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IS TURKEY THE NEXT IRAN?
America should prepare for the eruption of another Islamic volcano
by Srdja Trifkovic
A century ago the Ottoman Empire was moribund, the Sick Man on the Bosphorus
whose hold on the far-flung provinces in the Balkans, North Africa and the
Middle East was growing more tenuous by the day. Its precarious survival in the
century following the defeat of Napoleon was due entirely to the inability of
the Christian powers of Europe to agree on what to do with the spoils, and the
intractable �Eastern Question� remained on the European diplomatic agenda until
the Great War.
Today�s Turkey is back as a major player in its own right, a regional power par
excellence and the pillar of the U.S. strategy in Eastern Mediterranean, the
Middle East, and Central Asia. Its population will exceed that of Russia thirty
years from now if today�s demographic trends continue. Its influence is on the
rise in its old holdings in the Balkans as well as throughout the former Soviet
Central Asia. Turkey is aggressively pursuing its European Union candidacy,
while resisting even feeble Western demands to make concessions on Cyprus -
invaded in 1974 and partly occupied by 35,000 Turkish soldiers ever since - or
to end its brutal war against the Kurds in the eastern part of the country. In
Cyprus, Turkey has flooded the occupied northern part of the island with
settlers from the mainland, whose numbers (about 100,000) exceed the number of
native Turkish Cypriots.
The U.S. policy in the region has been consistently Turkophile for decades. The
war in Kurdistan has been going on for almost three decades, and has claimed
some thirty thousand mostly civilian lives, but Turkey�s status as a bona fide
member of NATO was never in doubt. The implicit assumption in Washington is
that Turkey will remain �secular� and �pro-Western,� and it behooves us to
examine the validity of those assumptions. In 1979 the entire U.S. strategy in
the Middle East was thrown into disarray with the fall of the Shah, an event to
which President Carter�s administration made a considerable contribution with
its heavy-handed attempt to appease the radical Islamic movement by forcing
concessions from Reza Pahlevi. What will happen if history repeats itself, if
something similar happens in Turkey, cutting off America�s access to the oil-
rich Caspian region, and bringing into its orbit America�s new clients in
Sarajevo, Tirana, and Pristina? Is it possible, or likely, or even imminent?
Can the U.S. afford to be caught by surprise yet again? What can it do to
prepare for such eventuality?
The lack of a coherent �Turkish� strategy in Washington was apparent in June
1997, when the Turkish army forced the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the
country�s democratically elected Prime Minister. This was hailed by the Clinton
administration as a welcome event, a defeat for �Islamic fundamentalists� of
Erbakan�s Refah party and the victory for the �pro-Western� camp led by the
army and supported by some �secular� parties. Such posture mirrored the U.S.
reaction to the military coup in Algeria that prevented the establishment of a
pro-Islamic government following the victory of radical Muslims at the polls.
In established democracies the army does not replace elected governments, of
course, but the propriety of political acts is judged in Washington on the
basis of the desirability of their outcome, not on any lofty principle. To this
day the Turkish army is regarded by the U.S. foreign policy establishment as
the reliable guarantor of Ankara�s permanently �pro-Western,� secular
orientation. But in the Middle East �secularism� does not coincide with
�democracy� - the regimes in Iraq and Syria provide a vivid example.
If we are to have a serious debate on America�s long-term interests in eastern
Mediterranean, the Middle East experts in Washington should stop pretending
that Turkey is democratic. At present it is, at best, a �guided democracy� in
which no institution, judicial or civil, is independent of the State. Its
abysmal human rights record is well documented and beyond dispute.
It is also time to admit that any real �democratization� of Turkey will mean
its irreversible Islamization. This is because Turkey is a polity based on an
Islamic ethos, regardless of its political superstructure. Turkey inherited
this Islamic legacy from the Ottoman Empire. With the establishment of the
Turkish nation state in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal �Ataturk� (the Father of the
Nation), the Kemalist project introduced a secular concept of nationhood, but
the establishment of the multi-party political system in 1945 gave political
Islam an opportunity to reassert itself. Popular Islamic political movements of
the past three decades have produced a �Turkish-Islamic synthesis� - an Islamic
concept of nationhood that has Ottoman roots and seeks to re-establish an
Ottoman-Islamic concept of Turkish nationhood. They are explicit in their
rejection of the contemporary Western way of life, values, and ideology. Their
success is due to the fact that an overwhelming majority of Turks are Muslims,
in their beliefs, values, and world outlook.
The narrow stratum of the Kemalist ruling class rules Turkey by the grace of
the West and the will of the Army, period. The same dynamics that have swept it
away in Teheran may apply in Ankara in the next decade. The parallel with Iran
is alarming. Backed by the United States, both the Shah and the Turkish
generals have pursued a policy of militarization as a means of solving the
tension between modernization dictated from above and religiously expressed
resistance from below. Repression and militarism have provided fertile ground
for Islam as a viable alternative to largely-defunct revolutionary Marxism,
which was rampant in Turkey in the 1970s but had never succeeded in extending
its appeal beyond the urban middle classes and students.
Inseparable from internal repression is Ankara�s external expansionism as a
means of lessening political tensions. Its policy towards Greece has entailed
military threats in pursuit of territorial revisionism. The status of the
Aegean Sea was supposedly settled decades ago. Since 1974, however, and
especially over the last eight years, Turkey has demanding that this status quo
be revised. In January 1996 Greece and Turkey came close to war when Ankara
disputed Greek sovereign rights over the Greek islet of Imia. Six months later
Turkey disputed the sovereignty of the Greek Island of Gavdos near Crete - 240
miles from the Turkish shore.
While Turkey is following a policy of repression internally and expansionism
externally, it nevertheless demands membership in the European Union. This is
most unlikely to be granted, however, less because of its violations of
democracy and international law and more because the resulting migratory deluge
would bolster the already five-million-strong Turkish colony in Western Europe
to new heights. But with or without EU membership, Turkish society will soon
face a profound crisis. The Europeans are increasingly aware of this. Eric
Rouleau, the former French Ambassador to Turkey who is recognized as one of the
most authoritative analyst of Middle Eastern affairs in Europe, wrote an
article in 1995 entitled Turkey: Beyond Ataturk. Rouleau, who is personally
deeply sympathetic to Turkey, says that �sickness is eating away the (Turkish)
republic. More than seventy years after its establishment by Kemal Ataturk, the
republic is in desperate need of an overhaul.� He sees the Kurdish conflict as
a key factor contributing to the remarkable revival of Islam in Turkey.
The academic and foreign policy establishment in the United States has not
faced these issues fairly and squarely so far. And yet, with each passing year
it is becoming more urgent for the U.S. government to break away from its
unthinking Turkophilia that is detrimental to American interests and
reputation. In our view the new Turkish policy in Washington should have the
following objectives:
Making it clear to Ankara that it can no longer take the U.S. for granted, and
that American interests demand flexibility, creativity, and diversification of
foreign policy options;
Even-handedness in Greco-Turkish disputes, based on the understanding that U.S.
interests are served by stability in the Aegean and fairness to all parties;
Demand for evacuation of Turkish troops from northern Cyprus, as a prerequisite
for a permanent political solution that may entail the island�s partition on
the basis of its ethnic map prior to 1974;
Encouragement of a comprehensive settlement of the Kurdish problem by political
means, coupled with a clear determination that Turkey will no longer be
supplied by U.S. armaments that are used in a never-ending war against Kurdish
civilians;
Re-examination of the policy in the Balkans, specifically with reference to the
establishment of proto-Islamic polities in Bosnia and Kosovo under U.S. aegis,
and a broad assessment of the likely impact on those U.S. �assets� of the
emergence of an explicitly Islamic Turkey;
Genuine long-term rapprochement with Russia, which is desirable in itself, but
may also provide an alternative access route to the Caspian oil fields if and
when Turkey �goes Iranian.�
None of this is likely either under Gore or under Bush Jr., whose foreign
policy team includes known lobbyists for the Turks. Without debate on this
issue, however, America will be doomed to repeat its Iranian experience.
End<{{
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