TURKEY’S POLITICAL-EMOTIONAL TRANSITION
ISN
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY NETWORK
8 Oct 2009
Turkey is engaged in a renegotiation between its pro-west commitments
and its family ties to east and south. This is part of a wider shift
in regional relationships and perspectives, says Carsten Wieland
for openDemocracy.
By Carsten Wieland for openDemocracy.net
Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmed Dawood Oglu made a telling remark
during a visit to Damascus in late August 2009. The immediate
question concerned a dispute between Syria and Iraq over alleged
Syrian involvement in a series of bombings in Baghdad, and Turkish
attempts at mediation. The foreign minister responded: "For Turkey,
both Syria and Iraq are strategic allies, as well as our brothers and
our neighbours. This is a family matter for us, which is why we want
to solve this dispute through negotiations to prevent any escalation."
Ahmed Dawood Oglu’s response was amply, even gleefully, reported
in Syrian state newspapers. No wonder, for his remark has profound
implications for Turkey’s foreign-policy orientation. For to refer to
Turkey’s relationships with Iraq and Syria as an internal "family
matter" goes beyond diplomatic courtesy; and it is only one of
several indications of a changing approach and rhetoric – even more
fundamentally, of a different emotional discourse in Turkey. Whereas
politicians of continental European countries have often referred to
the European Union or its predecessors as "the European family of
states", Turkey is coming to see its more intimate bonds as lying
not with Europe but rather with the former antagonists of Ottoman
colonial times: its Arab-Muslim neighbours.
The evidence is clear from opinion-polls and many other indices. The
broad aspiration to European Union membership persists, but frustration
with perceived EU double-standards in its enlargement policy and
"broken promises" concerning Turkey’s full-membership status reinforces
the trend. In 62% of Turks said it would be a good thing for their
country to join the European Union; by late 2008, 42% expressed the
same view.
Many Europeans and Americans sense the change, and their worries about
Turkey are increasing as a result. The ensuing debate often tends to
resort to the loaded and provocative question ("who lost Turkey?") or
the tired stereotype (the east-west bridge that needs repair). It is
ultimately for Turkey and the Turks to decide the future direction of
the country. What is clear is that Turkey’s strategic and diplomatic
position – to its neighbours in the region, and to leading powers
beyond – is more crucial than ever.
A great reversal
This fluid situation marks a great difference from only two
decades ago, after the fall of communism in Europe after 1989. A
new epoch started with Turkey – a Nato member and one of the most
important "frontline" states – deepening its ties within the western
alliance. Turkey’s role seemed all the more valuable in the context of
rising ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and the Caucasus, the call of
Islamist mujahideen to support Muslims in the former Ottoman province
of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the geopolitical uncertainties of the
post-Soviet space.
There was no doubt where Ankara belonged. In 1996-97, a still firmly
secularist Turkey signed a military alliance and then a free-trade
agreement with Israel (which Ankara had recognised in 1949, the first
Muslim-majority state to do so). In 1998, Turkey and Syria came
close to war amid accusations that Damascus backed Kurdish rebels
in Turkey, and that Ankara was withholding precious water from the
Euphrates river. At the last minute, Syria acceded to Turkish demands
by expelling the leader of the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK),
Abdullah Ocalan.
In the course of the 2000s, however, five emergent factors began to
put a severe strain on Turkey’s western orientation.
First, the final breakdown of the Oslo peace process between Israel and
the Palestinians. When Turkey and Israel sealed their military c s,
polarisation in the middle east was at a low and a Palestinian state
seemed to be in reach. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September
2001, the Israeli government jumped on the bandwagon of George W Bush’s
"war on (Islamist) terror" and handily incorporated their Palestinian
problem into this ideological context
Second, the electoral victory of the religiously inspired Adalet
ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice & Development Party / AKP) in November
2002. The Turkish state had encouraged the dissemination of Islamic
thought as a welcome distraction from communist seductions during the
cold war. But a process once begun could not easily be controlled:
these ideas trickled into minds and institutions, and – after a few
thwarted attempts – came to challenge the stalwarts of the ancien
regime.
Third, the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by a United States-led
coalition, accompanied by George W Bush’s polarising rhetoric vis-a-vis
the Arab and Muslim world. This has had two effects. First, the sense
of religious identity and collective feelings of injustice (which
included a rising identification with the Palestinian cause) gained
ground in Turkey’s public discourse. Second, the establishment of
Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq alarmed Turkey’s state and military
establishment. As a natural consequence, Turkey drew closer to those
of its neighbours with substantial Kurdish populations (Syria and Iran)
and moved further from the US orbit.
The Ankara parliament’s refusal to support the invasion of Iraq –
including a rejection of the AKP government’s agreement to grant the
US access to Turkey’s airbase in Incirlik, and a denial to the US
of overflight rights during the war – was a historic moment. Arabs
cheered, knowing that their own puppet parliaments would never have
succeeded in thus confronting the US administration – and in the name
of democracy.
The new distrust between Turkey and the United States / Israel has been
intensified by subsequent events – among them the Israeli military
operations in Lebanon in July- ber 2008 – January 2009. The Turkish
government has condemned Israel’s inflicting of heavy Palestinian
civilian casualties and its targeted killings of Hamas figures,
and has received Hamas leaders in Ankara. Turks questioned by polling
surveys show even less sympathy for the United States than their fellow
Muslims in Arab countries, in Iran or in Pakistan. Turkey’s president,
Abdullah Gul, was swift congratulate his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad after the latter’s declared election victory in June 2009.
Fourth, a Syria-Turkey rapprochement. Against the background of these
evolving tensions, Syria’s president visited Turkey for the first time
in January 2004. Bashar al-Assad’s trip represented the beginning of a
new relationship between the two countries. By the end of 2004 they had
signed a free-trade agreement, started to clear the mines laid at their
border, and opened the way to cooperative civil and military projects.
The narrowing of Syria’s foreign-policy options after the Iraq war (and
its military withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005) meant that it benefited
greatly from the reconciliation with Turkey. The longstanding border
dispute was quietly put aside: Syrian maps sill portrayed Turkey’s
contemporary province of Alexandretta (including the cities of
Antakya/Hatay and Iskanderun) as Syrian territory, but in September
2005 the official Syrian newspaper Tishreen for the first time printed
a map without the disputed areas. The new realities no longer leave
room for nationalist revisionism.
Fifth, an increase of tension between Turkey and the European Union. It
seemed for a time in the early 2000s that the AKP’s success would lead
to a rapprochement between Turkey and European institutions. But it
soon became clear that the road ahead would be much bumpier and more
contradictory than many had predicted.
Turkey’s relations with Europe appeared to be on track as late as
3 October 2005, when the fundamental decision was made officially
to open accession talks. The electoral cycle in France and Ge power
governments in these crucial European states that were opposed to
Turkish membership of the European Union.
The Turkish side was enraged by talk of a "privileged partnership"
and other such substitutes for full belonging, regarding these as a
betrayal after the decision of 2005. Ankara also pointed to Bulgaria
and Romania, accepted into the EU in 2004 despite these states’ shaky
credentials in some areas. Many Turks had felt an injury to their
national pride when their country had been rebuffed at the Luxembourg
summit in 1997 ; now, in the context of the anti-Muslim ambience of
the Bush administration and its close allies, they thought that an
element of religious prejudice was at work.
A creative confusion
The implication of the above might appear that Turkey is already "lost"
for the west. But the very way this point is expressed itself deserves
scrutiny – for the identity of "the west" (and many of its aspects
(the relation between the European Union and the United States, the
place of Israel) are less certain than ever. The fluid alliances and
cleavages of interest around the Bosphorus also make the Turkish issue
all the more complicated and elusive of such simplifying categories.
Two examples illustrate this complexity. The first is secularism,
whose defence as a core value would make the Kemalist elite the
"natural partner" of the European political class. The desired
outcome is that support for Turkish secularism would contain and in
time reverse opposing trends: the spread of Islamic ideas and rules
in many Turkish neighbourhoods, the growth of Arab-Muslim influence,
and the increase of religious intolerance (particularly against Jews,
whose millet communities were integral to Ottoman society).
The problem is that Kemalists in Turkey have failed consistently
to stand for civil and human rights, freedom of speech, and other
core "western" principles – embodied too in the European Union’s
acquiscommunitaire to which aspiring entrants to the union are obliged
to integrate into their own law befo er, Kemalists are profoundly
nationalist to the extent that it is hard to imagine them giving up
core aspects of national sovereignty in favour of European institutions
and concepts (whereas politicians inspired by Islamic ideas, for whom
the umma is in the end the sole legitimate collectivity, have tended
to have less of a stake in nationalism).
The second example is civil liberty, and political and economic
liberalism more generally. Their defence as a core value would mean
that the European political class would find more common ground with
the moderate Islamists of the AKP. After all, the AKP has done more
than any secular government in Turkey in pushing through reforms of the
judiciary, of civil-military relations, and of human-rights practices.
It can be said then that the Islamist AKP have fought and won
elections on an aggressively pro-European platform (in part in order
to secure the votes of the moderate, commercial middle class), while
the Kemalist secularists remained in their trenches of an illiberal,
obsolete 19th century ethno-nationalism. The political spectrum looks
likely to remain polarised between (broadly non-extreme) Islamists
and Kemalists; a third political force may one day develop a winning
combination of liberalism and secularism, though there is no sign of
that at present. In the meantime, it is no surprise that many western
observers feel confused when they observe Turkey’s politics.
An Arab-Turkish turn
These new realities are especially hard for Turkish secularists to
accept. The popular discourse promoted in recent years by successive
American presidents (Barack Obama included) of Turkey as the "model"
democratic state in the Muslim world often leaves them feeling
offended, excluded and even betrayed. They see the west as supporting
the "wrong" side, thus endangering Turkey’s westward-looking tradition
rooted in the tanzimat (Ottoman reforms) of the 19th century.
At the same time, Turkey has also been awarded a kind of "model-state"
character from both moderate Arab Is is represents a sharp change
from many Arabs’ condemnation of Turkey for its imperial past and its
pro-Nato and pro-Israel present. In addition, Islamists recall Kemal
Ataturk’s abolition of the caliphate in 1924. For different reasons,
many moderate Arab Islamists and among the Arab secularist opposition
today see in Turkey a working model of democracy in dire contrast to
their own authoritarian (and secular) Arab regimes.
The fact that Turkey has gained new and wide credibility in the Arab
world in recent years emphasises the importance of Turkey’s internal
emotional discourse. The AKP government may have made great efforts
on the judicial and political levels to convince European leaders of
their pro-European sincerity; but on the affective and moral levels,
its and Turkish society’s discourse is drifting towards the Muslim
and the Arab-Muslim world – its agendas, its anxieties, its concerns.
Turkey’s political, military, and social history – and its geographical
position – mean that it will never become fully a middle-eastern
Muslim country. Ankara has through moments of turbulence remained
a reliable and pragmatic political partner for the United States,
the European Union or even Israel; it is still searching for a new
role in a multipolar world; and it is part of the country’s raison
d’etat to seek to improve its relationships with its neighbours.
Such improvement is good for the west as well as for Turkey and its
neighbours – something apparent in Turkey’s mediation efforts in the
Israeli-Syrian portfolio, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, towards
Iran, and perhaps in relation to Georgia-Russia. The United States,
the European states and the United Nations have been responsible for
many have failed peacemaking attempts in the middle east; there is an
opportunity for a regional power with great diplomatic and intelligence
expertise, and that is equally accepted by Arab Muslims and (still)
by Israel, to take up the challenge.
A multipolar future
The AKP government – re-elected with a bigger majorit o maintain
the balance between its neighbours to west, east and south. This is
exemplified by the fact that a day after Turkey’s foreign minister
called Syria and Iraq part of Ankara’s "family", Turkey made a historic
step in opening the way to establishing diplomatic relations with
Armenia. This process of "normalisation" underscores Turkey’s growing
role in the Caucasus, as well as fulfilling an important EU demand –
though the hardest test, recognising the Armenian genocide of 1915,
is still to come.
But there are tests for Europe too in relation to Turkey, which if
anything are accentuated by the greater likelihood of the Lisbon treaty
being ratified after Ireland’s second referendum on 1 October 2009
(and by the second electoral victory of Angela Merkel in Germany on 27
September). Ankara has made progress in its outlook and relationships
that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. For the European
Union to respond to Turkey’s new emotional discourse with one of its
own – drawing on religious and cultural biases, for example – would
be wrong, counterproductive and self-defeating. Europe, after all, is
home to sectarian division in Northern Ireland; to secular Muslims in
Bosnia who in the 1990s resisted an Islamist takeover amid one of the
darkest chapters of their history; and to states that in their foreign
policy have rarely put great emphasis on "western" values such as
secularism or civil liberties. Turkey should be judged on the detail
of its judicial and institutional progress, not on indiscriminate
categories or fuzzy concepts such as civilisational heritage; and
its western partners should receive the same principle of scrutiny.
The degree to which Turkish democracy has matured since 2002 will be
measured once the AKP loses its first election. If Turkey’s pragmatic
and business-oriented middle class uses its influence to contain the
Islamisation of the public sphere and institutions, a modern secular
and/or liberal force might emerge as a political counterweight. If a
more conservative camp prevails in the religious or in the nationalist
sense, further structural changes may occur that could alter Turkey’s
fabric more profoundly.
Meanwhile, a Turkey whose heart at present is turning south and east
will still have to balance its role among a host of interlocutors:
the European Union, the United States and Israel as well as the Muslim
middle east, Russia, the Caucasus, and former Soviet (and Turkic)
central Asia. If and when European Union membership will become
possible remains open, given present conditions. Whatever happens, the
process must remain transparent, fair, and as free of prejudice and
emotionally laden categories as possible. The dangers as well as the
possibilities of Turkey’s region and of a multipolar world make mutual
respect and democratic principle essential conditions of progress.
Carsten Wieland is the author of the book Syria – Ballots or
Bullets? Democracy, Islamism, and Secularism in the Levant (Seattle,
Cune Press, 2006), published in Europe as Syria at Bay: Secularism,
Islamism, and "Pax Americana" (C Hurst, 2006)