Turkish Elite: With Russia or with the EU?

en.fondsk.ruÐ?rbis Terrarum
17.01.2010

Andrei KONUROV

Turkish Prime Minister R. Erdogan met with Russian President D.
Medvedev and Prime Minister V. Putin in Moscow on January 13. The
talks were held in an atmosphere of friendship and understanding and
produced a joint statement on Russia’s constructing a nuclear power
plant in Turkey and on the interest of the parties in the joint
implementation of the South Stream gas pipeline and Samsun-Ceyhan oil
pipeline projects. Russia and Turkey also agreed to introduce
visa-free travel between them and to execute bilateral commercial
transactions in national currencies. The agreements, if successfully
put into practice, would signify considerable progress in the
relations between Russia and Turkey as well as have much wider
repercussions.

It is well-known that Turkey is currently facing a historical
junction. In fact, the country is in the process of self-determination
in the international sphere, and the situation involves an array of
complexities in its domestic and foreign politics. The need to subject
to a revision the identity formed since the epoch of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, is bred by the
collapse of the grand geopolitical project in the name of which the
country shed its former imperial burden. At the core of the project
was Turkey’s integration into the Western civilization, a process
which was supposed to be crowned with its admission to the EU.

Turkey suffered severe humiliations in the pursuit. While its
population is predominantly Muslim, the Muslim clergy in the country
was marginalized to a greater extent than any other part of the
society. The army built from scratch to replace the disbanded armed
forces of the Ottoman Empire was given the role of the main protector
of the secular character of Turkey’s new statehood. Charged with the
highly specific mission, it was mainly staffed with militant atheists.
It used to be a fashion among Turkish officers to drink in restaurants
during Ramadan, while individuals whose ancestry included mullahs were
debarred from military careers. Any public manifestations of the
Muslim identity were unwelcome and wearing Muslim attire in official
institutions was prohibited. Military coups ` a total of four since
the epoch of Ataturk – were staged whenever the army elite sensed a
threat to the secular order in Turkey’s domestic political landscape.
Nevertheless, the West seemed to remain unperturbed by the military
interventions in civilian politics. Turkey joined NATO in 1952 and
earned the status of a EU candidate in 2000.

Things stalled at the point, however. The EU has expanded twice since
2000 and admitted 12 new members, but for Turkey its doors are still
shut. As an undisguised offense, the country which sacrificed its
identity in the name of the hypothetic EU membership was offered a
privileged partnership instead. Islamophobia is too deeply entrenched
in Europe to let the EU tell `good’ Muslims from the `bad’ ones, and
the Kemalist elite which traditionally maintains positions in the
army, university circles, and media finds itself in a difficult
situation as the result.

The developments shouldn’t have come as a surprise, in fact. The
existing technological framework based on energy extraction from
hydrocarbon fuels cannot sustain the West’s traditional level of
comfort for a population numbering over 1 bn. Moreover, the demise of
the USSR rendered the ideological task of demonstrating the advantages
of capitalism unimportant, and in the post-Soviet era the Western
ruling circles seem to have gotten convinced that even the appetites
of the `golden billion’ can be safely tempered. Anyhow, in today’s
West the neo-liberal tide is rapidly washing off the structures of the
socially-oriented economy. The process is a lot more pronounced in the
US than in Europe, but still the latter is clearly unprepared to make
its living standards available to Turkey’s population of 70 mln
people. The thinly veiled position was voiced by French President N.
Sarkozy ` Europe without borders would mean Europe without values.

The failure of the Kemalist aspirations focused on the integration
into the Western civilization is naturally translating into a
strengthening the positions of the pro-Islamic wing in Turkey. The
truth is that the popularity of Islam in the country never evaporated.
It continues to define the lifestyles of the unprivileged strata of
the Turkish population, and this part of the society clearly wants a
bigger role for Islam in Turkey’s politics. Kemalist talk about
preventing the Islamization of the Turkish society only fuels sympathy
for Islam among the impoverished masses.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party of which President Erdogan is a
member and to which Prime Minister A. Gul used to belong is the
successor to the Welfare Party outlawed by the army. The Justice and
Development Party won the 2002 elections and triumphed again in 2007
garnering 46.6% of the vote. It espouses Islamic values, but the lack
of power backing makes it resort to maneuvering and formally pledge
commitment to secular statehood and the obviously hopeless
Euro-integration course. The Turkish economy posted impressive growth
and got rid of hyper-inflation ` which previous governments could not
cope with – during the period of the Justice and Development Party
rule. Turkey diversified its export, and the achievement largely
softened the impact of the global crisis on its economy. Erdogan’s
term in office was marked with a rise of infrastructure investments.
In 2007, The Economist recognized that the period of the Islamist rule
was the best time for Turkey over the past 50 years.

Forced to conceal their Islamist leanings in domestic politics,
Turkish leaders act with greater openness internationally. Erdogan
clashed with Israeli President S. Peres in Davos over Israel’s
operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Erdogan lambasted Pres’s advocacy of the
offensive and left the forum after being cut off by the moderator.
Notably, Erdogan’s response came at the time when most Muslim
countries chose to keep a low profile and some ` like Egypt ` even
implicitly sided with Israel. Erdogan was cheered by a crowd of
supporters upon returning to Turkey, slogans `Hamas is Erdogan, not
Taliban’ appeared in the streets of Gaza, and the mayor of Tehran
granted to Erdogan the title of an honorary citizen following the row.

Later Erdogan sharply criticized China for the ferocious suppression
of the Uyghur protests. With his usual bluntness, he charged China
with genocide and called for boycotting Chinese-made products.
Altogether, watchers regarded Erdogan’s activity as a bid for
leadership in the Muslim world where indeed the position is vacant.
The Saudi Arabia is widely perceived as a US satellite and Iran’s
problem is that the Shia are a minority among the Muslim flock.

It should be noted that the domestic accomplishments of Erdogan’s
party make it increasingly difficult for the army elite to challenge
his authority. Importantly, Erdogan is credited with achieving serious
progress in addressing the Kurdish problem. Being
conservatively-minded Muslims, many of the Kurds dropped the idea of
armed struggle and opted for involvement in the Turkish political
mainstream after the Justice and Development Party took charge.
Islamists routinely garner a higher percentage of the vote in Turkey’s
Kurdish regions than on the average across the country. Erdogan showed
enough political will to stop the Turkish army from launching punitive
raids against the Kurds after several terrorist acts, and his
restraint was appreciated by the Kurdish population.

It should be noted that Erdogan had enough courage to confront the US
at the moment when Washington’s global domination more than ever went
unchallenged. In 2003 Turkish government and parliament did not allow
the US to use the Injirlik airbase to deliver air strikes to Iraq and
gave no consent to a US ground offensive against Iraq from Turkey’s
territory. Later, the US was the side to make the first reconciliatory
step. Turkey was one of the first countries to be visited by US
President B. Obama shortly upon his winning the presidential race ` in
fact, the first one Obama went to after Canada, the US nearest
neighbor, and the countries hosting the G20, NATO, and EU summits.
Obama generously dispensed praise for the Turkish statehood and was
actually close to dropping the demand that Turkey recognize the
genocide against Armenians, which he used to uphold as senator. The US
President urged the EU to let Turkey in and spoke of the need to
bridge the economic gap between the West and the East. While the
speech was a ritual more than anything else, it is nevertheless fair
to say that Obama started his much-touted reset in Ankara.

Turkey is widely regarded as an attractive coalition partner. The
country is not burdened with access foreign-politics obligations and
its leadership has sufficient freedom of maneuver. No doubt, Turkey
remains a NATO country involved in various missions of the alliance
including the one in Afghanistan. It is, nevertheless, bitterly
disappointed, and not only with the EU but with the West in general
and therefore likely to ignore Western strategic recommendations when
necessary. For external watchers, the transitions underway in the
ranks of the Turkish elite may be hard to discern, but it is logical
to expect a weakening of the pro-Western forces in the country, and
consequences will ensue in the nearest future.

For Russia, it is extremely important to entice Turkey to cooperate
over a broad range of issues in the spheres of economy and security.
Rapprochement with Russia should not meet with opposition from either
Kemalists or Islamists. For Islamists, it would be natural to embrace
Russia as an alternative to the unfriendly West, and Kemalists would
see ties with Russia as a counterforce to the absorption of Turkey by
the Muslim world. From Russia’s standpoint, the alliance with Turkey
is beneficial in many respects, one of them being that its very
materialization would cool the anti-Russian fervor of some of our
neighbors.