TURKEY PLAYS THE GOOD NEIGHBOR
By Helena Cobban

Asia Times Online
23Ak01.html
May 22 2009
Hong Kong

ISTANBUL – Two soaring bridges link Asia and Europe in this historic
city, which straddles the two continents.

For the past few years Turkey has likewise acted as a crucial bridge
between the Western and Muslim worlds. Turkey is a member of both
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization
of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The current secretary general of
the OIC is a Turkish historian.

In early April, United States President Barak Obama issued a crucial
appeal for understanding between the West and Islam during a visit
to the Turkish capital, Ankara.

The Turkish government has been led since 2002 by the

moderate-Islamist Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish
initials, AKP). Now Turkey, a democratic country of 71.5 million people
that has long embraced the separation of church (mosque) and state,
looks set to play an increasingly important role in both the Middle
East and the broader Muslim world.

In the Arab-Israeli arena, for eight months until last December,
Turkey sponsored and hosted a series of breakthrough proximity talks
between Israel and Syria. It brought the two nations closer than ever
to concluding a final peace agreement. The talks were abruptly ended
after Israel invaded Gaza on December 28.

In February 2006, Ankara played host to Khaled Meshaal, the national
leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. One month earlier,
Hamas had won the elections to the Palestinian legislature.

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, have both repeatedly called on the international community
to respect the results of the Palestinian elections and urged Western
countries to find a way to deal with Hamas.

In an achievement that indicates Turkey’s weight in world affairs,
Turkey has been able to retain its good relations with Israel even
while adopting this stance.

On US-Iranian relations, Gul and Erdogan have consistently called for a
negotiated resolution of the two countries’ problems. At a conference
held by Sabanci University’s Istanbul Policy Center here Thursday,
former diplomat Can Buharli noted that Turkey’s relations with Iran
have grown stronger over the past decade.

Turkey is a majority-Sunni country. Inter Press Service found no
Turkish nationals who agreed with the claim made by some Western
officials that an Iranian-backed "Shi’ite wave" is about to take
over the Middle East or that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat
to the region.

In 2003, Turkey firmly opposed the George W Bush administration’s
decision to invade Iraq, and refused to allow the US military to use
Turkey as a transit corridor for the invasion.

The distinctive position that Turkey now occupies in world affairs is,
most Turkish commentators agree, largely a result of the in-depth
strategic thought of Dr Ahmet Davutoglu, who was appointed foreign
minister on May 1. Before that, Davutoglu, 50, worked as a special
adviser to Erdogan, running Turkey’s shuttle diplomacy between Israel
and Syria and other initiatives on Erdogan’s behalf.

Some years ago, Davutoglu developed the concept that Turkey should
have "zero problems with its neighbors". More recently, he has
advocated building on that to strive for "maximum cooperation" with
all neighbors.

With some neighbors, like Armenia and the Kurdish region of northern
Iraq, that approach has proven difficult. But even with those two,
Erdogan has considerably improved relations that were previously
very tense.

In late April, Turkey concluded a five-point "road map" agreement
with Armenia. One of the points stipulated that the two countries will
establish a joint historical commission to investigate what happened
to the Armenians in Turkey in 1915.

Regarding northern Iraq, Turks now seem confident that they have solid
commitments from the ethnic-Kurdish provincial leaders there that they
will no longer give sanctuary to fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), a movement of ethnic-Kurdish Turkish citizens that has
waged a lengthy armed struggle in eastern Turkey in support of its
secessionist goals.

Israel is not an immediate neighbor to Turkey. But even there, Erdogan
has worked for maximum cooperation, despite deep differences over Tel
Aviv’s policy toward the Palestinians. In January, those differences
spilled into the elite halls of the annual Davos conference when
Israeli president Shimon Peres raised his voice to Erdogan in a panel
discussion – and Erdogan stormed out of the hall.

Peres later called Erdogan to apologize.

For all its attention to the Middle East, Turkish foreign policy is
still strongly oriented toward the country’s longstanding goal of
joining the European Union.

"We see ourselves as part of the West, without a doubt," Buharli
said. "And our neighbors in the region see us that way, too. Indeed,
that is part of what makes us attractive to them."

The two successive AKP governments in Ankara have brought seven years
of unprecedented political stability to a country that throughout
the Cold War was plagued by numerous military coups. Many people
around the world also view the AKP as an intriguing example of how
an Islamist party that commits to democratic principles can become
well-integrated into the political life of a democracy.

When Turkey became a nation-state in 1923, it was founded on the
explicitly secular and Turkish-nationalist principles of its first
president, Kemal Ataturk. From then until today, Turkish women have
been forbidden to wear Muslim-style headscarves in public universities
or government offices.

Ataturk ran the republic as a one-party state, clamping down on
political opponents. Under him and until very recently, successive
Turkish governments also used the military to ruthlessly suppress
any signs of cultural autonomy or political separatism from members
of the country’s sizeable Kurdish minority.

Since the AKP came to power in 2002 it has moved ahead carefully
on all these once explosive issues. It has not pushed forward its
longstanding request that scarf-wearing women be allowed their full
economic and social rights.

The wives of both Gul and Erdogan are scarf-wearers, as are around
one-quarter of the women one sees on the streets of Istanbul. (The
proportion is reportedly higher in the country’s interior.) But here,
as in many majority-Muslim countries, young women with and without
headscarves mix easily together.

On Kurdish issues the AKP has moved ahead more determinedly – in a
constructive, pro-peace way. Earlier this year the public television
station started airing programing in Kurdish for the first time.

In general, the AKP has built a strong political base by pursuing a
policy of "live and let live" at the ideological level – while also
paying attention to the efficient and non-corrupt delivery of good
public services to all citizens.

One liberal secularist told IPS that though she was not an ideological
supporter of the AKP, "If you are a liberal in Turkey, then the AKP
is probably the party that will best support your needs and interests."

Not all Turkish secularists agree. On Sunday, around 20,000 militant
supporters of Ataturk-style secularism demonstrated in Ankara against
the AKP and against a wide-ranging investigation the country’s
judiciary has launched into a reported anti-government plot hatched
in 2007 in what is called the Ergenekon case.

Istanbul residents expressed different opinions to IPS on whether
there is any substance to the Ergenekon allegations, or whether the
whole affair is an AKP exaggeration or witch-hunt. But they seemed
to agree that the judiciary could be trusted to sort out the truth
from the many lurid allegations now swirling around the case.

In a country where the rule of law was trampled on so thoroughly until
recent years, that trust in the judiciary seems like a significant
achievement.

Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs
at