Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [50]
"His following in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in particular are very strong," Rachlin went on, "and it's gotten stronger in Turkey since Islamic Party Leader Necmettin Erbakan became Prime Minister of Turkey in the summer of 1996. Ironically, not all of the radicalism has to do with religion. Some of it has to do with the economy. In the 1980s, when Turkey went from being a relatively closed market to being a global one, only a handful of people got rich. The rest stayed poor or got poorer. Those kinds of people are easy converts to anything new."
"The fundamentalists and the big urban underclass are natural allies," said Av Lincoln. "Both are minorities and both want things the wealthy, secular leaders have."
"Larry," the President said, "you mentioned Saudi Arabia. What will the rest of the region do if things escalate between Turkey and Syria?"
"Israel is the big question," said Rachlin. "They take their military cooperation agreement with Turkey very, very seriously. Israel's been flying training missions out of Akinci Air Base west of Ankara for two years now. They've also been slowly upgrading Turkey's 164 Phantom F-4s to the more sophisticated Phantom 2000s."
"Mind you," Colon pointed out, "Israel didn't just do that out of the goodness of their hearts. They were paid six hundred million dollars to do that."
"That's right," Rachlin agreed. "But in the event of war, Israel will still continue to provide spare parts, possibly ammunition, and certainly intelligence to Turkey. It's the same kind of arrangement Israel signed with Jordan back in 1994. There will probably be no direct military intervention unless Israel is attacked. However, if Israel permits Turkey to fly from its territory for a two-sided slam at Syria, you can be pretty sure that Damascus will attack Israel."
"For the record," said Vanzandt, "that 'bracketing the enemy' idea works both ways. Syria and Greece have been talking about forging a military relationship so that either of them could hit Turkey from two directions."
"Talk about a marriage made in Hell," said Lincoln. "Greece and Syria have virtually no other common ground."
"Which should tell you how much they both hate Turkey," Burkow pointed out.
"What about the other nations in the region?" asked the President.
"Iran will certainly intensify efforts to promote their puppet parties in Ankara," Colon said, "calling for general strikes and marches, but they'll stay out of this militarily. They don't need to become involved."
"Unless Armenia gets pulled in," Lincoln said.
"Right," said Colon, "which we'll get to in a second. Iraq will almost certainly use the excuse of troop movements to attack Kurds operating on their border with Syria. And once Iraq is mobilized, there's always the possibility that they'll do something to provoke Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or even their old enemy Iran. But as Av said, the big question we have is about Armenia."
The Secretary of State nodded. "Armenia is almost entirely Armenian Orthodox. If the government there fears that Turkey is going to go Islamic, they may have no choice but to jump into any conflict to protect their Own border. If that happens, Azerbaijan, which is mostly Muslim, will almost certainly use that as an excuse to try and reclaim the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which they lost to Armenia in skirmishes in 1994."
"And which Turkey has publicly stated belongs to Azerbaijan," Colon said. "That creates tension within Turkey for those who support their religious brethren in Armenia. On top of everything else, we could have civil war in Turkey over events in two neighboring countries."
"This might be a good time to push the expansion of NATO," Lincoln pointed out. "Bring Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the fold to keep them stabilized. Use them as a breakwater."
"We'll never be able to make that happen in time," Burkow said.
Lincoln smiled. "Then it's best to start right away."
The President shook his head. "Av, I don't want us distracted by that now. Those countries will side with us and we'll support them.