"Turkey Willing to do More to Build up Afghan Forces"
Turkey is willing to do more to train Afghan security forces, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said after calls from Afghan and US leaders to help build up the army and police in their fight with Taliban insurgents.
"We need to do more to help Afghans own their future, and how to do it is by helping them with building their own military and police forces," Babacan told Reuters in an interview late on Sunday. "We are willing to do more in the area of training," he said.
Turkey currently has some 800 troops serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan, most of them based in the capital, Kabul. With the second biggest army in NATO and as the only Muslim country in the alliance, Turkey is uniquely situated to help.
Afghans still train at Turkey's military staff colleges, and Turkish troops help train the Afghan army in Afghanistan and the police at a training center Ankara set up near Kabul.
But in meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other senior ministers, Babacan said they had all asked for more. "All I am hearing from them is 'you have very good military capabilities, you have good expertise in this area and we would like to get more help from you.' ... That is what the Afghan authorities have been requesting from us again and again," he said.
But Babacan, like US commanders, stressed there was no purely military solution to end the conflict with the hard-line Islamist Taliban, which has now entered its eighth year. "Maybe more soldiers are necessary, that's another technical issue the military experts should look into, but on the other hand by only having more troops, we don't think the problems in Afghanistan will be solved," he said.
Turkish companies are Afghanistan's biggest private investors, and Turkish organizations operate a number of private Turkish schools, mainly in the more peaceful north. Turkey has also now begun a $12 million project to build a military high school. "It is ultimately going to be very important to win the people of Afghanistan, to win their hearts and to win their minds. If the people of Afghanistan are not satisfied, if they are not convinced, then we all have a very difficult job here," Babacan said.
In the meantime, Babacan visited the Afghan cities of Mazar-i Sharif and Shibirgan on Monday and inaugurated Kazanci Baba High School, constructed in Shibirgan with contributions from Turkey. Babacan also inaugurated a sports complex at Kabul University constructed by the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA). Babacan later visited an Afghan-Turkish friendship children's hospital.
Babacan visits Turkish-Afghan high school for girls
Foreign Minister Ali Babacan visited a Turkish-Afghan high school for girls, opened by the Çağ Education Association in Kabul. During his visit to the high school, Babacan said Turkish state and nongovernmental organizations are contributing to infrastructural work in Afghanistan. "You are Afghanistan's future, so you have to work hard," Babacan told the students. Speaking with the pupils in Turkish for a while, Babacan congratulated them on their fluent Turkish. A student also said she had known nothing about Turkey before she attended the school. "But I received a very good education at this school, and I thank Turkey," she added.
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