http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1016/p07s02-woeu.htmlISTANBUL – Turks were already skeptical of their leaders' decision last week to allow troops to be sent to neighboring Iraq in line with US pleas for backup.
But following a car bomb attack outside the Turkish embassy in Baghdad Tuesday, many are growing more leery of letting Turkish troops get bogged down in a violent quagmire - and thrown into a job which they may be unprepared to handle.
Unlike the US and Britain, Turkey makes military service compulsory for all men. Given that well over 90 percent of Turks opposed the US-launched war against Iraq, the young conscripts heading to Iraq's volatile "Sunni Triangle" may be less motivated additions to the coalition of the willing.
"You cannot send compulsory, conscripted soldiers outside your national territory," says Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Riza Kocukoglu, who served for 43 years in the military before joining the staff of Istanbul's Yeditepe University. "Even the American and British soldiers there are very demoralized."
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