epicstruggle said:
I wonder how much we had to pay them? The situation with Turkey was one of the things that suprised me the most about the current war with iraq.
With the overwhelming majority of the turkish public and politicians opposing this war, what exactly surprised you about it? Anyway, its a good thing they opened up the possibility for supply lines, those air bridges must have been bothering US strategists.
I hope that once people around the world start seeing how glad the people are about their liberation that we can repair/improve our relation with Turkey.
I don't think the relationship was damaged dramatically at all, at least not in a way that couldn't be easily attended to in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, that also depends how the situation in the region develops after a war, it might take years to see the full impact this war had...
I want to see our bases in germany closed and moved to Turkey.
I'd like to know why you think so? For strategic reasons, as Turkey is a closer stationing point to the Middle East? In that case bear in mind that its not neccessarily as easy as it looks. There would not only be political hurdles within Turkey to take (although I'm sure there wouldn't really be much opposition), but also popular and severe security considerations to be taken into account. Bear in mind though that it is not in the interest of the US to just withdraw and move their whole military presence from one region to another. Quite the contrary, a more extensive global military network is seen as the a desirable basis of future prosperity and security by the current administration AFAIK. Also, a significant increase in US troops stationed in the region, beyond what is already there and will stay there after the war, might not go down too well with some other countries in the reagion at all. Either way, it won't happen overnight.
Or is the reason rather that you feel offended that Germany chose to oppose this war? If so, wouldn't you agree that this would be a pretty childish reaction, cutting ties that reach back almost 50 years and go much, much deeper than just foreign policies in one specific situation? In case you don't know, although Germany is officially opposed to the war the goverment is actually more than just fully cooperating according to its international obligations, even more so than many nations in the so called coalition of the willing. German military is not only helping in keeping up operations of US military bases during this war, granted the US full use of air space (something e.g. Italy, one of the more prominent coalition members, has had some trouble with), reinforced pretection troops in Kuwait (specialists for protection from biological and chemical weapons), sent defence missiles and AWACS planes for defensive purposes to Turkey (that whole NATO affair was a joke though, with the large Kurd-controlled zone in northern Iraq there never really was any danger of Turkey getting attacked) and in general has more troops in the area than pretty much all coalition members besides the US, UK and Australia. Beyond that about 60.000 german troops are in deployment all over the world, both in peace-keeping missions like Kosovo, or in the fight against terror as in Afghanistan, where it took a significant part in securing Kabul and other areas as well as actively fighting what remains of Taliban resistance. Its not as if we're lazy nay-sayers that are afraid to risk anything, we just happen to think this specific war is not right...