No Means Yes

Apparently, the Turkish decision wasn't final:

ANKARA, Turkey, March 2 — Under intense American pressure, a senior Turkish official indicated today that his government would ask Parliament a second time to allow American troops to use the country as a base against Iraq, a day after lawmakers here rejected such a plan.

Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis said after a marathon meeting of senior officials that his government would take a resolution to Parliament later this week, after the government completes an assessment of the first vote.

I'm not going to even speculate about what "intense American pressure" might mean, except to say that is probably wasn't a horse's head left in somebody's bed. Probably.

As for what "an assessment of the first vote" might mean, I'm going to guess that it means identifying the ruling party MPs that said they would vote for the thing but didn't (thus defying the whip both literally and figuratively) and rounding up their families to be held as hostages until the next vote.

Project Democracy marches on.

billmon

Posted March 02, 2003 03:37 PM | Comments (19)