Lost in the Valley of the Wolves

By Ken Silverstein and Sebastian Sosman

Three months ago, the Bush Administration appointed retired Air Force General Joseph Ralston to be U.S. “Special Envoy for Countering the PKK,” or Kurdistan Workers Party. Ralston's job, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, was to work with the governments in Ankara and Baghdad “to eliminate the terrorist threat of the PKK and other terrorist groups operating in northern Iraq and across the Turkey-Iraq border.” But it appears that Ralston is representing the interests of the shareholders of Lockheed Martin rather than the interests of the American people.

First, some background on the PKK. The United States, the European Union, and Turkey classify the PKK as a terrorist organization due to the group's bloody guerrilla warfare against Turkish civilians. But many Kurds see the PKK as freedom fighters, valiantly battling for political and cultural autonomy. Having long fought for the creation of an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey, the PKK abandoned armed struggle in 1999 and became a political party. But it still has roughly 5,000 fighters, many of whom found safe haven across the border in northern Iraq.

In 2003, U.S. forces were involved in an embarrassing incident during which they arrested, detained, and interrogated members of a Turkish Special Forces unit who were hunting the PKK in Iraqi territory. This incident, which was not widely reported in the United States, enraged certain chauvinistic elements of Turkish society and served as the backdrop for the 2006 film Valley of the Wolves Iraq, which starred Billy Zane and Gary Busey.

In the film, according to a story in the Washington Post, “U.S. soldiers shoot small children at point-blank range, harvest kidneys from Iraqi prisoners for shipment to Tel Aviv, blow a Muslim cleric out of his minaret and, to top it all off, display utter contempt for Turkish foreign policy.” The Post noted that Valley of the Wolves Iraq “set a box office record in its first weekend, after opening in more theaters than any movie in Turkish history.”

Thus the Bush Administration, presumably hoping to stave off a Valley of the Wolves Iraq II: Attack of yet more evil Americans, created the office of the special envoy—someone in charge of “coordinating” with Turkey and Iraq in their efforts to counter the PKK. At the time, it was not clear why Ralston was chosen for the post. As a former supreme allied commander for NATO and vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he would appear overqualified for the job.

Then came the mid-September announcement (just weeks after Ralston's appointment) that Turkey would be purchasing thirty new F-16's from Lockheed Martin. Weeks later, the Turkish government ruled out purchasing any Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes. This leaves only one option—Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. A deal between Lockheed and Turkey would be worth as much as $10 billion.

Did Special Envoy Ralston lobby on behalf of Lockheed Martin during his encounters with Turkish officials? It seems likely. Ralston sits on the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin and serves as vice chairman of The Cohen Group, a lobbying firm that has represented Lockheed since 2004. On August 11 of this year, seventeen days before he was named Special Envoy, Ralston was appointed to The Cohen Group team that lobbies for Lockheed.

As Kurdish activist and blogger Mizgin Yilmaz has explained in detail, Ralston has close ties to Turkey through his military service and through his seat on the advisory board of the American Turkish Council. Lockheed Martin is a leading member and financial sponsor of this council, which “is dedicated to effectively strengthening U.S.-Turkish relations through the promotion of commercial, defense, technology and cultural relations.”

It's hard to understand how the Bush Administration could appoint a special envoy with so many conflicts of interest, but Lockheed's corporate slogan says it all: “We never forget who we're working for.” Neither, it seems, does General Ralston.

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