It’s true that high-level visits to Turkey have recently intensified. Those intensified visits will continue. Looking at regional developments, it’s obvious that there are a lot of hot issues to be discussed between Turkey and its allies, including the United States,’ say Turkish Foreign Ministry. In a cascade effect over the last 10 days, after a German-based news agency report on the “secret agenda” of the high-level visits by U.S. officials to Ankara in December, the Turkish media's curiosity has kept both the Turkish foreign minister himself and ministry officials occupied with statements of denial, insistently and firmly trying to explain that there has been no behind-the-scenes efforts to jointly develop measures with the United States against Iran and Syria. Media reports based on a sole media report -- without having any new facts added -- stemmed from the German news agency ddp Nachrichtenagentur's Dec. 23 report saying that “U.S. plans to attack Iran next year were on the agenda of both Goss and Mueller's talks in Ankara,” in reference to separate visits by U.S. CIA Director Porter Goss and another key U.S. security official, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. Goss arrived in Ankara on Dec. 11, only two days after Mueller. “The visits that took place in recent days have nothing to do with Iran or Syria. These visits are [contributions] towards strengthening bilateral relations [between Turkey and the United States],” Gül said the following day after the German report was released. However, he had to reiterate a few times remarks in which he had dismissed the presence of a common policy towards the two neighboring countries, while describing such notions as “fictitious.”
