The Turkish Embassy in Washington presents a formidable facade on that part of Massachusetts Avenue known as Embassy Row. Not all countries in this cruel world of ours have been around long enough to merit, or can even afford, an address on that grand boulevard. England and Japan, for example, both nations of great significance, not to mention longevity, enjoy that privilege; but most post-colonial African countries, such as, say, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, certainly do not.
Yes, within the international community in DC, an address on Embassy Row is the equivalent of a fashionable Zip Code, a veritable diplomatic 90210. And Turkey has one, along with a building that looks just like an exotic foreign embassy in a a spy thriller movie should look – constructed like a bunker, faced with stone in a rococo 18th century style and ornately decorated with 15th century flourishes, it’s a truly intimidating edifice. Topped with one of those fish bone short wave antennas pointed directly at Ankara – why, you can calibrate your compass with it, no brag, just fact – there it broods, murmuring, in a low and menacing tone, of ancient intrigues, age-old emnities, autocratic greed, harem lust, dictatorial hubris, imperial arrogance, merciless oppression, oceans of blood and piles of severed heads.
Speaking of severed heads, the first thing one sees upon entering the Turkish embassy in Washington is the improbably enormous likeness of Ataturk’s noggin, fifty times life size, cast in bronze, dominating the lobby with its eerie, vacant gaze – no doubt about it, Big Mustafa Kemal Is Watching YOU. All of this creepy stuff is second nature to Turks, of course, one of whom, if you are sufficiently lucky, Dear Reader, you will never meet. Dealing with characters like them is, unfortunately, part of my job, though, and I do not shrink from it – the money’s way too good. So when Special Attache Without Portfolio, Plenipotentiary Advocate Skratzmai Itchibak summoned me this morning to that cavernous and unnerving mansion off Sheridan Circle, thither I duly went, there my trade to ply.
If you have any problems with your blood sugar, Dear Reader, remember to bring some insulin to any meetings or social gatherings you might contract with Turks. Like the Arabs, nothing happens until you and your host are totally buzzed on sweets and a type of coffee that has something resembling black mud at the bottom of the cup. During this, I was subjected, as anticipated, to forty-five minutes of totally inconsequential small talk; but since I was getting paid for it, the experience was at least tolerable. This was followed by the usual fifteen minute tirade about the Armenian Question, including the usual talking points. Everyone knows, of course, that the Armenians mounted what anyone would recognize as a terrorist insurrection against the Ottoman Empire, engaging in guerilla warfare and committing numerous unspeakable atrocities, thus leaving Sultan Abdul Hamid II no other choice. And while the Sultan’s 1909 counter-coup against the Young Turks was not, in retrospect, the best advised course of action, it must be noted that, upon regaining power, the Young Turks themselves were ruthlessly maneuvered into a similar dilemma by the rapacious and implacable Armenian insurgency. When the Armenians callously betrayed Turkey, siding with the Russians in World War I, what policy, other than one calculated to save the Turkish state at any cost, could they have expected? While scholars and historians may debate whether the Armenians were directly responsible for the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the hands of Czarist Russia in the Ottoman attempt to capture Baku in November of 1914, defense of the Dardanelles, if nothing else, mandated extraordinary measures, up to and including the May 1915 legislation and subsequent actions taken to defend the Turkish state. And, in any case, that was all a very, very long time ago, and America has an extremely strong incentive to maintain its military bases in Turkey. “I’m sure you agree, Mr. Collins,” a smiling and smarmy Itchibak asserted.
“I would not be here,” I assured him, “if I were not prepared to agree with you wholeheartedly on any such matters considered to be so important to your government.” That’s what you say – it’s all they expect, really.
So, at last, preliminaries out of the way, Itchibak moved to on to discuss what he actually had on his mind today. “Mr. Collins, as you know, the Kurds have presented a protracted and insoluble problem for Turkey since dissolution of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in World War I. Your own president Wilson, while concocting, along with the British and French, that thing which we today call the state of Iraq, not only drew arbitrary national borders on a map of the region, but also willfully encouraged, through his philosophy of ‘self-determination,’ the concept and ideology of an independent Kurdish state.”
“That, was also,” I noted, “a very, very long time ago.”
“True,” Itchibak conceded, “but unlike a headless Armenian, an idea can exhibit a quite considerable life span. I will be honest with you, Mr. Collins,” he continued, “we here at the embassy have been in contact with members of your Congress, your State Department, your White House, your intelligence community and your military. I have been authorized to inform you as to the content of all those communications.”
“You have?” It isn’t often that foreign diplomats offer to open the kimono all the way, after all.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because, frankly, we can’t make any sense of them, and we are fervently hoping that you can interpret their meaning.”
“The official United States responses to Turkey’s communiques have been so inconsistent, you need to hire a consultant to make sense of them?”
“Precisely.”
“Okay,” I ventured, “let me guess – our Congress is on the brink of censuring you for the Armenian thing, and you spent huge amounts of money just recently to stop that and you barely succeeded.”
“Yes,” Itchibak conceded, nodding solemnly. This was no small potatoes, either, because Turks are so proud, they make Klingons look humble – Itchibak copping to that, why, it amounted to nothing less than a blubbering plea for help. In view of this, I decided to take it as easy on him as possible.
“Furthermore,” I pressed on, delicately, “while our military profess their undying friendship, admiration…”
“’… and moral support for Turkey as a military ally and member of NATO… ” Itchibak chimed in, smiling ironically. “I can see, Mr. Collins, that we have both read the same Pentagon boilerplate.”
“I’m sure we have,” I readily agreed, “and it’s rather predictable and not terribly inspired prose, is it not?”
“Men in uniform seldom possess the souls of poets, Mr. Collins,” he dryly observed.
“Meanwhile, your sources in the White House provide nothing but a string of incomprehensible platitudes.”
“So they do.”
“And the State Department publicly discourages Turkey from taking any direct action against the PKK, while the intelligence community keeps nudging you with an elbow in the ribs and a knowing wink, all while spouting the State Department line.”
“I must confess, Mr. Collins, your insight is quite astonishing,” he reluctantly admitted, leaning closer in expectation. “So, in your obviously well-informed opinion, then, please tell me – what the [expletive] is going on with you Americans about this [expletive] Kurd thing?”
“Well, not to beat around the bush, I would say, that with respect to Turkey and the Kurdish Question, our government is up its [expletive] and out by Tuesday.”
“’Up its [expletive] and out by Tuesday?’” Itchibak narrowed his eyes, gazing at me intently. “I am unfamiliar with that particular American idiom, Mr. Collins. Could you explain?”
“It means we’re brass [expletive] to the walls, half naked and half way to bum [expletive] Egypt.”
“Excuse me? I have never heard of this place in Egypt, the one you call ‘bum [expletive].’”
“Look,” I explained, “Turkey was very helpful to the United States during the Cold War, and you’ve continued to be very helpful to us and to most of the other members of NATO since the Cold War ended, too. On the other hand, for the last fifty years, you guys have been ready to start a war with Greece at the drop of a fez. What’s more, you want to be in the European Union, but you run your country like Franco ran Spain. And on top of all that, you way you treat your minorities that aren’t ethnically Turkish would embarrass Wen Jiabao. Now you have 100,000 troops massed on the Iraqi border, rattling the saber and threatening to invade the only part of Iraq where George W. Bush looks like he’s actually accomplished some kind of mission. I mean, consider the facts on the ground here – a significant part of stirring up war hysteria for the invasion of Iraq in the first place was goading the media into running lots of gruesome ink and graphics about the way Saddam Hussein whipped Kurdish butt. Every American has seen that picture of the little dead Kurdish boy in colorful Kurdish costume with the curly little Kurdish elf shoes so many times, it’s burned into their brain – just like that picture of the nasty Nazi taunting the little old woman in a babushka with a riding crop, or that naked Vietnamese kid running down Highway One, covered with napalm. You start killing Kurds, my friend, you are going to have to deal with that picture. You are going to have to explain to Americans how you are any different from Saddam Hussein, who sprayed the cute little Kurdish kid in the elf shoes with deadly nerve gas.”
“And if we don’t?”
“If you don’t, then Turkey will appear totally arrogant and cruel, and Americans will get really upset with you guys.”
“All right,” Itchibak mused, stroking his chin contemplatively, “suppose we spend a few million on public relations, explaining why Turkey invaded Iraq?”
“That would be like daring the entire Armenian-American community to a televised sound-bite cage match where two interpretations of history enter, but only one leaves.”
“I see. And what about… uh, that is, how should we approach the issue of…”
“What, ‘a friendly fire incident?’”
“Ah, yes.”
“Allah Himself couldn’t do a thing for Turkey if your troops kill so much as one American in uniform while invading Iraqi Kurdistan.”
Itchibak shuddered. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely.”
“The United States… it… wouldn’t… invade Turkey over such a thing, would it?”
“It wouldn’t need to. The European Union and rest of NATO would turn Turkey inside out.”
“But I thought,” Itchibak protested, “that the European Union and the rest of NATO despise the United States!”
“They certainly do, but there’s one country they all despise even more.”
“Which one?”
“Yours.”
“There are limits,” Itchibak warned me, “to how much truth a Turk can bear to hear in one sitting.”
“Forgive me,” I replied, “if we have approached those limits during this discussion. Would something in writing, liberally sown with euphemism and carefully constructed turns of phrase, be preferable?”
Itchibak settled sanguinely back into his plush chair, letting loose a most diplomatic harrumph. “Yes, I think so. Something… longer… much more carefully worded… and, of course, arrived at after you have reviewed our research materials.”
“Provided you can give me the cables, white papers and meeting transcripts today,” I suggested, “I could devote my weekend to preparing a deliverable for close of business Monday. Would that be soon enough? I certainly hope you fellows aren’t planning on invading Iraq this weekend.”
Itchibak nearly hit the ceiling. “Who told you?”
“Nobody told me anything. I said I hoped you weren’t going to invade…”
“Oh, yes, right,” he muttered, somewhat beside himself. “I don’t suppose we will.”
“Policy Analysis and Recommendations deliverable for COB Monday, then? Since it’s a rush job, I’ll clean out my calendar – it should take about thirty hours between now and 4:00 p.m. on the Fifth.”
“The Fifth of November?”
“Yep,” I confirmed, then, as I rose to leave, smiled at him slyly, “‘Remember, remember, the Fifth of November.’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Guy Fawkes Day. It’s English.”
“Oh yes, the English – they’re a bunch of [expletive]; [expletive] them!”
“Yeah,” I let fly as a Parthian shot, while cordially slapping Itchibak a friendly wave and flashing my most diplomatic smile, “that’s what we Americans say, too.”