Germany to End AWACS Missions If Turkey Enters War
March 23, 2003
For the past few weeks, German aircrews have been part of a NATO mission protecting Turkish airspace near the Iraqi border. The United States asked the military alliance in January to begin planning to send surveillance aircraft known as airborne warning and control systems, or AWACS, to Turkey. The United States made the request because it wanted NATO to be able to protect the alliance member from a possible Iraqi attack. Germany reluctantly agreed to the deployment of German crews despite its opposition to the war in Iraq.
But German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made clear on Saturday Berlin would end its support for the surveillance flights if Ankara sends a large number of troops into Iraq.
“If Turkey becomes involved in the war then it’s a new situation for us, and it would cause the removal of German soldiers from the AWACS aircraft,” Fischer told journalists.
Turkey says it is eager to send forces into Iraq’s Kurdish region to avoid a massive refugee problem in its eastern provinces, but many think Ankara’s main motive is to ensure the Kurds there do not seek independence from Iraq, which could inflame its own Kurdish separatist problem.
No Significant Troop Movement Yet
Turkey military sources said Ankara had sent around 1,500 special forces commandos into Iraq overnight. U.K. Defence Minister Geoff Hoon confirmed the troop movement and said that the amount was commensurate with the protection of the Turkish border. Fischer said German intelligence sources had not yet observed a significant change in Turkish troop movements in the border region.
Some news reports say Turkey has 30,000 troops prepared to invade northern Iraq.
The foreign policy expert for Germany’s opposition Christian Democrats, Wolfgang Schäuble, said on Saturday that Germany could not simply pull its airmen out of the AWACS planes because it would go against its NATO commitments. German soldiers make up around a third of the 200 NATO troops currently assigned to the surveillance flights.
But German Defense Minister Peter Struck quickly dismissed such concerns. “If Turkey becomes an active party to war then our alliance obligations no longer apply. That is a different situation,” he said.
The deployment of the AWACS to Turkey has been controversial ever since the United States made the request. France, Germany and Belgium originally blocked NATO planning to increase Turkey's defenses for several weeks last month, arguing the measures risked undermining U.N. efforts to avert war in Iraq. That led to one of the biggest crises in the history of the alliance.