Turkey had no skin in the game and they refused to allow the US to drive an armor assault across the Turkish border. Therefore their desires should have been ignored.
Turkey has gone into Iraq multiple times to pursue the PKK. They could care less what the US thinks or does when it comes to the Kurds. They will do what is best in their national interests. And we can’t do a thing about it.
“Therefore their desires should have been ignored. “
I could not agree more, but Bush had difficult realities to fancy-foot around. One is that Turkey is a member of NATO. Another is we have permanent bases there. Still another issue was not further enflaming all the other stuff going on to which Turkey is a party. I think he did what he could. Also, he left significant forces at sea off Turkey and probably got the word through the intel circles that Turkey was trying to get Saddam to shift his northern forces to Kuwait. The Turks probably helped in that, as they had no love for Saddam.
Turkey is trying to re-vamp the Ottoman empire. They are not friends of the other Arabs in the neighborhood and still may play a significant role in Iraq and Syria.
We do cooperate intel-wise with Turkey. Though at this point I wouldn’t share much sensitive stuff with them after what they did to Israel. (Wiped out Israel’s in-place Iranian team by telling the Iranians who they were. Israel and Turkey used to be close when Turkey was secular. The Israelis were meeting their team members in Turkey.)