HOW THE WEST LOST TURKEY
NICK DANFORTH

Greek American News Agency
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Dec 1 2009

Lately, some on the right in Washington have fretted that Turkey’s
religiously oriented Justice and Development Party, the AKP, will
distance the country from its Western allies, eroding secularism as it
seeks tighter bonds within the Middle East. After all, Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed some very sensitive Western buttons:
He has dismissed concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, for instance,
and canceled a military exercise with Israel, holding one with Syria
instead.

These moves leave plenty to worry about — including the possibility
that the United States will make things worse by worrying about all
the wrong things. But Erdogan’s decisions do not augur the rise of
an Islamist foreign policy in Turkey. The more troubling reality
is that they are the inevitable outcome of long-brewing domestic
trends. In limiting cooperation with Israel and improving relations
with neighbors like Iran and Syria, Erdogan is playing to Turkish
leftists and rightists, secularists and Islamists. He’s pandering to
voters who already dislike the United States and Israel while cleverly,
if cynically, pursuing Turkey’s national interests. A good politician
from any other party would do the same.

Understanding Erdogan’s political calculus starts with understanding
that in Turkey anger at the West is near universal. Where Islamists
see a global crusade against their faith, secular leftists see global
capitalism and U.S. imperialism. Many Islamists think Israel and
the United States are secretly working with the Turkish military to
overthrow the democratically elected Islamist government. Conversely,
many secularists think Israel and the United States are using the AKP
to weaken Turkey by undermining its secular identity. According to a
recent poll, 72 percent of people in Turkey believe foreign powers
are working to break apart their country. It’s little comfort that
they disagree on how.

Turks themselves were never enthusiastic about their country’s
relationship with Israel. The military was, though, and for much of
Turkey’s recent history it controlled the country’s foreign policy.

Now, in an increasingly democratic Turkey with more power centers
when it comes to foreign affairs, the temptation for politicians to
pander to anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-Washington sentiment
is hard to resist — as seen in Erdogan’s recent statements.

The more impatient Washington gets with this dynamic, the worse it
will be. Suggesting, for instance, that it wouldn’t be so bad if the
Turkish army were still running the show just plays into the hands of
millions of anti-American conspiracy theorists — who are surprisingly
attentive to statements from think tanks and Capitol Hill. It also
feeds the illusion that the Turkish military will remain reliably
pro-American. Older, higher-ranking officers continue to work closely
with their U.S. counterparts. But younger officers who grew up viewing
the United States as their enemy are rising through the ranks.

Fortunately, Erdogan’s friendship with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad enjoys less popular support. And though moderates decry
the friendship, fringe rightists and leftists applaud it. Last June,
both moderate Islamists and moderate secularists embraced the Iranian
protesters as kindred spirits. To secularists, many of whom view
Erdogan as little more than a Turkish Ahmadinejad, the protesters
were fighting against theocracy. To Islamists, the protesters were
fighting for democracy, with the ayatollahs cast in the authoritarian
role of the Turkish military. After President Abdullah Gul and Erdogan
rushed to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his victory, several columnists
in the reliably pro-government Zaman newspaper broke with the party
line to condemn the brutality on the streets of Tehran.

Meanwhile, more partisan voices on both extremes denounced the
protesters as American or Zionist puppets. A secular columnist, for
instance, described Neda Agha-Soltan — the protesting young woman
whose death was seen around the world on YouTube — as a militant in
George Soros’s army who had removed the cross from her neck to pose
as a protester. An Islamist paper claimed she was still wearing the
cross when she was shot.

In time, democratization will help discredit the radicals on both
sides. Until then, Washington’s best partners remain those moderates
who, whatever they think of the United States, at the very least
share a mutually comprehensible view of the world.

There are also powerful economic and strategic interests driving
Turkey’s foreign policy of which watchers in Washington should take
better notice. In recent years, a vibrantly capitalist Turkey has
bolstered its regional trade to great effect, looking for markets
not just in the Middle East but also in old enemies such as Armenia.

Lifting visa requirements with Syria in September, for instance, has
already been a boon to businessmen in southern Turkey. Russia is now
the country’s largest trading partner, and the Wall Street Journal
reports that Turkey’s trade with Sudan has tripled since 2006. Iran,
meanwhile, is a major source of cheap natural gas, keeping Turkey’s
economy growing. How shocked can the United States be if that makes
Ahmadinejad look a little less despotic in Ankara?

Turkey is acutely aware that economic success is crucial to securing
European Union membership. Indeed, Ankara has promoted its EU candidacy
by claiming that it will help expand Europe’s influence in the Middle
East; the AKP has offered Turkey’s services as a mediator between Syria
and Israel as well as between Iran and the United States. Turkish
politicians and intellectuals are quick to point out that they will
be more useful to their allies if they are also on good terms with
their allies’ enemies. Being a bridge between East and West, they say,
requires having a footing in the East as well.

Yet in trying to turn its dual identity into a strategic asset,
Turkey runs the perpetual risk of finding itself rejected by both
sides — too Muslim and Middle Eastern for the Europeans, and too
secular and pro-American for the Middle Easterners. Europeans might
be more tolerant than Americans when it comes to entreaties to Iran
and Iran’s criticism of Israel, but only up to a point. Recently,
the AKP seems to have realized it went too far for EU tastes in
preparing to welcome Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to
Istanbul. Meanwhile, Turkey’s relations with the Arab world have
always been worse than many people realize. The Ottoman Empire, for
one, is not fondly remembered by many of its former subjects. Turkey
opposed Algerian independence in 1955 and almost attacked Syria in
1998. With the Cold War over and a resolution to Turkey’s perennial
Kurdish problem in sight, the general consensus in Ankara is that
it’s high time Turkey patched things up with the East as well.

The hostility Turks feel toward their allies is alarming. Their
desire for peace and prosperity in the region is not. Ultimately,
the challenge for Washington is to keep this distinction in mind when
deciding how worried to get over developments in Turkey. Erdogan’s
challenge is even harder. He has to get what he can from Turkey’s
new friends in the East while also keeping — and, if necessary,
publicly defending — Turkey’s friends in the West.