OBAMA’S TURKISH PARTNERS
By Mustafa Akyol

Newsweek

Dec 6 2008

A democratic Turkey that has respect in Muslim capitals is exactly
what the West needs.

For years Ankara’s foreign policy was fixated on a few narrow
topics–how to handle the Greeks, the Kurds and Armenians–and Turkish
policymakers seemed unable to solve even these chronic problems, let
alone the problems of others. But these days Turkey has tackled such
regional concerns with a new gusto–making the first real headway
on the Cyprus issue in decades, for instance–while playing a far
larger role in global affairs. In May Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s government mediated indirect peace talks between
Syrian and Israeli officials in Istanbul. The talks are now ongoing,
and further meetings have reportedly been scheduled. Erdogan also
recently stepped forward to offer help to U.S. President-elect Barack
Obama to deal with Iran, which Turkey’s prime minister and many others
expect to be Obama’s biggest foreign-policy challenge. On November
11 Erdogan told The New York Times his government was willing to be
the mediator between the new U.S. administration and Tehran. "We are
the only capital that is trusted by both sides," he reiterated later
in Washington. "We are the ideal negotiator."

This surge of interest in becoming something of a global
peacemaker is in part the result of the ongoing process of Turkish
democratization. The nation’s old elite consisted of the more
isolationist Kemalists, the dedicated followers of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, who established a republic without democracy in 1923 to
westernize and secularize the nation. For many decades to come,
society remained divided between the dominant Kemalist center and
the more traditional periphery it kept under its thumb. But things
fundamentally changed after the election victories of Erdogan’s
Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002 and 2007. The "other
Turkey" was now out of the periphery and into power, and while it
proved to be more religious than the old elite, it also proved to be
more pro-Western, and more committed to the European Union accession
bid than its growingly xenophobic secular rivals.

This was not simply a convenient tactic, as some have argued. Turkey’s
conservative Muslims had been undergoing a silent reformation since the
1980s, as evidenced by the country’s growing "Islamic bourgeoisie,"
which sees its future in global markets, not Sharia courts. Ideas
about the compatibility of Islam and liberal democracy flourished,
as recently evidenced by headscarved women rallying in the streets
for civil liberties for all.

Meanwhile, Ahmet Davutoglu, an erudite scholar who became Erdogan’s
chief adviser, outlined a new foreign-policy vision. Turkey had
unwisely denied its cultural links with the Middle East for decades,
he argued, but the time had come to turn Turkey into a "soft power"
that exports peace, stability and growth in its region. Hence came the
rapprochement in recent years and months with Greece, Lebanon, Iraq,
Iraqi Kurdistan and most recently Armenia, where President Abdullah
Gul paid an ice-breaking visit in September.

Kemalist Turks dislike this "neo-Ottoman" approach, which prescribes
closer relations with other Muslim nations. When Erdogan greets his
Arab counterparts "in the name of God," they are horrified and argue
that the country’s secular principles are under threat. And to garner
support from Westerners who are concerned about political Islam,
for good reasons, they try to depict the AKP as Taliban in sheep’s
clothing. But, in fact, a democratic Turkey that has respect in Muslim
capitals, that can speak their language and that is willing to use this
leverage for peace and reconciliation is exactly what the West needs.

Some in the West fear this approach as well, taking notice of AKP’s
interests in Islam and the rampant anti-Americanism in Turkey, and
sometimes conflating and confusing the two. Yet that anti-American
wave is a reaction to the Iraq War and its aftermath. By empowering
the Kurds in the north, the post-Saddam era unleashed the deepest
of all Turkish fears: the emergence of a Greater Kurdistan. In other
words, anti-Americanism is almost a derivative of anti-Kurdism, and,
not too surprisingly, is strongest in the nationalist circles, which
include the Kemalists. These groups, represented by the two main
opposition parties, deride the AKP as American puppets and Kurdish
collaborators. A 2007 bestselling book, whose Kemalist author was
covertly financed by the military intelligence, even argues that both
Erdogan and former AKP member President Gul are actually covert Jews
who serve "the elders of Zion" by undermining Ataturk’s republic.

Turkey’s new elites are not covert Jews as some fringe Kemalists
fantasize, of course. But neither are they creeping Islamists as
smarter Kemalists portray. In fact they are Muslim democrats, who
can both take Turkey closer to becoming a true capitalist democracy
and inspire other Muslim nations to follow a similar route. For
sure, they need to combat ugly nationalism inside their borders and
take continued steps toward deepening liberal reforms. With such a
combination of sound domestic leadership and visionary foreign policy,
they would be ideal partners for the Obama administration in its own
effort to reach out to the troublesome actors in the Middle East.

Akyol is a columnist for Istanbul-based Hurriyet Daily News &
Economic Review.