November 6, 2009
Turkey Set to Host President of Sudan
by Nicholas Birch and Sarah Childress
The Wall Street Journal
Turkey will receive Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir next week and has no plans to arrest him despite his indictment by an international court for war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, senior Turkish officials said Thursday.
Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, will be the most Western country Mr. Bashir has been able to visit since the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a warrant for his arrest in March. The senior Turkish officials, who declined to be identified, said the warrant wasn't binding on Turkey as it isn't a signatory to the ICC. They also said an arrest could upset the peace process in Darfur.
Mr. Bashir has visited Turkey twice in the past three years, triggering debate within Turkey over the propriety of hosting him each time. Next week's visit would come less than a month after Ankara canceled routine military exercises with Israel, triggering concerns that Turkey is shifting its focus from long-term allies in the West to neighbors in the Middle East. The government has denied any such strategic shift.
Turkey has also been pushing to secure entry to the European Union.
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