Brisbane Times , Australia
May 4 2009
Secular Turkey performs a finely tuned balancing act
May 4, 2009
Washington needs Ankara’s soft power in the Muslim world if Barack
Obama’s policy shift in the region is to prove successful. Kirsty
Needham reports.
BARACK OBAMA was welcomed like a rock star in Turkey on his symbolic
first visit as President to a Muslim country last month, as he sent
the message that the US was not at war with Islam.
However, before the month was out, Ankara had summoned the US
ambassador to complain about comments by Mr Obama on the
hypersensitive anniversary of the mass killing of Christian Armenians
by Ottoman Turks in 1915.
Intense lobbying in Washington was not enough, as Ankara had hoped, to
keep contentious language out of Mr Obama’s Armenian speech on April
24. Under pressure from a vocal lobby in the US, Mr Obama avoided the
term genocide but described the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians as "great atrocities". The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, warned Turkey was not a country that could be "flattered and
then fooled".
The US President’s "model partnership" for Western engagement with the
Islamic world is already straining under the backwash of history.
Seeking to leverage Turkey’s soft power in Afghanistan, Iran and
Pakistan, and needing co-operation in Iraq, including the use of
Turkish soil for the exit of US troops, the Obama Administration has
moved quickly to engage with Turkish interests.
Mr Obama publicly backed Turkey’s attempt to join the European
Union. A week before elections in the Turkish north of Cyprus, the US
Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, met the Turkish Cypriot leader
and chief negotiator on the seemingly intractable Cyprus dispute,
Mehmet Ali Talat, in Washington.
In the event Mr Talat’s CTP party lost the election, and the French
President, Nicolas Sarkozy, snorted that Mr Obama should keep out of
EU affairs. A brighter note was the breakthrough announcement, after
prodding from Washington, that Turkey and Armenia had agreed on a road
map to normalise relations that could include the reopening of their
shared border.
"Turkey is a very important country on every foreign policy issue that
the US has to solve in the coming years," said Kadri Gursel, a
columnist with the daily newspaper Milliyet.
"The US needs Turkey. In some places Turkey can offer important
advantages, and in Iraq will play a key role in stability. But with
Afghanistan and Iran I don’t think so.
"The need in Afghanistan is a surge and combat troops; Turkey can’t
offer these, for domestic political reasons and because it cannot
alienate itself from the Islamic world. It can’t shed Muslim blood to
defend pure Western interests."
Burak Akcapar, head of policy planning in Turkey’s Foreign Ministry
and recently returned from several years in the embassy in Washington,
said the Government had told Mr Obama during his visit that the crisis
in Afghanistan could not be tackled solely by military means and had
particularly sent the message that "it doesn’t help when you misfire
on civilian populations. You have to take maximum restraint."
Turkey also bristled when Mrs Clinton said the Pakistani Government
was "basically abdicating to the Taliban".
"Pakistan needs to be appreciated for what it is trying to do in very
difficult circumstances. We have to strengthen the government ¦ and
avoid putting them on the spot publicly," Mr Akcapar said.
Turkey has a large trading relationship with Iran, its second-largest
supplier of gas, and sanctions aimed against Iran’s nuclear program
hurt Turkey more than most.
Mensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Centre at Kultur
University in Istanbul, said Turkey recognised that confrontation with
Iran did not work.
"We don’t perceive any threat from Iran. No one would like to see a
nuclear Iran next to us, but we don’t see them as irrational beings,"
he said. "Iran saw the US as a great satan; it won’t be easy to change
¦ The US is reading this properly and sending correct signals to
them to boost their confidence ¦ but you shouldn’t expect any
immediate change in Iranian foreign policy."
Mr Akcapar said early indications from Syria and the new Israeli
government of Benjamin Netanyahu were that both sides were willing to
resume Turkish-mediated negotiations over the Golan
Heights. Similarly, Afghan and Pakistani leaders have met for dialogue
in Turkey since 2007.
"What the US wants and what Turkey can deliver flows from the fact
that we are very networked in this area," he said.
Dr Akgun agreed that Turkey’s soft power in Afghanistan – brokering
dialogue with tribal leaders and involvement in civilian construction
projects – was more important than deploying its troops in combat
roles.
Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, in Turkey for the
Anzac Day service, said: "Turkey is emerging as a potentially
significant influence, and the fact that Obama came here as one of his
first trips reflects that. Having [large, moderate and secular Muslim]
countries like that active regionally is a good thing. It helps break
down the barriers, that everything is not black and white."
Milliyet’s Gursel said he was not confident that the government of Mr
Erdogan’s Islamic AKP party had the ability to "play the fine-tuned
politics" this new role required for Turkey to avoid alienating either
the West or the Middle East.
Despite Turkey’s secular constitution, Mr Erdogan’s walkout at Davos
in January after clashing with Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, and
an attempt to obstruct the former Danish prime minister Anders
Rasmussen assuming the NATO secretary-general’s post in March, showed
he "took every opportunity to express himself as a speaker for the
Muslim world". European leaders had lost confidence in Turkey as a
result, Gursel said.
The president of the Foreign Policy Institute at Bilkent University,
Seyfi Tashan, said: "The US relationship is developing well. I can’t
say the same for Europe."
Kirsty Needham was in Ankara on a Turkish Government media program.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
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