ANALYSIS: TURKEY’S IRAN STANDOFF ROLE IRKS ALLIES
(AP)
25/05/10
ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey’s attempts to mediate Iran’s nuclear standoff
with the West have transformed into an aggressive effort to forestall
new U.N. sanctions. The assertive campaign is placing Turkey in
opposition to longtime allies Israel and the United States.
It also raises the question of whether NATO’s only Muslim member
is becoming less of a bridge between East and West than a powerful
international advocate for its neighbors in the Middle East.
Turkey and Brazil reached a deal in Tehran a week ago under which Iran
would ship much of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey, but it failed
to ease concerns in the West that Tehran will continue to enrich
uranium to higher levels with the aim of building a nuclear weapon.
The U.S. introduced a resolution last week calling for a series of
economic and trade restrictions after winning support from China
and Russia.
The prompted Turkey, a temporary member of the Security Council, to
send letters to 26 countries, speaking against sanctions and seeking
support for the envisaged swap deal.
“Turkey wants to prevent the escalation of tensions with Iran to
avoid suffering from it economically,” said Nihat Ali Ozcan of the
Economic Policy Research Institute in Ankara. “It is also seeking to
raise its profile in the Muslim world but its loyalty is at risk in
the eyes of the West.”
The Obama administration says it appreciates Ankara’s efforts and its
ability to be an effective interlocutor with Tehran. But officials
say they were unhappy with the timing of the deal and Ankara’s claim
that it met U.S. and U.N. Security Council demands.
The administration’s swift response a day later announcing that
Security Council powers had reached a deal on new sanctions was
intended as a message to Turkey and Brazil as much as to Iran. While
Turkey has been eager to portray its mediation as a sign of its
growing power on the world stage, its diplomacy could not persuade
Security Council members including, China and Russia, to hold off on
sanctions against Iran.
For Israel, the nuclear swap deal comes at a time when diplomatic
relations with Turkey are at a historic low.
While Israeli foreign ministry officials declined comment on just how
the swap deal would affect the Israeli-Turkish diplomatic relations
beyond admitting that “it is a factor,” government ministers have
been direct in their assessment that the deal is a bad one.
“The deal that they have offered is of course not good enough,” Dan
Meridor, Israel’s top minister for intelligence and nuclear affairs,
said of the nuclear swap deal between Brazil, Turkey, and Iran during
a news conference Monday. “I’m not sure why they did it – it may be
a trick, it may be something else … I hope, because they haven’t
offered something substantial enough, that it will not work.”
The Turkish government’s involvement comes as another bitter twist
in a relationship that has soured in the last 18 months over such
events as Israel’s offensive in Gaza and deputy foreign minister
Danny Ayalon’s diplomatic snubbing of Turkey’s ambassador during a
meeting in January of this year.
According to Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to Turkey,
the relationship between Israel and Turkey has reached such a low
point that Turkey’s involvement in the Iranian swap deal is unlikely
to affect the diplomatic relationship between the two countries –
because it can’t get any worse.
“The crisis is so severe that I don’t think this agreement will change
anything,” he said.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted Justice and
Development Party came to power in 2002 in a landslide victory and
despite the country’s traditional alliance with the West, has expanded
relations with Muslim countries, lifting entry visas with Syria and
Libya, while openly criticizing its ally and friend Israel for what it
says is excessive use of power against Palestinians – earning respect
in the broader Muslim world. Israel had long supplied and upgraded
Turkey’s military equipment while Turkey allowed its pilots to train
over the larger Turkish air space.
Erdogan walked out off the stage last year after berating Israel’s
President Shimon Peres at an international gathering in Davos,
Switzerland over the Gaza war. He quickly became a hero in the Muslim
world with protesters chanting his name in street demonstrations.
That applause was meaningful for a nation whose ancestors held the
seat of the Caliphate, the spiritual leader of world’s Muslims for
four centuries during the Ottoman Empire.
The government also hosted shunned Hamas political leaders, mediated
between Israel and Syria which demands the full withdrawal of Israeli
troops from the Golan Heights as a condition for peace. It has sent
soldiers to Afghanistan and Lebanon but placed them under strict
orders not to fight with fellow Muslims.
Despite all the rhetoric, Turkey is far from a break with the West. It
has vast interests intricately weaved in the NATO, the European Union.
Turkey has a customs union agreement with its top trading partner
Europe and wants to become part of the EU.
But there is no doubt that the tone in Turkey’s foreign policy is
changing.
Although, the United States has been its chief ally since the Cold
War, Turkey opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq through Turkish soil,
triggering tensions with Washington.
Until the late 1990s, Turkish relations with Iran were tense, with its
secular, westernized government accusing Tehran of trying to export
its radical Islamic regime to this predominantly Muslim but secular
country. Today, Turkey wants to build deeper trade ties with Iran.
“Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei is hoping that Erdogan would
confront the West on his behalf,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Israel-based
Middle East analyst and co-author of “The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran –
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and The State of Iran.
Turkey’s enthusiasm for European Union membership has eroded in the
face of European skepticism about admitting a large Muslim country and
resents pressure from the West to reckon with the uglier aspects of
its past, by making peace with Armenians and acknowledge that mass
killings of Armenians at the turn of the century were genocide –
a claim strongly denied by Turkey. Some other thorny EU demands are
granting more rights to minority Kurds and withdrawing its troops
from Cyprus which was divided into Turkish and Greek sectors after
Turkish troops invaded it in the wake of coup seeking to unite with
Greece in 1974.
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Associated Press Writers Desmond O. Butler in Washington and Karoun
Demirjian in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
From: A. Papazian