American military aid to Turkey

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

20)
           id VT23628; Fri, 20 Oct 1995 21:46:25 -0800


Washington has approved $7.8 B in millitary sales to Turkey in the last
decade- and has provided grants or loans to cover most of it.  This year
unless dramatic events take place in the current House-Senate conference,
Turkey will get $380 M in American credits to finish production- in Turkey
- of F-16 fighter planes.

America has traditionally used such aid to maintain its friendship with a
strategically crucial ally.  But the aid is now being used to prolong a qar
that both destablizes Turkey and betrays American values.  The State
Department has acknowledge that Turkey is using the F-16's and other
American weapons to strafe Turkish villages in its war against a Kurdish
guerrilla group, killing thousnads of civilians and leaving millions
homeless.  Washington should end the sale of weapons used in the war and
condition further military aid and sales on Turkish respect for human
rights.

One-fiffth of Turks are Kurdish, a minorty so repressed that its members
are even forbidden to speak Kurdish in many public settings.  In 1984 the
Marxist Kurdish Worker's Party, or PKK, began a brutal civil war, killing
many civillian officials and Kurdish oppenenets.  The Turkish Goverment
responded with an even more brutal campain to bomb and burn Kurdish
villages.  It has prosecuted even peaceful Kurdish politicians, writers,
and human rights workers whose only crime was describing the human rights
violations.  An American reporter for Rueters, Aliza Marcus, may be
sentenced to three years in jail for her reporting from Kurdish areas.  The
PKK is weak, but the Goverment has little progress toward winning the war,
Polls show that Turks overwhelmingly fovor a political settlement.

Turkish human rights record has caused several European Countries to cut
off military relationships- although Germany just resumed aid- and has so
far denied Turkey coveted memebership in the European Union.  But the White
House has allowed Turkish troops to pursue the PKK into Kurdish areas of
Iraq that America protects against Saddam Hussein.  The Turkish incursions
have killed many civilian Kurds.

Since the Turks' war against PKK escalated in 1992, American military aid
to Turkey has escalated as well. Washington now provides 85 percent of
Turkey's arms imports and 90 percent of its military aid. Despite the
efforts of Senator Patrick Leahym Democrat of Vermant, and Represantative
John Edward Porterm ab Illinois Republicanm to curtail aidm Congress has
not yet managed to block or place conditions on substantial amounts of
Turkish military aid.

Turkey has escaped a cutback because of its strategic importance.  America
depends on military bases in Turkey, and wants Turkey to spread its
moderate brand of Islam to Central Asia abd its pro_Western views to
Balkans and Mideast.

The Turkish Goverment and the Clinton Administration argue that oany cuts
in arms transfers would weaken and radicalize Turkey,  But the war itself
poses a greater threat to Turkey's stability and prosperity.  Its Islamic
party, a relatively moderate onem gained support after a ban on Kurdish
parties left it as the only non-mainstream alternative.

Any further aid should carry human rights conditions that would  promote a
political solition to a war that has undermined Turkish democracy, boosted
the power if the millitary, drained the economy and diveded Turkey from its
Europena allies.  Placing such conditions on assistance also reduce
America's compilicity in Turkey 's repressive internal war.

--- * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)