Good education

I had the opportunity to meet and listen to the speeches of several former U.S. presidents. It seemed to me that the best educated and cultivated of them all is Mr. Obama. The speech he delivered at Parliament was obviously a carefully prepared and very well studied one. It seems the U.S. Embassy in Ankara played an important role in writing the text.

It is natural that we should have differences of opinion with the U.S. But the important thing Mr. Obama tried to convey in his visit to Turkey and during his speech at Parliament is that to minimize these differences of opinion we should start from somewhere. If the U.S. has five international issues that take priority, four of them are over Turkey and one concerning this region. To straighten out these issues, the U.S. has to talk to Turkey. Turkey, on its part, has to make long, short, middle range plans concerning the U.S.

First of all there is the south Caucasus issue and mainly the normalization of relations with Armenia. To bring peace to the south Caucasus region, the Nagorno-Karabakh problem should be solved. But you cannot do it solely to satisfy the Armenian diaspora in the U.S. There is no need to create concerns in Turkey, in Azerbaijan, in Iran by bringing Azerbaijan closer to Russia. To safeguard the energy flowing through Turkey, stability should be brought to the Caucasus region. It is true also for the Middle East. The great concern for all parties is the vacuum that will be created after U.S. troops will pull out of Iraq and who will get hold of the American arms that will remain in the country.

Two reasons were influential in the creation of a strong opposition in Turkey against the U.S. The first is the aid given to forces supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the second is support given to forces that demand the acceptance of the so-called Armenian genocide. The expectation here is that the U.S. should find solutions to these two main problems. Coming to the economy. At the G20 meeting, the IMF was burdened with the mission of saving the world. Including Turkey, the IMF procured additional financial aid for several countries. Time will show is if this financial support will be enough. But there is a strong possibility that these can change the export-import balance to Turkey’s benefit. 2009 will be a difficult year not only for Turkey but for European countries as well. It is impossible to think that European economies and the U.S. economy will recuperate before 2010 and 2011 consecutively. On the other hand, President Obama’s insistence that Europe, which wants a relationship based on privileged partnership, should give accession to Turkey is meaningful.

You can remember that also in 1999 the U.S. had pressured Europe in Helsinki to accept Turkey’s membership application. It is important that Mr. Obama has given a message to Europe that the U.S. wants Turkey within Europe. But Europe is reluctant in accepting it. It is obvious that these days that Europe has its own serious economic problems and doesn’t have time to pay attention to Turkey. Most important of all, Europe doesn’t want to talk economics with Turkey and seems satisfied to open and close chapters during accession negotiations, always bringing up the condition of solving the Cyprus problem. All the world knows that a solution to the Cyprus problem and all problems in the eastern Mediterranean is directly related to the consent the U.S. will give.

In the meantime both in Ankara and Istanbul people had a very difficult time in going to their jobs and coming back to their homes during the Obama visit, though they seemed to like the new U.S. president very much. Maybe tight security was exaggerated by police forces, but innocent of what was going on around him, Mr. Obama became the target of most Turks’ anger.

Although I found him very sympathetic, I, too, showed strong reaction when police searched my car when entering the Parliament complex. When we complain about these exaggeratedly tight security measures, officials say, "It is done all over the world." This cannot be an excuse. While trying to guard our guests coming to Turkey, let’s not create feelings of hatred for them among the people.