Retired general: Turkey warns US with Putin speech

As the world debates the meaning of the now-famous Feb.10 speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference, the full text was put on the Web site of the Turkish Office of the Chief of General Staff, fueling opinions that Turkey is deeply concerned with Washington's policies on Iraq, Iran and terrorism.

The Russian leader also took new steps to guarantee that his policies will continue even after he resigns next year. Putin promoted his hawkish defense minister Sergei Ivanov to first vice premiership late Thursday, a move that is widely regarded as preparing Ivanov as his heir in the March 2008 presidential elections.

Putin's Feb. 10 speech, in which he accused the United States of stoking a new arms race, damaging the United Nations and acting unilaterally, is a sign that "unipolarity will not continue," said retired Maj. Gen. Armagan Kuloglu.

Observing signs of multi-polarity, Kulo?lu noted one of the new poles will be Russia. "Moscow manages and markets its energy resources skillfully, strengthens its economy and creates new resources for modernizing its military and enhancing its technology," Kuloglu told the Turkish Daily News over the phone on Friday. "The Russian leader gave a sign that U.S. power is not what it was before. Considering the positions of China, India or European Union, the sole power to give this sign was Russia."

And did the "gesture" of the Turkish Office of the Chief of General Staff amount to another sign from Turkey? Noting that Turkish-U.S. relations are suffering from issues such as the approaching referendum in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk and claims of Armenian genocide, Kuloglu noted that to balance the situation, Washington uses the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) card as a balm for bruised relations.

The gesture could be interpreted as a message that "There are other powers than the United States," said Kuloglu. "If so, the Office of the Chief of General Staff is saying that there are emerging powers in the world now and thus Turkey should not be pushed too hard on issues like terrorism, northern Iraq and Iran. The bilateral dialogue should be on equal footing, as Turkey also has good relations with those other powers."

Kuloglu added that the United States will either dismiss the "virtual gesture" as an ordinary act, or will understand that it has to tread carefully. "I don't think it will have much of an effect," he said.

But Professor Oktay Tanrisever, an international relations expert from the Middle East Technical University, had reservations about this point of view. The gesture should not be interpreted as an approval of Putin's opinions, he told Referans by phone on Friday.

"The speech also included some statements that could disturb Turkey, notably on energy lines and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline," he said. "The General Staff might have put the speech on its Web site to inform people of the Munich Conference and the timing with Buyukanit's visit to Washington might just be a coincidence. Governments have much more effective ways of conveying messages to each other." Turkish Daily News