Press Conference With Secretary Gates From Ankara, Turkey
Written by Stephen Rhodes on February 9, 2010 - 
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Below is a brief excerpt from a press conference that took place Tuesday from the Pentagon. the presenter was Defense Department Secretary Robert Gates, who was in Ankara, Turkey:
Spokesman Morrell: Thank you all for coming today. Sorry, we are running a little bit late. The meetings have run long. So, we are going to have a little less time. No more than a half hour. So, let’s move quickly and I want to get as many of our Turkish friends as possible. So, without further ado, the Secretary and then to the Turkish press and if there’s time, we will go to the American press.
Secretary Gates: Fire away.
Q: Good morning sir. My name is Murat Yetkin and I work for Radikal. Perhaps you would like to tell us about your contacts with the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff. We’re interested on the cooperation in Iraq and against terrorism, including the PKK.
Secretary Gates: Both meetings ran long. As a matter of fact, at the meeting with the Defense Minister we spent a good bit of time talking about Afghanistan, about missile defense, NATO missile defense, and the military-to-military relationship between the two countries. Virtually all of my time with the Chief of the General Staff was spent discussing Afghanistan and efforts against the PKK.
Q: Any details — did you ask more troops?
Secretary Gates: No, I didn’t ask for more troops. I told both of them how impressed we have been by Turkey’s contribution in Afghanistan and how important it is. It is a varied role — there’ are about 1700 troops, 2 provincial reconstruction teams, several operational mentoring and advising teams and command of regional command capital, Kabul. So it’s a very diverse set of responsibilities and we are very pleased to have Turkey in Afghanistan working with all of us as partners.
Q: Metahan Demir from Hurriyet newspaper. We are wondering about the details of your talks regarding the fight against the PKK because it has been on the agenda in Turkey for a long time and Turkey has been suffering from this terrorism for along time. Also it was on the agenda in the past, as you may remember — cooperation with the United States. Could you detail, or give us any specific information, about what kind of new cooperation was discussed between the two sides, during these talks, against PKK? Any further operation to capture the leading names of the organization? Or, any joint operation in Northern Iraq in the future?
Secretary Gates: Well, I don’t think any purpose would be served in sharing with you any information about any operations that may or may not be considered. I will tell you that in 2007, President Bush directed that more assistance from America be given to Turkey’s fight against the PKK. It fell on me to implement that beginning in 2007-2008 in terms of significant additional intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and other kinds of equipment.
We have continued that. I offered during my visit here to, when I return to Washington, to see if there are more capabilities that we can share with Turkey in terms of taking on this threat. When General Odierno was here there was discussion of an action plan going forward. So I think what we are seeing is a further intensification of the cooperation in an effort to deal with this threat. I would also say, as the General told me, the ultimate solution to this is simply not killing everybody. In that vein, I met with President Barzani of the KRG in Washington last week. We talked about the importance of the KRG putting pressure on the PKK to abandon violence as a political tool. So, I think there’s a broad range of cooperation and we talked about ways in which it can be further expanded.
To view the entire press conference in its entirety, please click here.
Filed under: Military News, The Red Skinny
