PAUL WILLIAMS

International Relations Professor

MARCH 26, 2003 · Paul Williams is an assistant professor of international relations at Bilkent University in Ankara. Originally from Sacramento, Calif., he has been teaching in the Turkish capital for five years. Turkey and the United States have argued diplomatically for the past few months over allowing American forces to invade Iraq from Turkish soil. Just before the U.S.-led war with Iraq began, Paul Williams talked to his students about Turkey's role in the coming conflict. Here's his War Diary.

Some of the conversation involved one student claiming that Turkey had no troops at that time in northern Iraq. To be sort of devil's advocate, I claimed that there were many reports suggesting otherwise, that Turkey had something like 2,000 to 3,000 troops there to prevent the former PKK terrorist group from regrouping.

The next part of the conversation involved me making the point that Turkey would probably help the U.S. because it was a little bit short on friends, either in the region or in Europe. The response, which sort of surprised me, was that the U.S. also needs a lot of friends because it is quickly losing them over its conduct of this Iraqi disarmament issue.

I was a bit shocked, I suppose, looking at it from the perspective of an American. Perhaps we don't see ourselves in the world as other people do. I didn't feel as though I was trying to act as a U.S. government spokesman, but I felt like maybe I was forced to do so just for the sake of making a point that all countries could be expected to act in their national interests or their perceived national interests regardless of what international law has to say on the matter.

You know, the world is not a black-and-white world. It wasn't just, the U.S. was all evil on one side and everyone else is doing things for purely idealistic reasons.

	Bilkent University Dept. of International Relations