ERDOGAN’S OUTBURST AND THE FUTURE OF THE TURKISH STATE
By George Friedman

Stratfor
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Jan 3 2009

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploded during a public
discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the annual meeting
of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Erdogan
did not blow up at Peres, but rather at the moderator, Washington
Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius, whom Erdogan
accused of giving more time to Peres. Afterward, Erdogan said,
"I did not target at all in any way the Israeli people, President
Peres or the Jewish people. I am a prime minister, a leader who has
expressly stated that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity."

Nevertheless, the international press focused not on the finer points
of Erdogan’s reasoning, but rather on his attacks on Israeli policy in
Gaza and his angry exit, which many thought were directed at Peres and
Israel. The confusion, we suspect, suited Erdogan quite well. Turkey is
effectively an ally of Israel. Given this alliance, the recent events
in Gaza put Erdogan in a difficult position. The Turkish prime minister
needed to show his opposition to Israel’s policies to his followers
in Turkey’s moderate Islamist community without alarming Turkey’s
military that he was moving to rupture relations with Israel. Whether
calculated or not, Erdogan’s explosion in Davos allowed him to appear
to demonstrate vocal opposition to Israel — directly to Israel’s
president, no less — without actually threatening ties with Israel.

It is important to understand the complexity of Erdogan’s political
position. Ever since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World
War I, Turkey has had a secular government. The secularism of the
government was guaranteed constitutionally by the military, whose
role it was to protect the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — the
founder of modern, secular Turkey, who used the army as an instrument
of nation-building. The Turkish public, in contrast, runs the gamut
from ultrasecularists to radical Islamists.

Erdogan is an elected moderate Islamist. As such, he is held in
suspicion by the army and severely circumscribed in how far he can go
on religious matters. To his right politically are more hard-line
Islamist parties, which are making inroads into Turkish public
opinion. Erdogan must balance between these forces, avoiding the two
extreme outcomes of military intervention and Islamist terrorism.

Meanwhile, from a geopolitical perspective, Turkey is always in an
uncomfortable place. Asia Minor is the pivot of Eurasia. It is the
land bridge between Asia and Europe, the northern frontier of the Arab
world and the southern frontier of the Caucasus. Its influence spreads
outward toward the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, the Arab world and
Iran. Alternatively, Turkey is the target of forces emanating from
all of these directions. Add to this its control of the Bosporus,
which makes Turkey the interface between the Mediterranean and Black
Sea, and the complexity of Turkey’s position becomes clear: Turkey
is always either under pressure from its neighbors or pressuring
its neighbors. It is perpetually being drawn outward in multiple
directions, even into the eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey has two different paths for dealing with its geopolitical
challenge.

Secular Isolationism

>From the army’s point of view, the Ottoman Empire was a disaster
that entangled Turkey into the catastrophe of Word War I. One of
Ataturk’s solutions involved not only contracting Turkey after the
war, but containing it in such a way that it could not be drawn into
the extreme risk of imperial adventure.

In World War II, both Axis and Allies wooed and subverted Turkey. But
the country managed — with difficulty — to maintain neutrality,
thereby avoiding another national catastrophe.

During the Cold War, Turkey’s position was equally difficult. Facing
Soviet pressure from the north, the Turks had to ally themselves with
the United States and NATO. Turkey possessed something the Soviets
desperately wanted: the Bosporus, which would have given the Soviet
navy unimpeded access to the Mediterranean. Naturally, the Turks
could not do anything about their geography, nor could they cede the
Bosporus to the Soviets without sacrificing their independence. But
neither could they protect it by themselves. Thus, left with only
the choice of NATO membership, the Turks joined the Western alliance.

There was a high degree of national unity on this subject. Whatever
the ideologies involved, the Soviets were viewed as a direct threat to
Turkey. Therefore, using NATO and the United States to help guarantee
Turkish territorial integrity was ultimately something around which a
consensus could form. NATO membership, of course, led to complications,
as these things always do.

To counter the American relationship with Turkey (and with Iran,
which also blocked Soviet southward movement), the Soviets developed
a strategy of alliances — and subversion — of Arab countries. First
Egypt, then Syria, Iraq and other countries came under Soviet influence
between the 1950s and 1970s. Turkey found itself in a vise between
the Soviets and Iraq and Syria. And with Egypt — with its Soviet
weapons and advisers — also in the Soviet orbit, Turkey’s southern
frontier was seriously threatened.

Turkey had two possible responses to this situation. One was to build
up its military and economy to take advantage of its mountainous
geography and deter attack. For this, Turkey needed the United
States. The second option was to create cooperative relations with
other countries in the region that were hostile to both the Soviets and
the left-wing Arab regimes. The two countries that fit this bill were
Israel and pre-1979 Iran under the shah. Iran tied down Iraq. Israel
tied down Syria and Egypt. In effect, these two countries neutralized
the threat of Soviet pressure from the south.

Thus was born the Turkish relationship with Israel. Both
countries belonged to the American anti-Soviet alliance system
and therefore had a general common interest in conditions in the
eastern Mediterranean. Both countries also had a common interest
in containing Syria. From the standpoint of the Turkish army, and
therefore the Turkish government, a close collaboration with Israel
made perfect sense.

Islamist Internationalism There is a second vision of Turkey,
however: that of Turkey as a Muslim power with responsibilities
beyond guaranteeing its own national security. This viewpoint would
of course break the country’s relationship with Israel and the United
States. In some sense, this is a minor consideration now. Israel is
no longer indispensable for Turkish national security, and Turkey has
outgrown outright dependence on the United States. (These days, the
United States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States.)

(click image to enlarge) Under this second vision, Turkey would extend
its power outward in support of Muslims. This vision, if pursued to the
full, would involve Turkey in the Balkans in support of Albanians and
Bosnians, for example. It would also see Turkey extend its influence
southward to help shape Arab regimes. And it would cause Turkey to
become deeply involved in Central Asia, where it has natural ties
and influence. Ultimately, this vision also would return Turkey to
maritime power status, influencing events in North Africa. It is at
its heart a very expansionist vision, and one that would require the
active support of a military that, at present, is somewhat squeamish
about leaving home.

Along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, Turkey is one of
only five major powers in the Islamic world with enough economic
and military potential to affect anything beyond their immediate
neighbors. Indonesia and Pakistan are internally fragmented and
struggling to hold together; their potential is largely bottled
up. Iran is in a long-term confrontation with the United States
and must use all of its strength in dealing with that relationship,
limiting its options for expansion. Egypt is internally crippled by
its regime and economy, and without significant internal evolutions
it cannot project power.

Turkey, on the other hand, is now the world’s 17th-largest economy. It
boasts a gross domestic product (GDP) that is larger than that of every
other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia; larger than that of every
EU country other than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy,
Spain, and the Netherlands; and nearly five times larger than that
of Israel. In per capita GDP, Turkey ranks much lower on the global
scale, but national power — the total weight a country can bring to
bear on the international system — frequently depends more on the
total size of the economy than on per capita income. (Consider China,
which has a per capita income less than half that of Turkey’s.) Turkey
is surrounded by instability in the Arab world, in the Caucasus and
in the Balkans. But it is the most stable and dynamic economy in its
region and, after Israel, has the most effective armed forces.

On occasion, Turkey goes beyond its borders. It has, for example,
moved into Iraq in a combined air-ground operation to attack units
of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish separatist group. But
it is Turkey’s policy to avoid deep entanglements. From the Turkish
Islamist point of view, however, a power of this magnitude under the
control of an Islamist regime would be in a position to spread its
influence dramatically. As mentioned, this is not what the army or
the secularists want: They remember how the Ottoman Empire sapped
Turkish strength, and they do not want a repeat.

Erdogan’s Challenge and Turkey’s Future It is not fair to say that
Turkey is a deeply divided society. Instead, Turkey has learned to
blend discord. At the moment, Erdogan probably represents the center
of the Turkish political spectrum. But he is stuck trying to balance
three competing forces. The first is an economy that remains robust
and is likely to grow further despite suffering setbacks (along
with the rest of the world). The second is a capable military that
does not want excessive foreign entanglements, and certainly not for
religious reasons. And the third is an Islamist movement that wants
to see Turkey as part of the Islamic world — and perhaps even the
leader of that world.

Erdogan does not want to weaken the Turkish economy, and he sees
radical Islamist ideas as endangering Turkey’s middle class. He wants
to placate the army and keep it from acting politically. He also wants
to placate the radical Islamists, who could draw the army out of the
barracks, or worse, weaken the economy. Erdogan thus wants to keep
business, the military and the religious sector happy simultaneously.

This is no easy task, and Erdogan was clearly furious at Israel for
attacking Gaza and making that task harder. Turkey was crucial in
developing the Israeli-Syrian dialogue. This means the wider world
now views Turkey’s leadership as regionally engaged, something its
risk-averse military is more than a little touchy about. Erdogan
therefore saw Israel as endangering Turkey’s military-civilian power
balance and squandering its tentative steps into the regional spotlight
for what he considered a pointless operation in Gaza.

Still, Erdogan did not want to break with Israel. So he became furious
with the moderator. Whether this was calculated or simply reflected
his response to the situation he finds himself in is immaterial. The
outburst allowed him to appear to break with Israel decisively without
actually creating such a rupture. He thus deftly continued to walk
his fine line.

The question is how long Erdogan can maintain the balance. The more
chaotic the region around Turkey becomes and the stronger Turkey gets,
the more irresistible will be the sheer geopolitical pressure on
Turkey to fill the vacuum. Add to that an expansionist ideology —
a Turkish Islamism — and a potent new force in the region could
quickly emerge. The one thing that can restrain this process is
Russia. If Moscow forces Georgia to submit and brings its forces back
to the Turkish border in Armenia, the Turks will have to reorient
their policy back to one of blocking the Russians. But regardless
of what level Russian power returns to over the next few years, the
longer-term growth of Turkish power is inevitable — and something
that must be considered carefully.