A visit to the Turkish-Russian border

Press, 1 November 1977, Page 20

A visit to the Turkish-Russian border

By

David Fairhall

of the

“Guardian”

tor many centuries the Anatolian city of Ani stood on the boundary between Christendom and Islam, changing hands repeatedly as tribes and armies surged back and forth across the mountains. All that ended in the earthquake of 1319. But the city’s broken walls and domes still stand on a modern Turkish border of great strategic significance — one of only two points where a N.A.T.O. country is adjacent to the Soviet Union. A visit to these otherwise totally neglected ruins provides a discreet pretext to stand and stare at the Communist regime’s wire fence and lattice watchtowers. On the Western side, nothing has been done to protect or restore the crumbling, but still bright frescoes of Saint Gregory’s church, standing right on the edge of the narrow gorge which also marks the border at this point. The bare walls of the abandoned mosque — before that the city’s cathedral — provide some shelter for the local cattle. As the escorting Turkish colonel put it: “Ruins are cheap here.’’ But the presence of a group of Western journalists, a captive audience on the long, bumpy drive from the Ninth Corps headquarters at Erzurum, gives the Turkish military a rare opportunity to demonstrate what they would dearly like American Congressmen to come and see for themselves — the stand they are taking for N.A.T.O. on this long exposed flank, reaching further East than Moscow.

The Turkish Army is far too proud to plead for renewed American help. “Turks

are not beggars,” one general said almost angrily when pressed to say how the three-year-old embargo on United States military aid was affecting his forces. His officers seemed convinced that if only the Greek lobby in Washington were less influential, politically and financially, their strategic position—guarding the Soviet Navy’s access to the Mediterranean and the Red Army’s most obvious route to the oilfields of the Middle East—would speak for itself: “Our mistake is to be Muslim.”

The immediate impact of the United States embargo is difficult to gauge in the face of an obstinate refusal to admit to any weakness and a tendency — reminiscent of the Russians — to answer specific questions with generalised parables. Even in normal circumstances Turkish military doctrine puts great emphasis on the value of tough, almost fanatically motivated infantryman. “The most dangerous weapon,” we were told more than once, “is the soldier who is resolved to die.”

They are certainly tough. A glimpse of their mountain training routines, chorusing to Allah as they plunge over the rock face on long ropes, helped to confirm that. The sight of herdsmen searching for the last of the summer’s dried grass and stacking dung to bum through a long winter that brings several metres of snow and temperatures down to minus 45 degrees, reminded one that without a good deal of toughness, survival in Eastern Turkey is scarcely possible. But whether physical courage would be sufficient to

stop the 12 Soviet divisions normally deployed on the other side of the border is another matter. At Kars, where a shallow valley restricted by one or two passes provides an obvious route for a Soviet invasion, the Turks reckon they would be facing three motor rifle divisions in the first echelon, supported by helicopter assaults. One wonders whether their communications. their tactical flexibility, and even their immaculately painted equipment, would do justice to the quality of individual Turkish soldiers.

Re-equipment with modem anti-tank weapons and aircraft has been slowed by the United States embargo. Since 1974 they have done what they can to make themselves more self-sufficient in things such as small arms. There is talk of indigenous aircraft production in the future. But for the. moment the shortage of spare parts and cash is undeniable. in 1975, the Government in Ankara retaliated by restricting the operation of United States bases in Turkey — except for “N.A.T.O. purposes.” Again, it is difficult to discover precisely what this means, since many of the 26 American facilities are intelligence-gathering centres whose function is essentially secret. The five most important facilities are probably the airfield at Incirlik in Southern Turkey (which is still open, although its range of operation may well have changed) and the four electronic monitoring stations at Karamursel on the Sea of Marmara, Sinop on the Black Sea coast, Belbasi near Ankara and Diyarbakir in South-eastern Turkey. A United States Con-

gressional library report has estimated that a quarter of the Americans’ hard information on Soviet missile launches would normally come from Turkey. This is the sort of information that has apparently been classified as outside N.A.T.O.’s immediate interest and therefore denied to the Americans by demanding that they switch off their radar. In other cases the restrictions seem to have been little more than cosmetic. The Turkish base administration has become more obtrusive. The Americans are showing their passes more often. But the surveillance of Soviet missile deployment is carried out mainly by satellites, and therefore continues. So, no doubt, does the surveillance of Soviet shipping through the Bosphorus and of Russian aircraft over the

Black Sea, since these things are of immediate importance to N.A.T.O.’s defence. The Turkish military still take their N.A.T.O. responsibilities extremely seriously, even if they are beginning to envisage a possible future outside the Alliance, and dropping resentful hints that their own oil supplies could be ensured by turning instead to the Arab world. At the same time they naturally want to exert pressure over the embargo by making things awkward for the Americans—just as the United States Administration hopes to exert pressure for a solution in Cyprus. The Defence Co-operation Agreement that now awaits Congressional ratification would provide for SIOOOM of military grants, credits and loan guarantees over four years, in place of the interim provision for SI2SM a year

of foreign sales credits, rising to SI7SM next year. One effect of the embargo has been to force the Turks to buy their. Phantom fighters through commercial — and hence more expensive — channels instead of direct through the United States Government.

Meanwhile, there is a developing economic relationship with the Soviet Union. On the eastern Turkish border just north of the Ani ruins, for example, the two neighbours are constructing a joint hydro-electric and irrigation dam across the Arpachy River. But the more fundamental relationship is still symbolised by the electrified border fence, backed by watchtowers, searchlights and minefields, stretching away to the Black Sea coast in the North and the snows of Noah’s Mount Ararat just visible to the South.