TURKEY’S STRATEGIC OUTLOOK MAKING SIGNIFICANT SHIFT
Igor Torbakov 3/07/06

EurasiaNet, NY
March 7 2006

Turkey’s strategic outlook is making a gradual shift away from the
West, driven by Ankara’s growing concern about the potential for
instability on the country’s southern and eastern flanks. Turkish
leaders are now seeing eye-to-eye with Russia on several important
geopolitical issues.

Turkey continues to publicly cast itself as a country with an
unshakable Western orientation, serving as a long-time NATO member
and a strategic partner of the United States, as well as and aspiring
to European Union membership. [For background see the Eurasia Insight
archive]. But behind the official rhetoric, geopolitical developments
in recent years, especially the Iraq imbroglio, have shaken the faith
of many in Ankara about the country’s Western orientation.

The major factor prompting Turkish leaders to reevaluate their
geopolitical views is Iraq. Turkish policymakers and pundits are
extremely worried that their southern neighbor is ready to implode.

At a March 3 briefing in Istanbul with a group of leading
foreign-policy columnists, officials warned that the escalation of
civil and sectarian strife in Iraq could turn the country into a “new
Lebanon.” Under Ankara’s nightmare scenario, an Iraqi civil war would
give birth to an independent Kurdistan – a possible development with
dire potential consequences for Turkey’s own territorial integrity.

Bush administration bumbling is responsible for much of what has
gone wrong in Iraq, many Turks believe. “If Iraq disintegrates and a
Kurdish state is created in the north, the Turkish people will take
this as something of US making,” the former Turkish president Suleiman
Demirel said in a recent interview published by the Turkish Daily
News. Such a development will inevitably seriously exacerbate the
already existing tension in relations between Ankara and Washington,
the veteran politician added.

Turkish wariness of US political designs extends beyond Iraq, covering
the greater Middle East. Few in Ankara approve of Washington’s tough
line against Iran and Syria, for example. [For additional information
see the Eurasia Insight archive]. “There is sufficient evidence to
suggest that the two countries do not see eye-to-eye on these regional
issues,” notes Semih Idiz, the Milliyet daily’s foreign-policy analyst.

Instead of following the US push to isolate Iran and Syria, Turkish
leaders favor engagement. At the same time, Ankara is firmly opposed
to any attempted use of force with the aim of promoting regime change
in the Middle East. In its advocacy of engagement, Turkey has found
common ground with Russia, which is championing the continuation of
the talks with Tehran to resolve the crisis over its nuclear program.

[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Though sharing
the same aims, the motives of the two countries are divergent:
Ankara’s stance is mainly driven by the fear of destabilization in
its geopolitical backyard, while Russia is more interested in keeping
the United States out of what has traditionally been Moscow’s sphere
of influence.

Policy-makers in Turkey see Moscow’s stance as a useful counterbalance
to what the Turks perceive as potentially harmful US policies. “In
the final analysis, Turkey’s views are different from the West and
closer to Russia,” argues the influential political analyst Sami
Kohen in a commentary published in the Milliyet newspaper.

Both Ankara and Moscow also appear to perceive US policies in the
South Caucasus as being destabilizing. The two countries have been
keen to preserve the status quo in the region, in sharp contrast to
the United States, which has been a staunch backer of Georgia’s Rose
Revolution led by President Mikheil Saakashvili. When it comes to
democratization, both Turkey and Russia favor an incremental approach
that does nothing to upset a delicate economic equilibrium.

“Democratization is a process, and it should be expected to proceed
at a different pace in different countries,” said Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul in a written statement released on March 5.

In addition, while advocating the peaceful resolution of the so-called
“frozen conflicts” in the South Caucasus – involving the territories of
Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh – Ankara, like Moscow,
fears that efforts to hurry political settlements could end up
disrupting the economic order.

Turkey’s changing internal political dynamics are also working to
alter the country’s international outlook. The governing Justice and
Development Party (AKP) – an entity with roots in political Islam –
has introduced a pronounced religious dimension into Turkish political
life, given that the party’s core constituency consists of pious
Muslims. As a result, a significant number of Turks are viewing
geopolitical developments through a religious prism. Recent public
opinion research helps support this view. For instance, in its annual
survey, Transatlantic Trends 2005, the German Marshall Fund reported
that 42 percent of Turks think that Turkey does not belong to the EU
because it is predominantly Muslim. Overall, the percentage of Turks
who believe EU membership would be beneficial for Turkey dropped from
73 percent in 2004 to 63 percent in 2005.

Editor’s Note: Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher
who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in History
from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy
of Sciences. He was Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian
History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the
Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York;
and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is now based in
Istanbul, Turkey.