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Also plans to send troops to northern Iraq

Friday, March 21, 2003

By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times

ANKARA, Turkey -- After months of national debate, a sharply divided Parliament authorized the government yesterday to open Turkey's airspace for U.S.-led military strikes on Iraq, giving this NATO-member country a minimal role in the effort to oust Saddam Hussein.

The decision was expected to yield considerable benefit for the bombing campaign that was begun hours earlier. A senior military official in Washington said the overflight rights would make it easier for U.S. warplanes to fly into Iraqi airspace undetected and attack northern Iraq, preventing Saddam from concentrating all his military might to deter forces advancing from the south and west.

In the same vote, Parliament approved a government plan to send two Turkish army brigades to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to protect Turkey's interests there. In doing so, lawmakers ignored warnings by the Bush administration that such an incursion could lead to clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces.

Parliament's action did little to heal a rift with Washington. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher welcomed the vote granting airspace rights, but said the United States remained "opposed to unilateral action by Turkey or by any party in northern Iraq."

U.S. officials had expected far more help from Turkey and heard repeated assurances that it was coming. However, on March 1, Parliament refused by three votes to permit the movement of 62,000 American ground troops through Turkey to Iraq. Since then, a new prime minister resisted U.S. pressure to ask lawmakers to reconsider.

With war imminent, the Bush administration last week scaled back its request and withdrew a multibillion-dollar aid offer that was tied to a U.S. troop deployment. But even the more modest proposal for overflights angered many Turks, who are opposed to a war. Others faulted the government for blowing the aid package.

As lawmakers met yesterday, hundreds of demonstrators chanting "America get out of the Middle East" laid black wreaths outside the U.S. Embassy here and threw stones and eggs at riot police who dispersed them with clubs. Antiwar activists also held rallies in Istanbul.

The vote in Parliament was 332-202 with one abstention. More than 30 lawmakers of the ruling Justice and Development Party broke ranks with the government to vote no.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who tried to balance strong antiwar sentiment in this mostly Muslim country with the needs of its strongest ally, said the outcome was a fair compromise.

"May it be good for our country and our people," he said. "The results are what we expected."

Emin Sirin, a lawmaker who opposed the U.S. troop deployment, voted yesterday in favor of airspace rights.

"It's not easy to reject billions of dollars, but we needed to prove that this was not about money, but about principles," said Sirin, a member of Parliament's foreign relations committee. "It was not in our interest to have so many American troops here. When the Americans come, they do not always leave."

Airspace rights, he added, "is the minimum help we can give to an ally."

The delays in allowing ground access have effectively made it impossible "to have a credible ground campaign at the beginning of potential operations," the U.S. official said.

U.S. officials are still pressing for approval to send ground troops through Turkey, but it's too late to use them in the first wave of attacks. Defense officials said U.S. ground troops could still move into northern Iraq at a later stage.

For the time being, the official said, about 40 cargo ships carrying supplies and heavy armor for the Army's 4th Infantry Division, which the Pentagon had been planning to launch into northern Iraq from Turkish bases, would remain off the coast of Turkey.

Negotiations between the United States and Turkey are likely to continue, another senior U.S. defense official said.