Turkey Analysis: Did US Intelligence Lead to Deaths of 34 Civilians (and Better Relations with Ankara)?
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 9:39 | Ali Yenidunya in EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran, US Foreign Policy A Wall Street Journal investigation points to the role of US intelligence in the Uludere airstrikes
The Wall Street Journal claims that the intelligence came from Washington. If this is true, we do not need to ask further about the reason for the Turkish Government's keeping of a secret. Both for general US-Turkish and for specific issues, such as co-operation over the Syrian issue, further enquiries into the Uludere incident would be inconvenient.
Could the deaths of 34 civilians have led to better relations between Ankara and Washington? After all, Turkey and the US are aligned in their policies towards Iraq's Maliki, Syria's Assad, Iran's Ahmadinejad, and Iraqi Kurdistan's Barzani --- so perhaps "collateral damage" in this case has been turned into "collateral benefit".