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  • Visit By Turkish President Demonstrates Greatly Improved Relations W

    VISIT BY TURKISH PRESIDENT DEMONSTRATES GREATLY IMPROVED RELATIONS WITH US
    By William C. Mann, Associated Press Writer

    Associated Press Worldstream
    January 8, 2008 Tuesday 3:07 AM GMT
    Washington

    The Turkish president's visit with U.S. President George W. Bush on
    Tuesday is seen as a major sign of sharply improved relations between
    the NATO allies after five years of acrimony over the Iraq war and
    U.S. policy on Turkey's fight against Kurdish rebels.

    President Abdullah Gul's visit follows a visit by Turkish Prime
    Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan two months ago that resulted in a
    commitment by Bush to share intelligence on Kurdistan Workers' Party,
    or PKK, rebels and not to object to Turkish airstrikes against the
    Kurdish guerrillas' installations in northern Iraq.

    The two sides have even established a coordination center in Ankara so
    Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information. The first Turkish
    airstrike was Dec. 16 and used intelligence shared by Washington. Two
    days later, a small Turkish ground force invaded Iraqi Kurdistan to
    flush out Turkish Kurds sheltering there.

    Washington tacitly approved.

    The PKK has been fighting for two decades to win a Kurdish homeland
    in Eastern Turkey.

    Speaking about Turkish-U.S. relations with Turkish reporters last
    month, Gul said, "Things are going well at the moment. Intelligence
    is being shared. Now there is a cooperation befitting our alliance.

    Both of us are satisfied. This is how it should be. We could have
    come to this point earlier."

    In the months leading to Erdogan's Nov. 5 White House appearance,
    however, U.S.-Turkish relations were at their lowest point in many
    years. Neither side was blameless.

    In 2003, during the buildup to the Iraq war, the Turkish parliament
    rejected U.S. requests to send troops into Iraq through Turkish
    territory. And a poll last summer showed just 9 percent of Turks saw
    the U.S. favorably.

    The U.S. Congress did its share to poison the atmosphere. Despite
    pleas from the Bush administration and personal appeals from Gul,
    then foreign minister, and other prominent Turks, the Foreign Affairs
    Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives passed a nonbinding
    resolution last year that described as genocide the World War I-era
    deaths of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

    Turkey reacted by withdrawing its ambassador from Washington.

    Despite the greatly improved situation since the Erdogan-Bush meeting,
    the situation remains touchy.

    "Certainly there is far greater satisfaction in Turkey than there
    was as late as three months ago," John Sitilides, chairman of the
    Southeast Europe Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
    for Scholars, said Monday. "It's all related to the PKK. Now the
    United States is seen not as an entity that is holding the Turkish
    military back but is working with Turkey."

    Still, Sitilides said, Turkey could "respond recklessly" to perceived
    U.S. mistreatment with grievous results. "There are 150,000 U.S.

    troops on the ground in Iraq whose well-being would be jeopardized
    if Turkey decided on an action such as closing off access to the flow
    of war supplies."

    Gul is having breakfast on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza
    Rice and is meeting Bush for talks and lunch. His schedule released
    in Ankara said he also will meet with Vice President Dick Cheney on
    Tuesday and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday before flying
    to New York to meet at the United Nations with Secretary-General
    Ban Ki-moon.

    While in the United States, the Turkish president is to meet with
    representatives of the Meskhetian Turks. A minority group ousted
    from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, the Meskhetians were bounced
    around to other Soviet republics until settling in Krasnodar Krai,
    a territory of Southern Russia.

    The Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program undertook
    what it calls one of the largest refugee resettlement programs in
    2005-6 to bring as many as 18,000 Meskhetians to about two dozen
    cities in the United States.
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