GLOBE EDITORIAL
Bush's talk in TurkeyPRESIDENT BUSH delivered a carefully worded yet revealing speech Tuesday at the end of a two-day NATO summit in Istanbul. He may have intended to present a generalized defense of his policies, but the speech bore traces of the alterations that events have forced upon him.
Most obvious to his audience of Turkish journalists and business leaders would have been Bush's fulsome praise for their country, their government, and Turkey's role as a bridge between the Muslim world and the West. The flattery may have been excessive, but it sent a message that Washington understands and respects Turkey's decision, made before the US invasion of Iraq, not to permit coalition troops to transit Turkish territory. "Democracy," Bush said, "does not involve automatic agreement with other democracies. Free governments have a reputation for independence, which Turkey has certainly earned." This was Bush's belated but welcome recognition that the old-fashioned virtues of diplomacy remain as indispensable today as they were for his father, who drew on personal relations with foreign leaders to manage the peaceful implosion of the Soviet empire, the unification of Germany, and the war to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. There was a time when the current president, playing the brassy note of unilateralism, warned other countries that they had a stark choice: Either you are with us or against us. But the Turkish Parliament voted not to be with Bush when he went to war against Saddam, and now a chastened Bush accepts Turkey's decision. It is a good thing for Turkey and for Americans that Bush, at least in regard to relations with Ankara, has seen the error of his unilateral ways. The two NATO allies need each other as much as they did during the Cold War. Turkey must count on Washington's cooperation in Iraq and for its drive to enter the European Union. The Turks have an obsessive fear that self-government for Iraqi Kurds will cause the Kurds of Turkey to seek secession. Bush did curry favor with his audience by lamenting that a secessionist Kurdish movement, the PKK, "has abandoned its cease-fire with the Turkish people and resumed violence." He was properly silent, though, on the subject of Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.
Bush took a stance that was both just and shrewd when he said, "America believes that as a European power, Turkey belongs in the European Union." Immediately afterward, President Jacques Chirac of France complained that Bush "not only went too far but went into a domain which is not his own." Chirac, who often acts as though only he is entitled to speak about some issues, illustrated how easy it is for democracies to disagree and why no American president should abdicate from the lists of multilateral statecraft. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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