[Debate] Turkey's Attack on Civilians Tied to U.S. Military Drone

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://on.wsj.com/Jfyo47>
Updated May 16, 2012, 8:46 a.m. ET
Turkey's Attack on Civilians Tied to U.S. Military Drone
By ADAM ENTOUS And JOE PARKINSON

ULUDERE, Turkey—After winding along a narrow mountain ridge, a caravan
of 38 men and mules paused on the Turkish-Iraqi border. Then they
heard the propellers overhead. Minutes later, Turkish military
aircraft dropped bombs that killed all but four of the men.

The strike in late December was meant to knock out Kurdish separatist
fighters. Instead it killed civilians smuggling gasoline, a tragic
blunder in Turkey's nearly three-decade campaign against the
guerrillas. The killings ignited protests across the country and
prompted wide-ranging official inquiries.

The civilian toll also set off alarms at the Pentagon: It was a U.S.
Predator drone that spotted the men and pack animals, officials said,
and American officers alerted Turkey.

The U.S. drone flew away after reporting the caravan's movements,
leaving the Turkish military to decide whether to attack, according to
an internal assessment by the U.S. Defense Department, described to
The Wall Street Journal. "The Turks made the call," a senior U.S.
defense official said. "It wasn't an American decision."

The U.S. role, which hasn't previously been reported, revealed the
risks in a new strategy for extending American influence around the
globe. It raises an outstanding question for the White House and
Congress: How far do we entrust allies with our deadly drone
technology?

After a decade of troop-intensive land wars, the Obama administration
is promoting advanced drones, elite special forces and intelligence
resources as a more nimble, and less expensive, source of military
power. The strategy relies heavily on close cooperation with regional
allies, in part to reduce the need for American troops on the ground.

In Pakistan and Somalia, where local authorities can't or won't act
against militants, the U.S. employs armed drones and
special-operations teams to track and kill suspected terrorists. In
Yemen, the U.S. carries out drone strikes with the government's
approval. In Turkey—a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member that
has a modern air force—the U.S. helps provide intelligence for
operations but plays no direct role in any strikes.

The downside to such arrangements, say current and former U.S.
officials, is that countries can use U.S. intelligence in ways the
Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency can't control. Allies
have varying standards for deciding who is a justified target. And
these partnerships can embroil the U.S. in local disputes with only
slender links to the security of Americans.

"What happens if this information gets to the [foreign] government and
they do something wrong with it, or it gets into the hands of someone
who does something wrong with it?" said Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.),
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who didn't know specific
details of the attack.

At the Pentagon, press secretary George Little said when asked about
the strike, "Without commenting on matters of intelligence, the United
States strongly values its enduring military relationship with
Turkey."

The conflict between Turkish security forces and the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, has taken an estimated 40,000 lives
since violence first flared in the 1980s. Ethnic Kurds, about 18% of
Turkey's population, have long sought a degree of political autonomy
and the right to public education in their native tongue. Tensions
have risen since Turkey last fall intensified its campaign against the
PKK, which the U.S. and European Union designate a terrorist group.

U.S. drone flights in support of Turkey date from November 2007, when
the Bush administration set up what is called a Combined Intelligence
Fusion Cell in Ankara, part of an effort to nurture ties with the
government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. U.S. and
Turkish officers sit side by side in the dimly lighted complex
monitoring real-time video feeds from Predator drones.

The Obama administration has moved to expand cooperation—by stepping
up intelligence sharing and by supporting Turkey's request to buy
armed and unarmed U.S. drones to give the Turks full control.

The issue is sensitive for both sides. Turkey doesn't want to be seen
as reliant on the U.S. And selling drones to Turkey faces opposition
from key members of Congress, who worry about spreading the
technology, as well as Turkey's standards for deciding when to launch
a strike.

While the White House is moving forward with plans to provide Italy
with arms for its drones, proposals to sell or lease drones to Turkey
face resistance in Congress, which reviews such sales in advance.
Proponents argue they build long-term military relations with close
allies, as well as give U.S. companies better access to the
fast-growing global market.

The caravan strike is illustrative of the dangers. Servet Encu, 42
years old, said he had made the journey across the mountainous border
separating Turkey and Iraq several times a month since he was a
teenager, smuggling all kinds of goods.

In his and other impoverished Kurdish villages of southeastern Turkey,
smuggling is a trade made profitable by differences between the two
countries, including taxes and currency values. Fuel costs twice as
much in Turkey as in Iraq, a substantial oil producer, rewarding
smugglers who ferry jugs of gasoline through the mountains. The
Turkish military usually doesn't bother villagers crossing the border,
as long as they aren't smuggling weapons or drugs. But PKK militants
also cross the border in the region.

The convoy, laden with food and gasoline, was returning to Turkey on
Dec. 28. They were less than an hour from home after hiking along
barren, icy ridges for more than four hours, Mr. Encu said in an
interview.

Mr. Encu called his Kurdish village by cellphone for help picking a
route to avoid Turkish soldiers who might confiscate their cargo, he
recalled.

Above and out of sight, a U.S. Predator drone loitered. It was on a
routine patrol when U.S. personnel monitoring its video feeds spotted
the caravan just inside Iraq and moving toward the Turkish border,
according to U.S. officials and the Pentagon's assessment of the fatal
strike.

U.S. military officers at the Fusion Cell in Ankara couldn't tell
whether the men, bundled in heavy jackets, were civilians or guerrilla
fighters. But their location in an area frequented by guerrilla
fighters raised suspicions. The Americans alerted their Turkish
counterparts.

U.S. officials said additional surveillance from the Predator might
have helped the Turks better identify the convoy. But, they said,
Turkish officers instead directed the Americans who were remotely
piloting the drone to fly it somewhere else. U.S. officials said
compliance with the Turks' request was standard procedure.

As darkness fell, Mr. Encu said, the men in the caravan heard the dull
hum of Herons—the Israeli-made surveillance aircraft used by Turkey
and less sophisticated than U.S. drones.

Then Turkish warplanes appeared. "It was like a lightning bolt," Mr.
Encu said. "I saw a bright light and the force of the explosion threw
me to the ground…When I turned my head I could see bodies on fire and
some were missing their heads."

The strikes lasted for about 40 minutes, survivors said. Of the 34 men
killed, 11 were members of Mr. Encu's extended family. It was the
largest number of Kurdish civilians killed in a single attack in
Turkey's long conflict with the region's militants.

Rescuers dug for corpses under a collapsed mountain ridge. They
wrapped body parts and loaded them on a trailer that was towed to the
nearest village, according to accounts of residents and local
officials.

The killings sparked clashes between hundreds of stone-throwing
protesters and the police in Kurdish parts of Turkey. In the town of
Uludere, Mayor Fehmi Yaman charged that the attack marked the latest
in a series of government efforts to intimidate the local population,
much of which supports Kurdish militancy.

"The military knew these people were civilians. It was a deliberate
attack," he said. "The government has tried all means of suppression,
which have failed, and now they tried this."

The Turkish military initially said it ordered the strike because the
convoy moved along a pathway frequently used as a staging point for
attacks by the PKK. Turkey's government and its armed forces both have
open investigations into the matter.

Turkey's military didn't respond to repeated requests for comment for
this article. Turkey's Prime Ministry, Interior Ministry and Defense
Ministry said they would neither comment on the incident nor on
questions over the scale of military cooperation between Turkey and
the U.S.

The killings threaten to spoil efforts to forge a Turkish-Kurdish
consensus for a planned new constitution expected to partly address
the issue of rights for the Kurdish minority.

A former senior U.S. military official, involved in sharing
intelligence with Turkey before the December attack, said he and
fellow officers were sometimes troubled by Turkish standards for
selecting targets. The former official said Turkish officers sometimes
picked targets based on a notion of "guilt by association" with the
PKK.

A current U.S. intelligence official defended the partnership. "That
is going to be the exception. It is a horrible exception. It's a
tragic exception," he said of the caravan strike. "But the vast
majority of efforts to expand our information sharing and to work with
our partners and allies around the world are going to have positive
outcomes."

U.S. personnel work in the Ankara Fusion Cell, in part, to monitor
Turkey's use of U.S. intelligence, U.S. officials said.

Turkish officials have assured the U.S. of their measures to avoid
civilian casualties. They say privately that Predator drones help
reduce attacks on the PKK using less precise weapons, such as
artillery.

But U.S. officials say such mistakes are feeding a debate within the
intelligence community and the Defense Department about setting better
guidelines for sharing of U.S. intelligence.

Intelligence officials are divided on the issue. Some say the U.S.
should withhold intelligence if it believes an ally might abuse the
information. Others warn new rules could slow intelligence sharing
during emergencies.

In Uludere, December's events continue to reverberate. Local men have
reduced cross-border smuggling trips, slowing the local economy.

Monuments to the dead have sprung up in villages. In Gulyazi, home to
13 of those killed, a 30-foot-high tent shelters a memorial where
residents left handwritten messages next to portraits of the dead.

On the outskirts of one village, widows and bereaved mothers gather
regularly. One day last month, scores of women marched along a dirt
track to a makeshift cemetery where many of the dead were buried.

Fatma Encu, a cousin of Servet Encu, clutched a framed portrait of her
eldest son, Huseyin, who was killed at age 19. "I don't want
compensation," she said. "I just want the murderers to be found and
punished."

Chief of the Turkish general staff, Necdet Ozel, said the military was
sharing information with prosecutors, according to a Turkish news
agency. "We are not hiding anything," he said.

—Ayla Albayrak and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous at wsj.com and Joe Parkinson at
joe.parkinson at dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page A1 in the
U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Turkey's
Attack on Civilians Tied to U.S. Military Drone.
-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>