http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0411/glick041511.php3?printer_friendly
April 15, 2011 /
Turkey's cautionary tale
By Caroline B. Glick
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Today's Turkey is a cautionary tale for the West. But Western leaders are loath
to consider its lessons.
Ever since Turkey's Islamist Justice and Peace AKP party under Recip Tayip
Erdogan won the November 2002 elections, Western officials have upheld the AKP,
Erdogan and his colleagues as proof that political Islam is consonant with
democratic values. During Erdogan's June 2005 visit to the White House for
instance, then president George W. Bush praised Turkish democracy as "an
important example for the people in the broader Middle East."
Unfortunately, nine years into the AKP's "democratic" regime it is clear that
Erdogan and his colleagues' embrace of the language and tools of democracy was
a mile wide and an inch thick. They used democracy to gain power. Now that they
have power, they are systematically destroying freedom in their country.
Turkey ranks 138th in the international media freedom group Reporters Sans
Frontiers country index on press freedom. 68 journalists are languishing in
Turkish jails for the crime of doing their job. The most recent round-up of
reporters occurred in early March. And it is demonstrative of Turkey's Islamist
leaders' exploitation of democratic freedoms in the service of their tyrannical
ends.
As Der Spiegel reported last week, veteran journalists Ahmet Sik from the far
left Radikal newspaper and Nedim Sener from the highbrow Milliyet journal were
among those rounded up. As radical leftists, both men oppose the AKP's Islamist
politics. But they shared its interest in weakening the Turkish military.
The Left opposed the military's constitutional role as the overseer of Turkish
democracy because the military used that role to persecute leftists. The AKP
party opposed the military's power because it blocked the party's path to
Islamizing Turkish society and politics. When the AKP turned its guns on the
military it used leftist journalists to support its actions.
This collusion came to a head in 2007. In a bid to destroy the legitimacy of
the military, the AKP regime has engaged in unprecedented levels of wiretapping
of the communications of senior serving and retired generals.
This wiretapping operation preceded the exposure in 2007 of the so-called
Ergenekon conspiracy in which senior military commanders, journalists,
television personalities, entertainers and businesspeople have been implicated
in an alleged attempt to topple the AKP government. As part of the Ergenekon
investigation, over the past four years, hundreds of non-Islamist leaders from
generals to journalists have been arrested and held without trial.
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Ironically, Sik, who is now accused of membership in the Ergenekon plot, was an
editor at the leftist weekly magazine Notka which "broke" the conspiracy story.
As Der Spiegel notes, the arrest of Sik and Sener shows that the AKP's early
embrace of investigative reporters and championing of a free press was purely
opportunistic. Once Sik, Sener and the other 66 jailed reporters had finished
discrediting the military, the regime had no need for them. Indeed, they became
a threat.
Both Sik and Sener have recently written books documenting how Turkey's version
of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Fetulah Gulen network, has taken over the
country's security services.
In an interview this month with the opposition Hurriyet Daily News and Economic
Review, former Turkish president Suleyman Demirel warned that the AKP has
established "an empire of fear" in Turkey.
Turkey's descent into Islamist tyranny has not simply destroyed freedom in
Turkey. It has transformed Turkey's strategic posture in a manner that is
disastrous for the West. And yet, in this arena as well, the West refuses to
notice what is happening.
Earlier this week the US Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone gave an
interview to the Turkish media in which he romantically upheld the US-Turkish
partnership. As he put it, "Our interests are similar. Even if we have
different methods and targets, our strategic vision is the same."
Sadly, there is no way to square this declaration with Turkish policy.
This week it was reported that NATO member Turkey is opening something akin to
a Taliban diplomatic mission in Ankara. Turkey supports Hamas and Hizbullah. It
has begun training the Syrian military. It supports Iran's nuclear weapons
program. It has become the Iranian regime's economic lifeline by allowing the
mullahs to use Turkish markets to bypass the UN sanctions regime.
In less than ten years, the AKP regime has dismantled Turkey's strategic
alliance with Israel. It has inculcated the formerly tolerant if not pro-Israel
Turkish public with virulent anti-Semitism. It is this systematic
indoctrination to Jew hatred that has emboldened Turkish leaders to announce
publically that they support going to war against Israel.
The Turkish government stands behind the al Qaeda and Hamas linked IHH group.
IHH organized last year's pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in which IHH members
brutally attacked IDF naval commandoes engaged in a lawful mission to maintain
Israel's lawful maritime blockade of Gaza's coast. With the support of the
Turkish government, IHH is now planning an even larger flotilla to assault on
Israel's blockade of Gaza next month.
Actually in a sign of the intimacy of its ties to the AKP regime, this week IHH
announced it is considering postponing the next pro-Hamas flotilla in order to
ensure that its illegal pro-terror campaign will not harm the AKP's electoral
prospects in Turkey's national elections scheduled for June.
American and other Western officials have argued that it would be wrong to
distance their governments from Turkey or in any way censure the NATO member
because doing so will only strengthen the anti-Western forces in the
anti-Western government. Instead, Western leaders have done everything they can
to appease Erdogan. The US even allowed him to invade Iraqi Kurdistan.
Unfortunately, this appeasement policy has only harmed the West and NATO. Take
the behavior of NATO's Secretary General and former Danish prime minister
Anders Fogh Rasmussen. As Denmark's prime minister Rasmussen stood up boldly to
the Islamists when they demanded that he apologize for the Danish newspaper
Jyllands Posten's publication of caricatures of Muhammad in 2005. Yet when
Turkey threatened to veto his appointment as NATO Secretary General in 2009
over the Islamists' rejection of free speech, Rasmussen abandoned his
previously strong defense of Western liberal values to placate the Turks.
In a humiliating speech Rasmussen said, "I was deeply distressed that the
cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark or insult
or behave disrespectfully towards Islam or the Prophet Mohammed�I respect Islam
as one of the world's major religions as well as its religious symbols."
Rasmussen then proceeded to appoint Turks to key positions in the alliance.
Far from reining in Turkey's anti-Western policies, by maintaining Turkey in
NATO Western powers have been forced to curtail their own defense of their
interests. NATO's incoherent mission in Libya is case in point. It can be
argued that Germany's large and increasingly radicalized Turkish minority
played a role in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to risk her
country's good ties with Britain and France and refuse to support the Libyan
mission. So too, it was reportedly due to US President Barak Obama's deference
to Turkey that the US failed to support the anti-regime forces until Gaddafi
organized a counteroffensive against them.
So if as appears increasingly likely, Gaddafi is able to survive the
NATO-backed insurgents' bid to overthrow him, he will owe his survival in no
small measure to Erdogan.
Turkey is a cautionary tale for the West which is now faced with the prospect
of AKP-like regimes from Egypt to Tunisia to Jordan to the Persian Gulf. And
the real issue that Western leaders must address is how things in Turkey were
permitted to deteriorate to the point they have without any US or European
official lifting a finger to stem the Islamist tide?
The answer it would seem is a combination of professional laziness and cultural
weakness. This mix of factors is also on display in the US's behavior toward
the revolutionary forces active throughout much of the Arab world.
Professional laziness stands at the root of the West's decision not to contend
with the unpleasant truth that the AKP is an Islamist party whose basic
ideology has more in common with Osama Bin Laden's values than with George
Washington's. This truth was always available. Erdogan and his colleagues did
not make any special efforts to hide what they stand for.
The West chose not to pay attention because its senior officials knew if they
did, they would have to do something. They would have had to distance itself
from Turkey, remove Turkey from NATO and seek to contain the power of the
Erdogan regime. And this would have been hard and unpleasant.
So too, they knew that if they noticed the nature of the AKP they would have to
throw themselves deep into Turkish society and defend the superiority of
Western values over Islamist values. They would have had to locate and support
Turkish leaders who are willing to adopt Western values and then cultivate,
fund and empower them. This also would have been hard and unpleasant.
Likewise, in post-Mubarak Egypt, it is easier to believe fairytales about
Facebook revolutions and Westernized student leaders than face the harsh truth
that from Amr Moussa to Muhammad el Baradei to Yousef Qaradawi there are no
leaders in post-Mubarak Egypt that support the peace with Israel or believe
that Egypt has common interests with Israel and the US. There are no potential
leaders in Egypt who share Western values of individual liberty and human
rights.
And as in Turkey, the price for recognizing these inconvenient facts is taking
effective action to counter them. As in Turkey, the West will be forced to do
hard things like develop a policy of containing rather than engaging Egypt and
identifying and cultivating forces in Egyptian society that are willing to
embrace John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith over Hassan el Banna and
Qaradawi.
Rather than do any of these hard things, Western leaders have lied to
themselves about the nature of these forces and regimes. They have told
themselves that there is no problem with the likes of Erdogan and his Egyptian
cohorts and opted to limit their meddling in the internal affairs of others to
endless attempts to undermine and overthrow successive pro-Western, democratic,
non-leftist governments in Israel. These governments, they have argued must be
replaced by leftist parties in order to feed the West's fantasy that all the
problems of the region, all its Qaradawis and Erdogans will magically become
Thomas Jeffersons and John Adamses if Israel would just cut a deal with the
PLO.
This fantasy is convenient for lazy Western cultural cowards. They know that
there will be no pushback for their policies. Israel won't attack them. And by
pretending the Islamists share their values and strategic interests they are
free to take no action to defend their values and strategic interests from
Islamist assault.
But while this strategy has been convenient for policymakers it has done great
damage to their countries. The growing menace that is Islamist Turkey teaches
us that professional laziness and cultural squeamishness are recipes for
strategic disasters.
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