulf crisis of 1990-91 was economic. As
already noticed, Iraq had been one of Turkey’s most important trade partners in the
1980s. Transport and trade across the Iraqi frontier had also been an important source of
income and employment in the impoverished provinces of south-eastern Turkey, most of
whose inhabitant were ethnic Kurds. Hence, the imposition of sanctions against Iraq was
very costly for Turkey, both nationally and locally. Estimates made by the writer at the
time suggested that the cost to Turkey’s balance of payments, caused by lost exports,
pipeline royalties, and other invisibles, was around $2 billion per year, although other
estimates put the loss at far higher than this (Gözen, 2001).22 In return, Turkey received
compensation aid from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait of around $2.2 billion in 1991, tailing off
to around $900 million in 1992, and apparently ceasing thereafter. 23 The substantial net
loss to Turkey is sometimes cited as a criticism of Özal’s policy during the Gulf crisis
(Gözen, 2001). On the other hand, it has to be remembered that Turkey could not have
ignored a mandatory decision by the UN Security Council, and that the application of
sanctions would almost certainly have been inevitable, regardless of whatever other
policies Özal might have adopted during the crisis.
In the broader sphere, it is also apparent that Özal’s role in policy making, and the
role of the Middle East in his overall approaches, began to shift during the last two years
of his life. In the general elections of October 1991 his former Motherland Party was
defeated, leading to the formation of a coalition government headed by his old rival,
Süleyman Demirel. From this time on, Özal lost much of his domestic power base, and
began to act almost as though he was part of the opposition rather than of the
government. The defeat of George Bush Snr. in the US presidential elections of 1992 also
removed a powerful friend in Washington. Meanwhile, Özal’s foreign policy focus, like
that of the Turkish government generally, shifted away from the middle east, and towards
21
Statements by Ertugrul Özkök and Kaya Toperi, in Birand and Yalçın, eds.
Estimates by the writer in 1991, for the Economist Intelligence Unit, London. Against
this, Ramazan Gözen, for instance, estimates Turkey’s total losses between 1990 and 2001
at ‘over $30 billion’, or an annual average of around $3 billion.
23
Calculated from Turkish balance of payments figures, in Briefing, 27 July 1992, p.24 and
10 May 1993, pp.24-5.
22
Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans, where the dismemberment of both the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia created a host of new problems as well as some opportunities for
Turkey. In the Middle East, the beginning of the Arab-Israeli peace process in 1991 was
welcomed by Turkey, but Ankara had played virtually no part in achieving it, and the
process did not begin to bear fruits until after Özal’s death.
As previously, Turkey’s most immediate concerns in the region derived from its
internal Kurdish problem. These reached a critical juncture in the spring of 1993, when
Abdullah Öcalan proclaimed a ceasefire by the PKK. The story needs some examination in
the present context, since it was apparently linked to Özal’s relations with the Iraqi Kurds
– in particular, with Jelal Talabani. On 17 March Öcalan announced that his organisation
would declare a unilateral ceasefire between 20 March and 15 April. This was largely
observed, and on 16 April the PKK leader went further by announcing that the ceasefire
would be extended indefinitely. Coincidentally, Özal died of a heart attack on the
following day (17 April). Öcalan’s move left Demirel’s government in a state of indecision
(Anon., 1993). The Turkish armed forces did not entirely cease their operations against the
PKK, although on 30 March Demirel announced that a large-scale campaign, which had
been planned for the spring, would be dropped (Summary of world Broadcasts, 1991).
Meeting under the temporary premiership of Erdal İnönü on 24 May,24 the National
Security Council announced that there would be a partial amnesty law, giving immunity to
those who had joined the PKK but not committed acts of violence. 25 However, on the
same day, the PKK itself ended the ceasefire, when a gang under the command of Semdin
Sakık, the PKK’s local commander in Bingöl province, attacked a bus carrying unarmed
soldiers and civilians, killing 31 soldiers and six civilians in cold blood. İnönü promptly
announced that the proposed amnesty was suspended, and the military campaign against
the PKK was resumed at full scale.26
While the main events in this apparently missed opportunity are not disputed, it
also appeared that the PKK’s ceasefire had not been launched without some previous
peace-feelers between Özal, and perhaps Demirel also, to the PKK, and that Özal’s
contacts with Jelal Talabani played a vital part in this. These apparently continued after
the ceasefire was declared. In a letter to Özal, delivered on 5 March, Talabani stated that
Öcalan had offered to abandon his campaign of violence in return for the opening of a
‘fraternal dialogue’ with the Turkish government which, he suggested, could be conducted
through the medium of Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament, rather than directly
with the PKK itself. He stated that Öcalan had abandoned his previous goal of establishing
24
Demirel had resigned from the premiership on 23 April, in preparation for his election as
President of the Republic on 16 May. His True Path Party (DYP) did not elect Tansu Ciller as
Chair of the party, and thus Prime Minister, until 13 June. As Deputy Prime Minister, İnönü
took over as head of the government in the interim.
25
Briefing, 24 May 1993, p.8
26
Ibid.
an independent Kurdish state, and accepted ‘democracy, human rights and cultural and
administrative rights within the unitary Turkish entity’. A passage in the letter also
suggests that Talabani had previously acted as intermediary in indirect negotiations
between Öcalan and Özal, in which Özal had put forward proposals which had then been
rejected by Öcalan.27 Another version of these events was later related by Talabani, to the
effect that he visited Süleyman Demirel immediately after the general elections of 20
October 1991. According to Talabani, Demirel requested him to get in touch with Öcalan
and ask him to stop the fighting, to give the Turkish government a chance to implement
reforms in the south-east. Later, Talabani met Öcalan, who said he was ready to make
peace. Talabani then heard from Özal that this announcement should be made publicly.
Later, he visited London and Washington, and received official support for his peace
efforts. After Öcalan’s initial declaration of a ceasefire (on 17 March 1993) Özal suggested
to Talabani that he should extend it: as a result, Talabani again visited Öcalan in the
Lebanon, accompanied by some Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament, and Öcalan
made his second announcement of 16 April, which was televised (Birand & Yalçın, 2001).28
To sum up, while the events which led up to the PKK ceasefire of March 1993 are not
entirely certain, it can be argued that this was a tragically missed opportunity which, had
both sides seized it, could have saved thousands of lives by ending the fighting in southeast Anatolia at an early stage.
Evaluations and Conclusions
Summing up Özal’s political career, or his foreign policy, is far from easy since, although he
certainly had some firm convictions, he sensibly adapted his policies to the pragmatic
needs of the moment. After his death, Güneş Taner remarked of him: ‘Özal was like a
sponge. He would seize on whatever was novel in what you were saying, then sell it on as
if it were his own. He showed us vision, gathered light and focused it like a spotlight’ (Pope
& Pope, 1997). As the foregoing account suggests, his policies in the Middle East altered
significantly at different stages of his career. Although he never abandoned his personal
faith as a Muslim, he seems to have given up a specifically Islamist political agenda at the
end of the 1970s. In his approaches to the Muslim world there were only faint echoes of
his personal religious commitment, and those mainly in the general moral sphere. His high
regard for American democracy, his commitment to the aim of achieving Turkey’s
eventual accession to the European Union, and general recognition that Turkey’s best
interests were best served by developing its links with the western powers, balanced out
whatever attachments he may have had to the Muslim universe.
27
The passage reads: ‘I put forward to him [Öcalan] my well-known suggestions – those
which I had explained to Your Excellency [Özal] in the past and which I brought to him and
he rejected at the time’. For what is said to be the full text of the letter, see Mideast
Mirror, 15 March 1993, p.23.
28
Statenent by Jelal Talabani, in Birand and Yalçın, eds.
During the 1980s, his policies extended most of the principles which had been
established by his predecessors – both those of the military regime of 1980-83, and the
civilian governments of the 1970s – but with the advantage that he had a much more
stable and legitimate hold on domestic political power. Nor were there any apparent
differences, of any consequence between Özal and the rest of the Turkish foreign policy
making establishment. In his attitudes towards the critical questions of the middle east,
such as the Arab-Israeli dispute, the aftermath of the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq
war, and relations with the other participants in the Islamic Conference Organisation, he
essentially followed previously established policy lines. During the 1980s, Turkey
continued to adhere to the principle that it should not take sides in intra-regional
disputes, notably in the Iran-Iraq war, but also in the Arab-Israeli context, where there was
actually a shift towards a more pro-Israeli position by Turkey, beginning in 1985. Turkey
broke with the United States in following a more nuanced policy in its relations with Iran,
but there was nothing ideological about this: instead, Turkish approaches to Iran rested on
the correct assumption that, while their ideological commitments were poles apart, the
two countries had to coexist, for economic and strategic reasons. Where Turkey was
involved in direct disputes with its neighbours, then Özal adhered to the well-established
principle that it should try to settle them without resort to force. This was exemplified,
most notably, by his visit to Damascus in 1987, even though this failed to produce lasting
results until several years after his death.
The Gulf crisis of 1990 opened up a new phase in Özal’s policies, mainly because it
allowed him to step into a far more independent and proactive position in the
determination of Turkish policy, and because it destroyed the previous assumption that
Turkey could stay out of regional conflicts. Özal was determined to exploit the opportunity
which it offered, to demonstrate Turkey’s continued importance to the western powers,
after the end of the cold war, and to enhance its political standing in the region. In the
end, his vision was only partially realised. His own ambition to play a more active role in
the coalition campaign, and to help determine the course of post-war Middle Eastern
politics, was severely restricted by the reluctance of the Turkish public, the parliament and
the military, to become directly involved in the war. Özal’s apparent promotion of the idea
that Turkey should open a second front against Iraq was fortunately overruled by his own
military commanders and the government, although it is not clear how serious he was
about this plan, or in what circumstances he wanted to exercise it. Above all, his
expectation, which he apparently shared with George Bush Snr., that Saddam Hussein
would be overthrown and that there would be a ‘new order’ in the region, turned out to
be wide of the mark. Instead, much the same regimes, in the same countries, remained in
power for the rest of the decade. His hope that, in future, the security of the Gulf could
be assured by the Gulf states themselves, in collaboration with Turkey, remained
unrealised, since the regional states were too weak and divided to assume this function,
leaving the United States the main guardian of Gulf security (Aykan, 1993). Similarly,
Turkey’s important role in defeating Saddam Hussein in 1991 had almost no effect in
persuading the members of the European Union to accept Turkey into their ranks, as Özal
had apparently hoped. Several of them – notably Germany – had never put the Middle
East at the top of their foreign policy agendas, and were far more concerned by Turkey’s
shortcomings in the field of human rights, its internal Kurdish problem, and the
prospective budgetary costs of Turkish membership.
The fact that several of Özal’s ambitions remained unrealised should not, however,
blind us to his achievements. What may have been the most important of these emerged
quite unexpectedly, as a result of the refugee crisis of April 1991, and the subsequent
launch of ‘Operation Provide Comfort’, in which Özal played a crucial role. His subsequent
establishment of regular contacts with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership was quite
unprecedented, and may well have acted as the spur to his own attempts to find a
solution to the destructive internal war against the PKK. In the Middle East, Turkey’s
current government faces a situation similar to that which Özal had to address 24 years
ago. It would do well to pay attention to his visions and achievements, as well as his
failures.
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