COMMENTARY: The Sick Man of Europe — Again
By ROBERT L. POLLOCK
Wall Street Journal
,,SB110851241259955899,00.html?mod=opinio n%5Fmain%5Fcommentaries
February 16, 2005; Page A14
ANKARA, Turkey — Several years ago I attended an exhibition in
Istanbul. The theme was local art from the era of the country’s last
military coup (1980). But the artists seemed a lot more concerned with
the injustices of global capitalism than the fate of Turkish democracy.
In fact, to call the works leftist caricatures — many featured fat
capitalists with Uncle Sam hats and emaciated workers — would have
been an understatement. As one astute local reviewer put it (I quote
from memory): “This shows that Turkish artists were willing to abase
themselves voluntarily in ways that Soviet artists refused even at
the height of Stalin’s oppression.”
That exhibition came to mind amid all the recent gnashing of teeth
in the U.S. over the question of “Who lost Turkey?” Because it shows
that a 50-year special relationship, between longtime NATO allies who
fought Soviet expansionism together starting in Korea, has long had
to weather the ideological hostility and intellectual decadence of
much of Istanbul’s elite. And at the 2002 election, the increasingly
corrupt mainstream parties that had championed Turkish-American ties
self-destructed, leaving a vacuum that was filled by the subtle yet
insidious Islamism of the Justice and Development (AK) Party. It’s
this combination of old leftism and new Islamism — much more than any
mutual pique over Turkey’s refusal to side with us in the Iraq war —
that explains the collapse in relations.
And what a collapse it has been. On a brief visit to Ankara earlier
this month with Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, I found a
poisonous atmosphere — one in which just about every politician and
media outlet (secular and religious) preaches an extreme combination of
America- and Jew-hatred that (like the Turkish artists) voluntarily
goes far further than anything found in most of the Arab world’s
state-controlled press. If I hesitate to call it Nazi-like, that’s only
because Goebbels would probably have rejected much of it as too crude.
* * *
Consider the Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s favorite. A Jan. 9 story claimed that U.S. forces
were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that mullahs
there had issued a fatwa prohibiting residents from eating its
fish. Yeni Safak has also repeatedly claimed that U.S. forces used
chemical weapons in Fallujah. One of its columnists has alleged that
U.S. soldiers raped women and children there and left their bodies in
the streets to be eaten by dogs. Among the paper’s “scoops” have been
the 1,000 Israeli soldiers deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq,
and that U.S. forces have been harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis
for sale on the U.S. “organ market.”
It’s not much better in the secular press. The mainstream Hurriyet has
accused Israeli hit squads of assassinating Turkish security personnel
in Mosul, and the U.S. of starting an occupation of Indonesia under
the guise of humanitarian assistance. At Sabah, a columnist last fall
accused the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, of letting his
“ethnic origins” — guess what, he’s Jewish — determine his behavior.
Mr. Edelman is indeed the all-too-rare foreign-service officer who
takes seriously his obligation to defend America’s image and interests
abroad. The intellectual climate in which he’s operating has gone
so mad that he actually felt compelled to organize a conference call
with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey to explain that secret
U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the recent tsunami.
Never in an ostensibly friendly country have I had the impression
of embassy staff so besieged. Mr. Erdogan’s office recently forbade
Turkish officials from attending a reception at the ambassador’s
residence in honor of the “Ecumenical” Patriarch of the Orthodox
Church, who resides in Istanbul. Why? Because “ecumenical” means
universal, which somehow makes it all part of a plot to carve up
Turkey.
Perhaps the most bizarre anti-American story au courant in the Turkish
capital is the “eighth planet” theory, which holds not only that the
U.S. knows of an impending asteroid strike, but that we know it’s going
to hit North America. Hence our desire to colonize the Middle East.
It all sounds loony, I know. But such stories are told in all
seriousness at the most powerful dinner tables in Ankara. The common
thread is that almost everything the U.S. is doing in the world —
even tsunami relief — has malevolent motivations, usually with the
implication that we’re acting as muscle for the Jews.
In the face of such slanders Turkish politicians have been utterly
silent. In fact, Turkish parliamentarians themselves have accused
the U.S. of “genocide” in Iraq, while Mr. Erdogan (who we once
hoped would set for the Muslim world an example of democracy) was
among the few world leaders to question the legitimacy of the Iraqi
elections. When confronted, Turkish pols claim they can’t risk going
against “public opinion.”
All of which makes Mr. Erdogan a prize hypocrite for protesting to
Condoleezza Rice the unflattering portrayal of Turkey in an episode of
the fictional TV show “The West Wing.” The episode allegedly depicts
Turkey as having been taken over by a retrograde populist government
that threatens women’s rights. (Sounds about right to me.)
In the old days, Turkey would have had an opposition party strong
enough to bring such a government closer to sanity. But the only
opposition now is a moribund Republican People’s Party, or CHP,
once the party of Ataturk. At a recent party congress, its leader
accused his main challenger of having been part of a CIA plot
against him. That’s not to say there aren’t a few comparatively
pro-U.S. officials left in the current government and the state
bureaucracies. But they’re afraid to say anything in public. In
private, they whine endlessly about trivial things the U.S. “could
have done differently.”
Entirely forgotten is that President Bush was among the first world
leaders to recognize Prime Minister Erdogan, while Turkey’s own legal
system was still weighing whether he was secular enough for the job.
Forgotten have been decades of U.S. military assistance. Forgotten
have been years of American efforts to secure a pipeline route for
Caspian oil that terminates at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Forgotten
has been the fact that U.S. administrations continue to fight annual
attempts in Congress to pass a resolution condemning modern Turkey
for the long-ago Armenian genocide. Forgotten has been America’s
persistent lobbying for Turkish membership in the European Union.
Forgotten, above all, has been America’s help against the PKK. Its
now-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was expelled from Syria in 1998
after the Turks threatened military action. He was then passed like a
hot potato between European governments, who refused to extradite him
to Turkey because — gasp! — he might face the death penalty. He was
eventually caught — with the help of U.S. intelligence — sheltered
in the Greek Embassy in Nairobi. “They gave us Ocalan. What could
be bigger than that?” says one of a handful of unapologetically
pro-U.S. Turks I still know.
I know that Mr. Feith (another Jew, the Turkish press didn’t hesitate
to note), and Ms. Rice after him, pressed Turkish leaders on the
need to challenge some of the more dangerous rhetoric if they value
the Turkey-U.S. relationship. There is no evidence yet that they got
a satisfactory answer. Turkish leaders should understand that the
“public opinion” they cite is still reversible. But after a few more
years of riding the tiger, who knows? Much of Ataturk’s legacy risks
being lost, and there won’t be any of the old Ottoman grandeur left,
either. Turkey could easily become just another second-rate country:
small-minded, paranoid, marginal and — how could it be otherwise? —
friendless in America and unwelcome in Europe.
Mr. Pollock is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress