Turkish Daily News, 96-06-04

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From: Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs <http://www.mfa.gov.tr>

TURKISH DAILY NEWS
4 June 1996

CONTENTS

[01] Turkey satisfied with CFE accord reached with Russia

[02] Turkey wary of NATO's plans to beef up European Pillar

[01] Turkey satisfied with CFE accord reached with Russia

Turkish Daily News

ANKARA- Turkey has welcomed Russia's decision to abide by the arms reductions in the Caucasus foreseen in the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), which was signed between NATO and the then still alive Warsaw pact, and whose stipulations were subsequently endorsed by former Eastern bloc countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia, which in early 1995 said it would not be able to fulfil CFE ceilings for the Caucasus -- thus putting itself in the position of being in technical violation of the treaty -- said late Friday it had agreed a "new reality" for European security.

Official confirmation of the Russian position came on Saturday in Vienna after delegates from 30 nations, including Turkey, most of Europe, the United States and Canada, had debated a deal between Washington and Moscow on the subject.

In a written statement on Moscow's position, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the problem of Russia's compliance with CFE stipulations relating to its flanks had been solved.

"This outcome, which has come about as a result of our constructive and active participation in the negotiations, is a pleasing development both for our country and for the other CFE signatories," the statement said.

The statement said that the result obtained in Vienna this time at the CFE review conference "addressed all of Turkey's political and military priorities."

"This agreement has also proved that matters relating to European security can be secured, not by unilateral initiatives, but only by the joint decision of all the parties involved," it added.

Aware that the Caucasus is Russia's "soft underbelly" after the collapse of the Soviet empire, Moscow had let it be known from the start that it wanted special dispensation for this region in terms of the tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces and military aircraft it could deploy there.

This demand of Russia's had become more pressing after the Chechen crisis, which Russia used to bolster its arguments as to why it had to violate the CFE and deploy more conventional forces in the region than was allowed under the treaty.

Just before the November 1995 deadline for compliance, Moscow announced it could not meet its treaty obligations because it feared that reduced military might on its frontiers, and especially on its southern flank near the troubled Caucasus region, would ruin its defense capabilities.

Afraid that pushing Russia on this issue would scuttle the whole treaty, the United States and other NATO powers appeared to show tacit understanding to Moscow, and to try to diplomatically pressure Ankara into accepting higher conventional force limits for Moscow in the Caucasus.

Ankara had, however, rejected a Russian proposal for additional security guarantees to Turkey within the CFE Treaty in return for Turkish approval of amendments to the CFE in Russia's favor.

But not wanting to obstruct what amounts to the most comprehensive conventional arms reduction treaty, Ankara agreed to let the treaty come into force with the proviso that the problem relating to Russia's flanks be solved in the shortest possible time.

[02] Turkey wary of NATO's plans to beef up European Pillar

By Semih D. Idiz

Turkish Daily News

ANKARA- Turkey is seen to be going along with attempts to restructure NATO along the lines proposed at Monday's meeting of alliance ministers in Berlin. But this appears to be based more on a desire not to "rock the boat" than on a position of true conviction. The firm U.S. position on keeping NATO's "Atlantic Link" very much alive is also seen to be soothing in terms of Turkish fears in this framework.

While the "Post Cold War structure" being proposed now for the alliance is due mainly to considerations that followed the "Bosnia debacle," it is precisely this debacle that has put Ankara in the position of being wary of developments that might put Europe too much at the helm of NATO's military planning and command structure.

There is also the concern that a strengthening security structure in Europe, even if within the overall NATO framework, could work to Turkey's exclusion given that it is not a European Union member, and given that the efforts in Europe are aimed at somehow coming up with the EU's military wing.

Turkey has always been a strong supporter of the Atlantic link, namely the firm and guiding presence in the alliance of the United States. But there are concerns that present efforts to reshape NATO's command structure to strengthen the "European Pillar" will work to the detriment of the Atlantic link, which will in turn be out of tune with Ankara's long-term security interests.

Despite active efforts, by France in particular, to ratchet up the role of this European Pillar, officials in Ankara have noted with satisfaction the emphatic position that Washington took in the lead-up to the Berlin meeting, underlining that the U.S. role in NATO will not be watered down.

Of particular satisfaction in this regard were remarks attributed to U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry to the effect that "Europe will restrict its own arrangements to emergencies and will not seek a peacetime European planning and command set-up inside NATO."

Remarks to international news agencies by senior American officials suggesting that despite a bigger, more visible role for Europe in NATO, Washington will still be the major force in the Western alliance have also been noted positively in Ankara .

These remarks also address the Turkish concern that a too rapid expansion of NATO by taking in former Warsaw Pact countries would also water down the notion of collective security.

Despite these reassuring remarks, though, here are aspects of the planned restructuring that are still of concern to Ankara, perhaps more so given that the United States is also willing to adopt them.

The principle concern in this regard relates to an "opt out" clause for Washington in terms of purely European operations, even if analysts say that in practice Europeans could do little in such cases without U.S. aircraft and intelligence. Accepting an opt-out clause, however, will set a precedent which Ankara worries the European powers could invoke to the detriment of collective security.

The elemental worry in Ankara is that there is a move toward compartmentalizing security concerns along lines that are specific to countries, groups of countries or continents.

In other words there is the fear that a crisis such as Bosnia, which has political and military ramifications for Turkey, is deemed to be a specifically European issue thus prompting the United States, the only genuine power broker in the post Cold War world, to stay out or be kept out.

All the political and military prevarication and procrastination that characterized the European approach to the crisis in Bosnia, leading finally to such a high toll in human lives, has made planners in Ankara think very seriously about how committed Europe would be to warding of specific types of aggression.

"The Europeans failed in badly in their Bosnia test and demonstrated that they are more interested, when all is said and done, in pursuing specific national agendas rather than in acting according to the dictates of the principle of collective security enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic charter," one source commenting on the implications of the Berlin meeting told the Turkish Daily News.

Analysts also recall that Turkey had a "close call" in terms of the "one for all and all for one" mentality enshrined in Article 5 during the Gulf War.

Concerned for its eastern borders, which are also NATO borders, at the time, Turkey called on in its allies to send a deterrent military presence there. But not all of its partners, most notably Germany, were willing to do so at first and complied with the request only after a certain amount of persuasive pressure.

Diplomatic analysts, appear, however, to be of the opinion that Turkish concerns need not be exaggerated because, as seen in Bosnia, Europe needs the integrated command structure represented by NATO perhaps more than ever, especially given its failed attempts so far to set up an specifically Pan-European military command structure.

They also say that it is inevitable that the United States remain the principle guiding power in the NATO alliance, given the diverging interests of the European powers which have not allowed these powers to formulate a common foreign policy, let alone a common security policy.

These analysts also point to the fact that this inability of Europe's to set up such an integrated political and military approach comes despite the targets it set for itself within the EU context. This, they say, signals that a specifically European defense identity is still further down the road somewhere, even if more responsibility is shouldered by the European powers today within the context of NATO's command structure.

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