TURKEY AS A REGIONAL POWER
Hakimiyet-i Milliye, Turkey
744
Oct 24 2007
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas based in northern Iraq
ambushed Turkish troops near the border Oct. 21, killing 12 soldiers
and suffering 23 casualties in the ensuing firefight, according to
the Turkish government. For its part, the PKK said it captured eight
Turkish troops, though Ankara has not confirmed the claim.
Based on prior PKK attacks, the Turkish parliament last week
authorized the use of force in Iraq. This latest attack, therefore,
was clearly designed to challenge that decision. Even before the dust
had settled Oct. 21, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, rejected
an earlier demand from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
that Baghdad shut down all PKK camps in Iraqi territory and hand over
PKK leaders. Talabani said Iraq cannot solve Turkey’s problem, given
that PKK leaders hide out in rugged mountains and even the "mighty"
Turkish military has failed to kill or capture them. Specifically,
he said, "The handing over of PKK leaders to Turkey is a dream that
will never be realized."
If that position holds, it is difficult to imagine that the Turks won’t
move into northern Iraq and re-establish the sphere of influence and
security they had during the Saddam Hussein era. The United States
is working furiously to satisfy Turkey by taking responsibility for
controlling the PKK. It is not clear whether the United States can
deliver, nor is it clear whether the Turks are prepared to rely on
the United States. Some move into Iraq is likely, in our mind, but
even if it doesn’t happen in this particular case, tensions between
Turkey and the United States will remain. More important, Turkey’s
willingness to play a secondary role in the region is declining.
This is not really new. The Turks refused to allow the United States
to invade Iraq from Turkish territory, even though Washington offered
them free room to maneuver in northern Iraq in exchange for their
cooperation. The Turks, however, were not unhappy with the status
quo in Iraq. They also were concerned about the consequences of an
American invasion and were not eager to be seen as a tool of the
United States in the Islamic world.
At the same time, the Turks did not want a rupture with the United
States — given that the relationship has been the foundation of
Turkish foreign policy since World War II. The refusal of the European
Union to admit Turkey in particular made it necessary for Ankara to
preserve its relationship with Washington. Therefore, although the
invasion was problematic for the Turks, they have cooperated with
the United States, allowing a large portion of the supplies for
U.S. troops in Iraq to come through Turkey.
The Turkish balancing act on Iraq has pivoted on one fundamental
national security consideration: that the autonomy given to Iraq’s
Kurds remains limited. The Kurdish nationality crosses existing
borders — into Iraq, Turkey, Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria —
and represents a geographically coherent, self-aware nation without
a state. Historically, the Kurds generally were compelled to be part
of larger empires, including the Ottoman Empire. When that empire
collapsed — leaving Turkey as its successor — these other countries
contained Kurdish lands, with more than half of the Kurds living in
Turkey. The Turks, dealing with the collapse of their empire and the
building of a new nation-state, feared that Kurdish independence
would lead to the disintegration of that nation-state. Therefore,
they had — and continue to maintain — a fixed policy to suppress
Kurdish nationalism.
>From the Turkish point of view, the greatest danger is that an
independent Kurdistan will be created in Iran or Iraq, and that the
homeland will be used to base and support Kurds seeking independence
from Turkey. In fact, each of these countries — and outside powers
such as the United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom — have
used the Kurds as a tool to apply pressure on Turkey, Iran or Iraq
at various times. They have used Kurdish separatism as a threat,
and then normally double-crossed the Kurds, making a broader deal
with the nation-state in question.
The evolution of events in Iraq is particularly alarming to the
Turks. Hussein was not necessarily to the Turks’ liking, but he did
pursue one policy that was identical to that of the Turks: He opposed
Kurdish independence. The U.S. policy after Desert Storm was to use
the Iraqi Kurds against Hussein — and the United States helped carve
out an area of Iraqi Kurdistan that he could not reach. The Turks,
uneasy with this arrangement, entered Iraq in the 1990s to create a
buffer zone against the Kurds. The United States did not object to
this move because it increased the pressure on Hussein.
In looking at current U.S. strategy in Iraq, the Turks have drawn
two conclusions. The first is that the United States, focused on
Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite areas, has little interest in controlling
the Kurdish region — the one area that is fairly unambiguously
pro-American. The second is that the Iranians and Shia want an Iraq
divided into three regions — or even independent states — and that
a U.S. policy designed to create a federal state with a strong central
government will fail.
Therefore, Turkey’s perception is that it already is dealing with the
post-war world, one in which an increasingly bold Iraqi Kurdistan is
pursuing a policy of expanding Kurdish autonomy by facilitating a
guerrilla war in Turkey. The PKK’s actions in recent weeks confirm
this view in their mind. They also believe they cannot deal with
the Kurdish challenge defensively, and therefore they must defend by
attacking. Hence, the creation of a security zone in Iraq.
>From the Kurds’ point of view, if there ever was a moment to assert
their national rights, this is it. However, their highly risky gamble
is that the United States will not chance an anti-American uprising
in Iraq’s Kurdish areas and so will limit the extent to which Turkey
can intervene. Moreover, with the United States at odds with Iran,
it might support a Kurdish uprising there. Hence, though the stakes
are high, the Kurdish gamble is not irrational.
The Kurds in Iraq are correct in their view that the United
States does not want conflict in the one area in Iraq that is not
anti-American. They also are correct that this is a unique moment for
them. But they are betting that the Turks don’t recognize the danger
and thus will place their interests second to those of the United
States — which is more concerned with stability in Iraqi Kurdistan
than with suppressing attacks in Turkey’s Kurdish areas. Although
this might have been true of Turkey 10 years ago, it no longer is
true today. The U.S.-Turkish relationship has flipped. The United
States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States —
for reasons beyond getting supplies to Iraq.
Al Qaeda’s geopolitical threat has subsided, no uprising capable of
effecting regime change has occurred in the Islamic world and the
threat of a unified Islamic world has vastly decreased. Meanwhile,
the grand strategy of the United States has remained the same. It
played Hitler against Stalin, Mao against Brezhnev and is now playing
Sunni against Shi’i. The Sunni threat having subsided, the Shiite
and Iranian threats remain. The current U.S. task is to build an
anti-Iranian coalition. Regardless of whether the Europeans approve
sanctions against Iran, its neighbors are important — and one of
the most important is Turkey. However, given that Turkey and Iran
have a common interest in preventing an independent Kurdish nation
anywhere, the more the United States supports the Iraqi Kurds, the
greater the danger of an Iranian-Turkish alliance. At the moment,
that is the last thing the United States wants to see, which is why
the resolution on Turkish responsibility for Armenian genocide in
the U.S. Congress could not possibly have come at a worse moment.
But that is atmospherics. When we look beyond al Qaeda and beyond Iran
— a country that has been unable to create substantial spheres of
influence for many centuries — we see a single country that is likely
to begin bringing order to the region: Turkey. Turkey is the heir
to the Ottoman Empire, which at various points dominated the eastern
Mediterranean, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus and
deep into Russia. Its collapse after World War I created an oddity
— an inward-looking state in Asia Minor. Cautious in World War II
and strictly aligned with the United States during the Cold War,
Turkey played a passive role: It either sat things out or allowed
its strategic territory to be used.
The situation has changed dramatically. In 2006, Turkey had the 18th
largest economy in the world — larger than that of any other Muslim
country, including Saudi Arabia — and the economy has been growing
at a rate of between 5 percent and 7 percent a year for five years.
Most important, Turkey is not a purely export-oriented country. It
has developed a substantial middle class that buys the products it
produces. It has a substantial and competent military and is handling
the stresses between institutions and ideologies well.
It also is surrounded by chaos. Apart from Iraq to the south, there
is profound instability in the Caucasus to the north and the Balkans
to the northwest. The southern region from the Levant to the Persian
Gulf is tremendously tense. The stability of Egypt — and therefore
the eastern Mediterranean — after President Hosni Mubarak departs
is in question. Turkey’s longtime rival, Greece, no longer presents
the challenge it once did. Moreover, the European Union’s effective
rejection of Turkey has freed the country from many of the constraints
that its membership hopes might have imposed.
Turkey has a vested interest in stabilizing the region. It no longer
regards the United States as a stabilizing force, and it sees Europe
as a collective entity and individual nations as both hostile and
impotent. It views the Russians as a long-term threat to its interests
and sees Russia’s potential return to Turkey’s frontier as a long-term
challenge. As did the Ottomans, it views Iran as a self-enclosed
backwater. It is far more interested in the future of Syria and Iraq,
its relationship with its ally, Israel, and ultimately the future of
the Arabian Peninsula.
In other words, Turkey should be viewed as a rapidly emerging regional
power — or, in the broadest sense, as beginning the process of
recreating a regional hegemon of enormous strategic power, based in
Asia Minor but projecting political, economic and military forces
in a full circle. Its willingness to rely on the United States to
guarantee its national security ended in 2003. It is prepared to
cooperate with the United States on issues of mutual interest, but
not as a subordinate power.
This emergence, in our view, is in the very early stages. Just as
Turkey’s economy and its internal politics have undergone dramatic
changes in the past five years, so have its foreign policies. The
Turks are cautiously reaching out and influencing events throughout
the region. In one sense, the intervention in Iraq would simply be a
continuation of policies followed in the 1990s. But in the current
context, it would represent more: a direct assertiveness of its
natural interests independent of the United States.
Looked at broadly, three things have happened. First, the collapse
of Yugoslavia drew Turkey into a region where it had traditional
interest. Second, the collapse and resurrection of Russian power has
made Turkey look northward to the Caucasus. Finally, the chaos in
the Arab world has drawn Turkey southward. Limits on Turkish behavior
from Europe and the United States have been dramatically reduced as a
result of Western strategy. Turkey believes it needs to bring order
to regions where the United States and Europe have proven either
ineffective or hostile to Turkish interests.
Considering the future of the region, the only power in a position to
assert its consistent presence is Turkey. Iran, its nearest competitor,
is neither in competition with Turkey, nor does it have a fraction
of its power — nuclear weapons or not. Turkey has historically
dominated the region, though not always to the delight of others
there. Nevertheless, its historical role has been to pick up the
pieces left by regional chaos. In our view, it is beginning to move
down that road.
Its current stance on the Kurdish issue is merely a first step. What
makes that position important is that Turkey is pursuing its interests
indifferent to European or American views. Additionally, the reversal
of dependency between the United States and Turkey is ultimately more
important than whether Turkey goes into Iraq. The U.S. invasion of
Iraq kicked off many processes in the world and created many windows
of opportunity. Watching Turkey make its moves, we wonder less about
the direction it is going than about the limits of its ambition.
From: Baghdasarian