TURKEY’S ALARMISTS, POLLYANNAS HAVE WRONG TAKE
By Frederick Kempe
Bloomberg
April 18 2007
April 18 (Bloomberg) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
a man the country’s secularists suspect is an Islamist wolf in
sheep’s clothing, once compared democracy to a bus. "You ride it
until your destination and then you step off," he said at the time
as Istanbul’s mayor.
The secularists now suspect that Erdogan is about to reach his Islamic
central station after more than four years of getting there.
They argue that he plans to use a presidential election process that
began this week to extend his Islamic-based party’s near-monopoly
of power, either by nominating himself or a close ally. He already
controls the parliament that will elect the president, the government
and most municipalities.
That concern brought a quarter-million secularist protesters onto
the streets of Ankara last weekend.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whose tenure ends May 16, has used his
seven-year term in a mostly ceremonial job to veto a record number of
bills he deemed unconstitutional because of their Islamist drift. He
blocked the appointment of hundreds of officials on the same grounds.
Yet Turkey’s alarmists, who warn the West about what they call the
Talibanization of their country, are mistaken. So are the Pollyannas,
who perceive no change in Turkey’s nature.
"They are both wrong," says Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to
Turkey who is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
His point is that even while the U.S. and Europe must eschew
Islamophobia, they need to accept that the shifts in Turkey will make
it a more difficult partner on a host of issues, from Iran to Israel.
Culturally Distant
Turkey’s leaders are culturally distant from the Western diplomats
accustomed to the sorts of Turks whose European inclinations were
evident in the wines they order and the opera and concert houses they
attend. The Erdogan group is less connected to Europe, friendlier to
the Arab world, cooler toward Israel, and more likely to negotiate
over tea in the afternoon than merlot at midnight.
Yet the job of a superpower isn’t to engage in misguided debate about
"Who Lost Turkey?" but to understand its democratic forces and tap
them in a way that keeps Turkey rooted in the West while making it
a more appealing model for the Middle East.
To do that, the European Union must be careful not to further distance
itself from Ankara and its membership aspirations. The U.S.
must avoid reacting with disregard to plummeting Turkish public opinion
toward America. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also should resist pending
legislation that would further inflame Islamic-oriented nationalism
by declaring that Turkish killings of Armenians in 1915 were genocide
and not just a massacre. The timing of this often-delayed non-binding
resolution couldn’t be worse.
Kurdish Irritant
The U.S. government also must be careful not to underestimate rising
and legitimate Turkish concern over Kurdish terrorists operating from
northern Iraq and in easy striking distance of its border.
It’s useful to dissect the flaws in the alarmist and Pollyanna
arguments to come up with the right approach to Turkey.
The alarmists overestimate the danger of Talibanization. As troubling
as the Erdogan juggernaut may seem, it grows out of a Western
tradition and is locked on a pro-business course with 7 percent
growth levels since 2003. Turkish stock markets remain among the
world’s top performers, and Erdogan’s fiscal balances have made him
an International Monetary Fund darling. Any move away from democracy
toward an Islamic state would undermine that and his party popularity.
More Influence
He has remained close to fellow faith-based leader George W. Bush
even while improving relations with Hamas, Syria and Iran.
Condoleezza Rice has made close ties with Erdogan a priority,
recognizing that Turkey has more influence in the Middle East now
than ever under its secularist leadership.
Turkey, for all its flaws, still is the best model for Islamist and
secularist co-existence within a democratic state that is friendly
to the West. It remains the most-advanced democracy in the Islamic
world — a position all the more important for its borders with Syria,
Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.
Yet the Pollyannas also are wrong in underestimating the dangers.
Erdogan is shifting Turkey more quickly than is easy to measure,
and in some municipalities new laws, such as those regulating the
sale and taxing of alcohol, are raising concerns. Without the veto
power of the president, this trend away from the secularist state is
almost certain to accelerate.
U.S. Strains
Strains with the U.S. over northern Iraq, and the failure of Washington
or its Kurdish allies to control terrorists, are intensifying. The
secularist military’s top officer called for intervention in northern
Iraq to combat Kurdish terrorists, saying all he lacked was political
approval. It was the military’s way of reminding Erdogan that it is
unhappy with his leadership and remains Turkey’s ultimate arbiter
even if he becomes president.
The best the secularists can hope for, however, is that Erdogan won’t
run himself, but will nominate more secular figures such as Defense
Minister Vecdi Gonul or parliamentarian Koksal Toptan.
What is clear is that the West needs to look past the distractions
of Iraq and pay more attention to a country that may be even more
vital to any dreams of democratizing Islamic countries.
Erdogan’s bus is speeding forward and wise Western policy could help
influence the destination by keeping the road open and providing
incentives that act as guardrails.
At this point, we should have learned the perils of wishful thinking
and the value in the Islamic world of embracing the best model
available.
(Frederick Kempe, president of the Atlantic Council, is a Bloomberg
News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Frederick Kempe in Washington
at [email protected] .