Word: ankara
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...TURKEY Ankara is worried that postwar instability in Iraq would provoke Iraqi Kurds to assert their independence, thereby inciting Turkish Kurds to follow suit. Still, Turkey has strong historical ties with the U.S. and counts on Washington's backing for further IMF assistance. The pro-Islamic government would probably allow the U.S. to use some air bases and would support special forces en route to Iraq but not the transit of large numbers of ground troops...
...interview with TIME's Tony Karon, Erdogan's foreign policy adviser Egemen Bagis says that Turkey will abide by any UN resolution on Iraq. And that Ankara's own priority is winning continued U.S. backing for Turkey's efforts to join the European Union...
...Secretary Paul Wolfowitz traveled to Turkey to secure support for an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, offering to write off at least $6 billion of military debt and an undisclosed amount of other aid in return. Then, even as British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrived for talks on Ankara's application to join the European Union, Wolfowitz said it would be "unthinkable" for the E.U. to exclude Turkey - music to the ears of his hosts. Back in Washington, the Bush Administration swatted away complaints from right-wing hawks that the President was overselling the Islam-is-a-peaceful-religion...
...President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to confirm that the U.S. did not want to see Iraq's borders changed. The Turkish government is worried that Iraqi Kurds will be so overjoyed if Saddam is defeated that their mood will infect the Kurds in Turkey, rekindling demands for autonomy from Ankara. As sweeteners, Bush reaffirmed American backing for Turkey's candidacy for membership in the European Union and promised support for Turkey's mess of an economy. Then he was off to Russia, where he reassured President Vladimir Putin that the Americans have not forgotten that Iraq owes Russia $8 billion...
...Turkish politician Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not look like a man so dangerous as to have been accused of "inciting religious hatred." His comfortably furnished offices in Ankara look more like a banker's suite than a fundamentalist's den. Impressionist prints adorn the walls, along with a portrait of Turkey's fiercely secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. There isn't a prayer bead in sight. "I am a Muslim," the beardless Erdogan, 48, dressed in a pressed blue suit and red tie, said in a recent interview with Time. "But I believe in a secularist state...