IT’S NOT ABOUT THE WEST: TURKEY’S EYES ON THE EASTERN FRONT
Newsweek Magazine
November 5, 2007
International Edition
Turkey is risking ties to the U.S. and Europe for a simple reason:
its eyes are on the eastern front.
By Owen Matthews and Seth Colter Walls; With Sami Kohen in Istanbul,
Kevin Peraino and Michael Hastings in Qandil and Babak Dehghanpisheh
in BaghdadWith in Istanbul and in Qandil and in Baghdad
SECTION: WORLD AFFAIRS; World Affairs Vol. 150 No. 19 ISSN: 0163-7061
Iraqi law stops at a small checkpoint at the base of the Qandil
Mountains, 40 kilometers short of the Turkish border. The little post
is manned by a handful of Iraqi Kurdish fighters loyal–officially,
at least–to the government in Baghdad. Beyond, up an unpaved track, is
a no-man’s land controlled by outlaw groups of Kurdish guerrillas who
have used the rugged tangle of peaks to launch attacks inside Turkey,
which have left more than 95 Turkish troops dead this year alone.
But if Turkey has its way, Qandil won’t be bandit country for much
longer. While Washington has been promising to clean up Qandil
for years, it has done nothing. So Ankara has taken matters into
its own hands, sending nearly 100,000 Turkish troops to the border
area. Already, according to Turkish military sources not authorized
to speak on the record, 11 Turkish battalions have been deployed
on the Cudi, Kato, Gabar, Kupeli and Namaz mountains, surrounding
Qandil in a ring of steel. Turkish F-16 jets have been flying bombing
sorties up to 50 kilometers inside Iraq, and special mountain-fighting
commandos have launched 300-strong raids at least 10 kilometers into
Iraq. Turkey, it seems, is finally taking control of its eastern front.
But it’s not just in Iraq. Along its eastern borders, Turkey is forging
closer ties with its neighbors–reinventing relationships that date
back to when Ottoman Turkey was the colonial master of much of the
Middle East. And small wonder, considering what is happening on
Turkey’s western flank. In Brussels, Turkey has found its hopes of
joining the European Union snubbed by Turko-skeptics like France’s
Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel, who have talked of a
kind of second-rank "associate" membership instead.
At the same time, Ankara’s old NATO ally the United States has–in
Turkish eyes–not only destabilized its neighborhood with a reckless
war in Iraq, but also failed to clean up the mess it has made by
refusing to crack down on Kurdish guerrillas in Qandil. And while
dozens of Turkish soldiers have died in Kurdish rebel ambushes, the
U.S. Congress has been spending its time considering a resolution
that would label the massacres of Ottoman Armenians a "genocide," one
of the most controversial episodes in modern Turkish history. "Turkey
will not move away from the West by its choice," says Ahmet Davutoglu,
chief foreign-policy adviser to Turkey’s prime minister.
"But if Western countries continue to make the same mistakes, Turkey
has other alternatives."
Given these wobbling relations with the West, it is perfectly logical
for Ankara to start looking east. While the United States may view
Iran and Syria as rogue states run by tin-pot dictators, to the Turks
they’re major regional players with established governments and,
indeed, civilizations they have been doing business with for centuries.
For evidence of this strengthened bond, look how far Ankara has moved
on Syria. Ten years ago, Turkey, with the wholehearted support of the
United States, was threatening to invade Syria for providing shelter
to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Now, the Turks have built
a soccer stadium and multimillion-dollar shopping mall in Syria. The
new Damascus Stock Exchange, due to open next year, is modeled on its
Istanbul counterpart. Officials in Ankara also backed Syria in its
protest of last month’s Israeli raid–and have backed Syrian claims
that Israel must return the Golan Heights as part of any peace deal
with the Palestinians.
Indeed, Turkey has gone out of its way to position itself as a talking
shop and power broker, equally at home talking to Bashar Assad
as George Bush. This week, as part of a major diplomatic effort,
Turkey will host a conference of all of Iraq’s neighbors. And the
feeling between Turkey and Syria appears to be mutual. Assad has
just visited Ankara as an honored ally and, as if to underscore the
tightening bond, Syria’s ambassador to Washington proudly told an
audience of Syrian expats in the United States two weeks ago that
"our closest ally is not Iran, it’s Turkey," according to one attendee.
The same week, Assad expressed support for Turkey’s right to act in
"self-defense" against north Iraq. Although Iraqi Foreign Minister
Hoshyar Zebari dismisses Assad’s support as a ploy to "appease the
Turks" and ease Syria’s "isolation," key figures in Turkey’s Justice
and Development (AK) Party government say creating regional ties is
a key part of its national strategy. Egemen Bagis, a top adviser to
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says that since the U.S.
attempt "to promote democracy by military means has failed," it is
time to try "Turkish democracy promotion." His formula: trade, open
dialogue and attempting to defuse threats wherever they may come from.
To this end, Turkey has also found common ground with Iran. It will
soon finalize a $3.5 billion deal to develop gas deposits there and
finish the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to Turkey–in
defiance of strong opposition by the United States. Tellingly, Turkey
also refused to take a hostile attitude toward Tehran’s nuclear
program, preferring to use what Turkish President Abdullah Gul calls
"very constructive" relations to try to persuade Tehran to comply with
the United Nations. For its part, Tehran is helping out Turkey in its
fight against the Kurds in Qandil, according to Turkish officials,
by passing on intelligence information about the Party for Free Life
in Kurdistan, or PJAK, a PKK affiliate, as well as by shelling PKK
and PJAK positions.
At base, Turkey’s eastward turn stems from the nation’s deep
disappointment with old friends in the West. Over the last five years,
Turkey’s elite has spent enormous political capital in an ambitious
reform program, closely guided by the EU, with the hope of one day
obtaining full membership into the club of European nations.
But in the Turkish view, the EU has reneged on its earlier promises.
"As the Sarkozys and other [Turko-skeptics] make it quite clear that
Turkey isn’t getting into the EU in any near-time scenario, Turkey
has begun consolidating its relationships," says Joshua Landis,
an expert on the region at the University of Oklahoma.
Adding to the pressure to look east for partners is the sentiment on
the Turkish Street, which increasingly dismisses the benefits of entry
into the EU. Between 2004 and 2006, the percentage of Turks who viewed
membership in the EU as a "good thing" fell by 19 points to 54 percent,
according to the German Marshall Fund. Anti-U.S. sentiment is rising,
too. A Pew Foundation poll last month found that 66 percent of Turks
agree that "Western countries want to divide and break Turkey like they
divided and broke the Ottoman Empire in the past." More worryingly,
an increasingly large number of Turks are also critical of American
culture and values. More than 80 percent of Turks now say they
"dislike American ideas about democracy," up 31 points since 2002,
and 68 percent dislike "American music, movies and television," up
22 points. Even Prime Minister Erdogan is alarmed at the shift. He
warned earlier this year that until recently, Turks who disliked
the U.S. government still appreciated American people and their
culture–but now he sees an "emerging antipathy toward the Americans
and the U.S. lifestyle."
To a certain extent, Washington is in an impossible position. The
Turks and the Kurds are two of its closest allies in the region. Even
the PKK, though nominally Marxist, are pro-American, like their Iraqi
Kurdish protectors. PKK chief of daily operations Murat Karayilan
spoke glowingly to NEWSWEEK about democracy, human rights and "Mr.
Bush’s new Middle East project" in September. He claimed his fighters
could be a valuable ally for the U.S. against Islamic fundamentalism.
And PJAK’s Germany-based leader, Rahman Haji Ahmadi, made a trip
to Washington last July to ask for support to foment regime change
inside Iran–though he claims he was snubbed and had only "limited
contact" with American officials. "If someday our common interests
[the United States’ and PJAK’s] are on the same line, we’re ready,
we can negotiate," says Beryar Gabare, a top PJAK commander in Iraq.
Still, it is "shortsighted" for Washington to believe that cooperation
with Kurd leaders is more valuable than a strategic alliance with
Turkey, says Morton Abramowitz, the former U.S. ambassador to
Turkey. "We are in a defining moment," he says. But now, and only
belatedly, is Washington coming to realize that if it does nothing
to mend its ties with Turkey, it risks losing the relationship
altogether. Last week the White House fought successfully to stall
Congress’ Armenian resolution. Washington then offered to share
information about the whereabouts of PKK bases with Turkish military
intelligence. Helping the Turks to clean house in Qandil could, if
handled right, even mark a turning point in a relationship that is
surely damaged, but not yet beyond repair.
Which way Turkey ends up leaning remains a matter of enormous debate
within the Turkish government–one which has stood many traditional
affiliations on their head. Turkey’s AK Party has Islamist roots,
for instance, yet favors sticking to a program of joining the EU and
maintaining friendly relations with the United States, despite all the
setbacks. The Army, by contrast, has traditionally been close to the
United States–yet is pushing hard to go into Iraq, in defiance of
Washington. In fact, it seems that ideology is not much of a factor
in Ankara’s shift eastward. Rather, says RAND Corporation analyst
Stephen Larrabee, pragmatism drives policy. "This isn’t all about
Turkey turning its back on the West," he says. "It’s simply a matter of
Turkish national interests." In other words, which hemisphere can offer
Ankara a better return on its diplomatic investments? At the moment,
a Turkish backlash against the West remains a serious danger–and not
just for the narrow reasons of Mideast diplomacy. If the West can’t
manage to engage with the Islamic world’s most democratic and liberal
member, there is little hope it can find common ground with the rest.
With Sami Kohen in Istanbul, Kevin Peraino and Michael Hastings in
Qandil and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Baghdad