U.S.-Turkey Relationship

As Prepared

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Volker: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. As you described, I'm the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the European Bureau. I'm not particularly a Turkey expert. As I look around the room I see a lot of people who are, so I think if you start asking yourself why am I the one that's here speaking to you? I think there are two reasons. First off, if you look at travel schedules, Nick Burns is in Zagreb today, and Dan Fried is in Germany. That's one reason. The other reason is, who's fool enough to speak after Dick Holbrooke's already addressed all this stuff. They had to find someone.

I was not here to hear Dick's remarks, but I did get a quick rundown of them. I can tell you there's a lot of wisdom in what he said, and I think you'll find a lot of things that we agree on about Turkey and the relationship between the United States and Turkey. So I'm sure this will be familiar.

I thought what I would try to do then, instead of repeating things in much the same way that Dick did, is to try to organize a couple of general thoughts about U.S. and Turkish relations and where we're headed.

The first phrase I wanted to use was the phrase that the demonstrators in Istanbul used on April 29^th, which was "No Sharia, no coup." I think that says an awful lot in a few short words about what's important. It is a secular democracy. It is a respect of the process of constitutional democracy in Turkey. And, that is very much what our thinking is and what we support. So, we were taken with those words from the demonstrators.

If I could try to summarize or characterize U.S. thinking toward Turkey, if I was trying to capture that in a few words, how would I do that? The words that I wanted to suggest are respect, commitment, patience, and confidence. I want to talk a little bit about each of those and tell you what I think we mean by that.

When I say respect, there are a lot of aspects to that. First off, of course, the history, the culture, the traditions, and the identity of Turkey we understand. And, we have a great deal of respect for them and think they are tremendously important in understanding Turkey and working with Turkey as a strategic partner.

Part of the identity that is particularly important is Turkey's identity as a country with a predominantly Muslim population, but which is a secular democracy with strong constitutional processes. That is vital not only for Turkey but vital for the world, that we have a country that is like that and that is working on these issues for all of us. These are important things to get right, and we have tremendous respect for Turkey's ability to doing that.

The institutions in Turkey are strong, and we believe in them. That's another area where I think Turkey has shown progress and strength where others haven't, and we have a tremendous respect for that.

Finally, Turkey's identity you can look at from another way, which is as a transatlantic country, partner, and ally within NATO; a European country, and we very much support Turkey's aspirations to accede to the European Union; it has a special role in Central Asia; a special role in the Middle East; and these are tremendous attributes for a country, and attributes that make Turkey a vital and important country for the United States.

The second word I mentioned was commitment. Because when you look at what I just described about Turkey and how we see Turkey, it drives a lot of the way we think about our own policy and what is important and what we do. We see Turkey as a strategic ally and partner. We're very much committed to working together with Turkey. We support Turkey's secular democratic institutions, and I want to be very clear about that. We believe in Turkey's growth and prosperity and democracy and the welfare of the Turkish people and want to be helpful in that as best we can. Part of that is, as I mentioned, supporting Turkey's aspirations for membership in the European Union.

Obviously, there are a lot of reforms and processes that occur with any country that joins the EU -- political, economic, otherwise. But, these are things that take time. And, these are things that we need to support. If we hold out a vision of a successful, prosperous, democratic Turkey, part of the EU, part of our community, rather than looking at the challenges, we look at the vision and we're committed to that.

We're committed to fighting terrorism, as is Turkey, and know that the PKK is a special issue for Turkey, and it's been a special issue for us in the U.S.-Turkish relationship in the last few years. We're committed to working together with Turkey to eliminate the PKK terrorist threat and help Turkey to work together with the Iraqi government to do the same. We're very committed, very strong on that.

Finally, we do believe that Turkey's role as a neighbor is tremendously important. A neighbor for countries in the Middle East; a neighbor for Iraq; a neighbor for the Caucasus and Europe; and working together with Turkey from a regional perspective is tremendously important to us and something that we're committed to doing.

The third word that I mentioned was patience. I mentioned patience because a lot of the things I've just said take time. We don't expect perfection overnight in anything, and certainly we don't expect a lot of these issues that I just described with Turkey and Turkey's U.S. relations and Turkey's role in the region to crystallize overnight. We need to have patience, strategic patience, to work together and work with our European allies and partners, work as partners in the broader region in the Middle East toward these objectives and this long-term vision for Turkey.

I mentioned secularism and democracy in a predominantly Muslim population. The world right now is going through a tremendous searching of what is the relationship between Islam and democracy and how it evolves. There's not a single answer and there's not an easy answer, and that will clearly take time. When you look at the constitutional processes that are unfolding in Turkey in these weeks ahead, I think that is a tremendously important role that Turkey plays and one that we need to have patience with to see how Turkey addresses these issues.

Finally, one further word about the EU, too. We see a lot of commentary from current EU members now and EU politicians that are very negative in their approach toward Turkey, and including the recently elected President of France who has said that he has objections to Turkey as a member of the EU.

Here, I would hope that we can also counsel patience and not just exercise it ourselves. There is a long way to go in seeing a vision for Turkey as a successful, democratic, market economy, integrating in Europe, integrating in the global economy, integrating in institutions. We shouldn't rush to decisions when they're not ready, but rather hold out the vision and do the hard work and take the decisions when they are ready. So I hope that we can counsel patience in our dealings with Turkey and the EU.

Finally, confidence. I think that's important for the United States, because we see in the last several weeks questions raised. What does this statement mean? What do these actions mean? What does the vote of the Parliament mean? What will happen in the process of selecting a President? Will there be a referendum? Having new elections now on July 22^nd, and what comes after that?

I think it's important for the United States that we express our confidence in Turkey--that we really do believe that these institutions are strong. We believe in Turkey's secular democracy. We believe in the constitution. And, that these issues can be resolved and will be resolved well.

When we look at what has happened in recent weeks, I think more important than the words that came out of the military about the direction of Turkey's democracy were the actions of the people who took to the streets to say we believe in a Turkey that is a secular democratic country. That gives us great confidence in Turkey, and I think it's important that we stress that confidence, and that in the United States we are a very steady partner for Turkey as it proceeds in the direction of its strong constitutional democracy.

That is how I would sum up our thinking about Turkey and where we stand. I doubt that it differs very much from what Dick said, but I hope I was able to give a slightly different color to it.

Thank you.