TURKEY: LONG-TIME ADVOCATES CITE BETRAYAL AND

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 002660 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/25/2022 TAGS: PREL PTER PGOV TU US SUBJECT: TURKEY: LONG-TIME ADVOCATES CITE BETRAYAL AND DISAVOW LINKS REF: ANKARA 2632 AND PREVIOUS Classified By: DCM Nancy McEldowney, reasons 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) Summary: Anger on the streets pales in comparison with the deep sense of betrayal long-time friends of America are expressing to us. They assert we are on the brink of a full blown rupture in relations. End summary. ¶2. (C) Suat Kiniklioglu is the former head of the German Marshall Fund in Turkey and newly-elected Justice and Development Party MP. Educated in Canada, he spent considerable time in the US and worked closely for years with US think tanks and the Congressional study group on Turkey. He is an ardent advocate of EU, NATO and Turkey's ties with the US. ¶3. (C) Kiniklioglu told the DCM October 26 that as a result of US failure to act against the PKK, he can no longer justify meeting with her or others in the Embassy. Unfulfilled US promises, he said, had driven Turkey to the edge of disaster. Extreme nationalist sentiment, xenophobia and irrational hostility are growing daily, despite official calls for calm. Turkey has no choice but to act militarily against the PKK in northern Iraq. He described this as the ultimate self-destructive step which would undermine everything he had committed his life to achieving -- but for which he was now advocating. ¶4. (C) Murat Mercan, the chairman of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and his wife Inci both pursued their post-graduate education in the US. He earned a PhD at the University of Florida; she, an MBA in Cleveland while he taught. Both their children, now being educated in English at Bilkent University, were born in the US. Murat Mercan has told us that in fact Inci had regretted their return to Turkey, feeling her opportunities here were circumscribed by her Islamic headscarf. ¶5. (C) On October 25, Murat told us pointedly that Turkey will go it alone now, whatever the cost. The GOT knows that cost will be enormously high, both domestically and internationally. But the government -- which has avoided kneejerk reactions, acted and planned in a reasoned, calculated manner, and repeatedly urged calm on the population -- has reached the point where it must react. The trigger is cocked; all military preparations are complete. If there is another PKK ambush, the trigger will be released. The PM -- through his statements that Turkey is prepared to pay the price, however high -- is preparing the public for a potentially long, sustained campaign. No one should underestimate the determination of the Turkish armed forces and the public who are aligned behind them. (Mercan is also an AKP MP -- the pro-Islam party that governs but is often at odds with the military.) ¶6. (C) Inci Mercan is deeply angry with the US. She was polite, but telegraphed just-concealed rage. Inci said she cannot understand the policies the US has pursued. Her sense of betrayal seems all the greater for her clear affection for the US after her many years in our country; she spoke warmly of the Cleveland neighborhood in which they had lived. Public anger, Inci related, is resulting in dangerous incidents: shopkeepers in Mamak, a relatively poor district of Ankara and home to many recent migrants to the capital, are posting signs on their shop windows: we will not serve Kurds. ¶7. (U) These sentiments are being played out throughout Turkey. Columnist Muharrem Sarikaya in daily "Sabah" referred to an incident in a major Anatolian sub-province: A large crowd of youths stopped a bus that was leaving town for the Southeast, and asked the passengers to disembark and sing the Turkish national anthem. After posing questions such as, "Are there any PKKers among you?" they allowed the bus to depart. No one questioned the youths. It is not an isolated incident. ¶8. (C) Comment: Anger on the streets was one thing -- a ANKARA 00002660 002 OF 002 spontaneous expression of frustration by a young population that did not live through the terrible days of GOT-PKK fighting in the 1990s. But the reactions of a Suat Kiniklioglu or an Inci Mercan (sophisticated, well travelled, familiar with the ambiguous and the complicated) -- this is something else entirely. In Turkey, when friends betray friends, the wound never really heals. Turks view the lack of US action to root out the terrorists who are killing their boys as a national betrayal. They know if they make a major incursion into northern Iraq, the gig is up on EU accession, on democratization, on societal progress in the southeast, all pillars on which Erdogan's government has staked its future. Our Turkish friends' pride and sense of nation dictate that they are willing to pay that price. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON