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WHY ARE NEOCONS ATTACKING TURKEY?
John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
July 24 2008
Some neoconservatives in Washington are obsessed with attacking Iran
before President Bush leaves office at the end of this year. Hence,
they have been pushing the Bush administration for increased economic
and political isolation of Iran in order to weaken its current
regime. Crucial to this plan is the support of Turkey, a traditional
U.S. ally and an increasingly critical player in the region.
But to the enormous frustration of the neoconservatives, such an
attack does not align with Turkey's interests given its newly enhanced
regional ties, maturing democracy, and new foreign policy. Instead,
Turkey plays the negotiator role and favors diplomacy and direct
talks to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
With neoconservatives pressing for an attack on Iran and Turkey
maneuvering to play a mediating role, which way will U.S. policy swing?
Turkey's Transformation Much has changed in Turkey's approach to
foreign policy in recent years. When the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) came to power in 2002, it quickly broke the old patterns of
Turkish foreign policy. Turkey's role evolved from an introverted
peripheral country to a significant country with a regional and
global influence.
According to this new policy, Turkey aims to play a more active and
constructive role in developing relations with its neighboring regions
and beyond. "As a major country with a historical and strategic depth
in the midst of the Afro-Eurasia landmass, Turkey is a central country
with multiple regional identities that cannot be reduced to one unified
category. In terms of its sphere of influence, Turkey is a Middle
Eastern, Balkan, Caucasian, Central Asian, Caspian, Mediterranean,
Gulf and Black Sea country all at the same time," said Ahmet Davutoglu,
the intellectual architect of the new multi-dimensional foreign policy,
during an interview on CNN-Turk on January 2, 2008.
A fundamental principle of the new approach is a "zero problems with
the neighbors" rule, which has improved diplomatic relations with all
of Turkey's neighbors -- most notably Syria, Georgia, and Bulgaria -
and boosted trade volumes as well. The share of Turkey's trade volume
with neighboring nations increased from 6% of the total foreign trade
volume in 2000 to 35% in 2007.
In addition, a significant Turkish-Iranian rapprochement has taken
place, not only because of Iran's policy against the Kurdish
separatists (PKK), but also because of Turkey's growing energy
needs. Trade volume with Iran alone increased from $1 billion in 2000
to over $8 billion in 2007. And in July 2007, the Turkish government
signed an agreement with Iran to transport Iranian natural gas to
Turkey and Europe and to develop the Iranian natural gas industry
by investing $3.5 billion in its South Pars gas field. This figure
reaches approximately $10 billion when other contracts, such as for
electricity generation, are factored in.
Although Turkey's enhanced ties with Iran and Syria have caused
concern in certain quarters of Washington, this change - stemming
from a transparent diversification of the Turkish policy - has
not distanced Turkey from the West and Israel. However, Turkey's
clear lack of interest in isolating Iran has prompted neoconservative
hardliners, led by former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle,
to undertake a smear campaign against the ruling AKP.
Neocon Attack Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, and Michael Rubin, three
leading neo-con writers, have published pieces equating Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with far-right ultra-nationalist
politicians such as France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, Austria's Joerg Haider,
and even Osama bin Laden. They have accused the AKP and Erdogan not
only of having a hidden agenda to turn Turkey into an Islamic state,
but also of paving the way for an Iranian-style Islamic revolution by
Fethullah Gulen, a prominent religious leader known for his moderate
and progressive views. Moreover, Rubin defended both the case to shut
down the ruling AKP and the coup launched by the Turkish military last
year as democratic. These accusations and assertions against the AKP
government were harsher even than those made by the government's own
critics. Rubin's arguments went largely ignored in Washington, since
they are in clear conflict with U.S. foreign policy. However, they
were more than enough to rally his friends in the Turkish military.
In addition to attacking the Erdogan government, Rubin claimed that
Massoud Barzani, the president of the Regional Kurdish Government in
Iraq, of selling U.S. arms to the Kurdish separatist group PKK. Rubin
even went as far as to boldly suggest that Turkey should capture and
imprison Barzani next to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in the Turkish
island prison of Ä°mrali in order to stop the PKK terror. Once again,
although not taken seriously in Washington, Rubin's arguments were
applauded in Turkey by the hawkish wing of the military general
staff. His surreal arguments were reflected as "American expert
opinion from Washington" in Turkey's anti-AKP media outlets to create
an illusion of international support for their cause.
The neoconservative campaign has had two main goals. The first has been
to team up with non-democratic powers within Turkey, primarily some
circles within the military as well as the state and the political
system, to oust the democratically elected government. A less
democratic Turkey with a more dominant and politically active military
would be more susceptible to neocon pressure to support a U.S. attack
on Iran. The second goal has been to strengthen the Israeli-Turkish
alliance by boosting the influence of the more Israel-friendly
military circles within the Turkish politics. Not surprisingly, in
order to strengthen the position of the military in Turkish society,
the neoconservatives have not hesitated to support something the Bush
administration has been desperate to avoid: opening another front in
the Iraq War by supporting a possible Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq to hunt down PKK terrorists..
Neoconservatives have had a deep and continuing interest in Turkey. In
the past, Richard Perle has been involved in some lucrative consulting
deals and has made some very high-level friends in Turkey. In 1986,
he became the co-chair, along with the Turkish general staff, of the
U.S.-Turkish consultative defense group. From 1989 to 1994, he worked
as an adviser for the International Advisors Inc. (IAI), a lobbying
firm started by Douglas Feith and registered as Turkey's foreign agent
with the Justice Department. Perle is also known as the key architect
of the Israeli-Turkish alliance of the late 1990s. This alliance has
resulted in close military cooperation between the two countries,
and Turkey has been an important customer of Israel's defense industry.
Shifting Geopolitics Despite speculation that Turkey's importance to
the United States would decrease after the Cold War, Turkey remains
pivotal to U.S. security interests. The United States depends on
Turkey in an unstable region that intersects the Balkans, the Middle
East, and the Caucasus as well as Central Asia. Turkey has continued
its close cooperation with the United States through both NATO and
the UN. It cooperated in the missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and
has participated as well in several key peacekeeping missions such
as Sudan and Lebanon. It hosts the Incirlik Air Base, which provides
logistical support missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Seventy percent of
U.S. air cargo bound for to U.S. troops in Iraq goes through Incirlik.
But Turkey is no longer dependent entirely on the United States
for its geopolitical position. It has demonstrated a willingness
to position itself as a regional and global power. In addition to
economic and military power, the appeal of Turkey's soft power has
increased thanks to its political and economic domestic reforms and
its new perceived image in the neighboring regions as a good example
of the coexistence of Islam with democracy and modernity.
Turkey has been playing a key mediating role in several conflicts,
including those between Syria and Israel, between Palestine and Israel,
and in Lebanon. Syria and Israel just had their third round of indirect
talks under Turkey's mediation in Istanbul. Similarly, the Ankara Forum
had several meetings so far and brought the private sectors of Israel
and Palestine together to work on possible rapprochement. The Ankara
Forum also hosted a meeting between the Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres before the Annapolis summit in
November 2007. After the 2006 Lebanon war, the AKP government decided
to send 1,000 troops - one of the largest contributions - to the UN
Interim Force in Lebanon despite harsh domestic opposition. Also,
during the recent Lebanon crisis in May 2008, Turkey played the
mediator role between the Shia opposition and the Sunni establishment
thanks to its good relations with both parties. Its balanced policy
toward each group also secured Turkey an active role in bridging the
Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq in 2007. It has similarly worked behind the
scenes in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan on peace-building efforts. In
fact, Turkey is now the only country that enjoys good relations with
every country in the Middle East.
Turkey's willingness to engage hasn't just been limited to its
immediate region. As a result of Turkey's opening to Africa in 2005,
the African Union declared Turkey a strategic partner after China,
India, and Japan in January 2008. More importantly, Turkey is now
a UN Security Council candidate for 2009-2010; this is an important
position where Turkey can use its current experience as a promoter
of stability and democracy on a broader level, especially in bridging
the divide between East and West.
Turkey's good-neighbor policy doesn't extend in every
direction. Cross-border operations in Iraq, the Cyprus issue --
despite a significant rapprochement with Greece -- and the historical
dispute with Armenia still pose major potential setbacks.
Moreover, the transformation in foreign policy depends in part on
continuity in domestic reforms. The biggest challenge is the high
court's recent attempt to shut down the governing AKP. The groups
manipulating the high court to shut down the AKP are the same ones that
favor an insulated and more autocratic Turkey. They see both the United
States and the European Union as major threats to Turkey's unity,
and have very rigid positions on the Kurdish, Cypriot, and Armenian
issues. Therefore, if the AKP is shut down, all of the aforementioned
achievements and policy changes will be overturned. Put simply, if
these pro-military and anti-AKP forces are successful, they will mark
the end of an era of unprecedented reform in Turkish politics, second
only to the period of the country's modern leader, Kemal Ataturk.
Future of U.S. Policy The teaming up of U.S. neoconservatives with
pro-military and anti-AKP circles in Turkey in an effort to topple
the Erdogan government is self-destructive and has little chance of
success, given popular support for a stronger and more pluralistic
democracy in Turkey. Moreover, such neoconservative manipulations taint
the image of the United States in Turkey, even at a time now when the
Bush administration is distancing itself from many neoconservative
positions.
The Bush-Erdogan summit in Washington in November 2007 marked
the beginning of a new era in U.S.-Turkish relations. The Bush
administration put pressure on Congress to squelch a resolution
calling on Ankara to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and Turkey
got a more sympathetic audience for its security concerns related to
the PKK in northern Iraq. Both sides now keep communication channels
open in order to avoid the kind of dips in relations that have taken
place in the past.
It is in the U.S. interest for Turkey to play an expanded peacemaking
role in the region. But for Turkey to do so, it must continue on its
current path of democratic reform. By supporting the military's return
in Turkey and a more hardline approach to Iran, U.S. neoconservatives
want to turn the clock back on Turkish reform and plunge the entire
region into even greater chaos.
--Boundary_(ID_BZXTorolKbJIe+S/ir9gQA)--
John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
July 24 2008
Some neoconservatives in Washington are obsessed with attacking Iran
before President Bush leaves office at the end of this year. Hence,
they have been pushing the Bush administration for increased economic
and political isolation of Iran in order to weaken its current
regime. Crucial to this plan is the support of Turkey, a traditional
U.S. ally and an increasingly critical player in the region.
But to the enormous frustration of the neoconservatives, such an
attack does not align with Turkey's interests given its newly enhanced
regional ties, maturing democracy, and new foreign policy. Instead,
Turkey plays the negotiator role and favors diplomacy and direct
talks to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
With neoconservatives pressing for an attack on Iran and Turkey
maneuvering to play a mediating role, which way will U.S. policy swing?
Turkey's Transformation Much has changed in Turkey's approach to
foreign policy in recent years. When the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) came to power in 2002, it quickly broke the old patterns of
Turkish foreign policy. Turkey's role evolved from an introverted
peripheral country to a significant country with a regional and
global influence.
According to this new policy, Turkey aims to play a more active and
constructive role in developing relations with its neighboring regions
and beyond. "As a major country with a historical and strategic depth
in the midst of the Afro-Eurasia landmass, Turkey is a central country
with multiple regional identities that cannot be reduced to one unified
category. In terms of its sphere of influence, Turkey is a Middle
Eastern, Balkan, Caucasian, Central Asian, Caspian, Mediterranean,
Gulf and Black Sea country all at the same time," said Ahmet Davutoglu,
the intellectual architect of the new multi-dimensional foreign policy,
during an interview on CNN-Turk on January 2, 2008.
A fundamental principle of the new approach is a "zero problems with
the neighbors" rule, which has improved diplomatic relations with all
of Turkey's neighbors -- most notably Syria, Georgia, and Bulgaria -
and boosted trade volumes as well. The share of Turkey's trade volume
with neighboring nations increased from 6% of the total foreign trade
volume in 2000 to 35% in 2007.
In addition, a significant Turkish-Iranian rapprochement has taken
place, not only because of Iran's policy against the Kurdish
separatists (PKK), but also because of Turkey's growing energy
needs. Trade volume with Iran alone increased from $1 billion in 2000
to over $8 billion in 2007. And in July 2007, the Turkish government
signed an agreement with Iran to transport Iranian natural gas to
Turkey and Europe and to develop the Iranian natural gas industry
by investing $3.5 billion in its South Pars gas field. This figure
reaches approximately $10 billion when other contracts, such as for
electricity generation, are factored in.
Although Turkey's enhanced ties with Iran and Syria have caused
concern in certain quarters of Washington, this change - stemming
from a transparent diversification of the Turkish policy - has
not distanced Turkey from the West and Israel. However, Turkey's
clear lack of interest in isolating Iran has prompted neoconservative
hardliners, led by former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle,
to undertake a smear campaign against the ruling AKP.
Neocon Attack Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, and Michael Rubin, three
leading neo-con writers, have published pieces equating Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with far-right ultra-nationalist
politicians such as France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, Austria's Joerg Haider,
and even Osama bin Laden. They have accused the AKP and Erdogan not
only of having a hidden agenda to turn Turkey into an Islamic state,
but also of paving the way for an Iranian-style Islamic revolution by
Fethullah Gulen, a prominent religious leader known for his moderate
and progressive views. Moreover, Rubin defended both the case to shut
down the ruling AKP and the coup launched by the Turkish military last
year as democratic. These accusations and assertions against the AKP
government were harsher even than those made by the government's own
critics. Rubin's arguments went largely ignored in Washington, since
they are in clear conflict with U.S. foreign policy. However, they
were more than enough to rally his friends in the Turkish military.
In addition to attacking the Erdogan government, Rubin claimed that
Massoud Barzani, the president of the Regional Kurdish Government in
Iraq, of selling U.S. arms to the Kurdish separatist group PKK. Rubin
even went as far as to boldly suggest that Turkey should capture and
imprison Barzani next to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in the Turkish
island prison of Ä°mrali in order to stop the PKK terror. Once again,
although not taken seriously in Washington, Rubin's arguments were
applauded in Turkey by the hawkish wing of the military general
staff. His surreal arguments were reflected as "American expert
opinion from Washington" in Turkey's anti-AKP media outlets to create
an illusion of international support for their cause.
The neoconservative campaign has had two main goals. The first has been
to team up with non-democratic powers within Turkey, primarily some
circles within the military as well as the state and the political
system, to oust the democratically elected government. A less
democratic Turkey with a more dominant and politically active military
would be more susceptible to neocon pressure to support a U.S. attack
on Iran. The second goal has been to strengthen the Israeli-Turkish
alliance by boosting the influence of the more Israel-friendly
military circles within the Turkish politics. Not surprisingly, in
order to strengthen the position of the military in Turkish society,
the neoconservatives have not hesitated to support something the Bush
administration has been desperate to avoid: opening another front in
the Iraq War by supporting a possible Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq to hunt down PKK terrorists..
Neoconservatives have had a deep and continuing interest in Turkey. In
the past, Richard Perle has been involved in some lucrative consulting
deals and has made some very high-level friends in Turkey. In 1986,
he became the co-chair, along with the Turkish general staff, of the
U.S.-Turkish consultative defense group. From 1989 to 1994, he worked
as an adviser for the International Advisors Inc. (IAI), a lobbying
firm started by Douglas Feith and registered as Turkey's foreign agent
with the Justice Department. Perle is also known as the key architect
of the Israeli-Turkish alliance of the late 1990s. This alliance has
resulted in close military cooperation between the two countries,
and Turkey has been an important customer of Israel's defense industry.
Shifting Geopolitics Despite speculation that Turkey's importance to
the United States would decrease after the Cold War, Turkey remains
pivotal to U.S. security interests. The United States depends on
Turkey in an unstable region that intersects the Balkans, the Middle
East, and the Caucasus as well as Central Asia. Turkey has continued
its close cooperation with the United States through both NATO and
the UN. It cooperated in the missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and
has participated as well in several key peacekeeping missions such
as Sudan and Lebanon. It hosts the Incirlik Air Base, which provides
logistical support missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Seventy percent of
U.S. air cargo bound for to U.S. troops in Iraq goes through Incirlik.
But Turkey is no longer dependent entirely on the United States
for its geopolitical position. It has demonstrated a willingness
to position itself as a regional and global power. In addition to
economic and military power, the appeal of Turkey's soft power has
increased thanks to its political and economic domestic reforms and
its new perceived image in the neighboring regions as a good example
of the coexistence of Islam with democracy and modernity.
Turkey has been playing a key mediating role in several conflicts,
including those between Syria and Israel, between Palestine and Israel,
and in Lebanon. Syria and Israel just had their third round of indirect
talks under Turkey's mediation in Istanbul. Similarly, the Ankara Forum
had several meetings so far and brought the private sectors of Israel
and Palestine together to work on possible rapprochement. The Ankara
Forum also hosted a meeting between the Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres before the Annapolis summit in
November 2007. After the 2006 Lebanon war, the AKP government decided
to send 1,000 troops - one of the largest contributions - to the UN
Interim Force in Lebanon despite harsh domestic opposition. Also,
during the recent Lebanon crisis in May 2008, Turkey played the
mediator role between the Shia opposition and the Sunni establishment
thanks to its good relations with both parties. Its balanced policy
toward each group also secured Turkey an active role in bridging the
Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq in 2007. It has similarly worked behind the
scenes in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan on peace-building efforts. In
fact, Turkey is now the only country that enjoys good relations with
every country in the Middle East.
Turkey's willingness to engage hasn't just been limited to its
immediate region. As a result of Turkey's opening to Africa in 2005,
the African Union declared Turkey a strategic partner after China,
India, and Japan in January 2008. More importantly, Turkey is now
a UN Security Council candidate for 2009-2010; this is an important
position where Turkey can use its current experience as a promoter
of stability and democracy on a broader level, especially in bridging
the divide between East and West.
Turkey's good-neighbor policy doesn't extend in every
direction. Cross-border operations in Iraq, the Cyprus issue --
despite a significant rapprochement with Greece -- and the historical
dispute with Armenia still pose major potential setbacks.
Moreover, the transformation in foreign policy depends in part on
continuity in domestic reforms. The biggest challenge is the high
court's recent attempt to shut down the governing AKP. The groups
manipulating the high court to shut down the AKP are the same ones that
favor an insulated and more autocratic Turkey. They see both the United
States and the European Union as major threats to Turkey's unity,
and have very rigid positions on the Kurdish, Cypriot, and Armenian
issues. Therefore, if the AKP is shut down, all of the aforementioned
achievements and policy changes will be overturned. Put simply, if
these pro-military and anti-AKP forces are successful, they will mark
the end of an era of unprecedented reform in Turkish politics, second
only to the period of the country's modern leader, Kemal Ataturk.
Future of U.S. Policy The teaming up of U.S. neoconservatives with
pro-military and anti-AKP circles in Turkey in an effort to topple
the Erdogan government is self-destructive and has little chance of
success, given popular support for a stronger and more pluralistic
democracy in Turkey. Moreover, such neoconservative manipulations taint
the image of the United States in Turkey, even at a time now when the
Bush administration is distancing itself from many neoconservative
positions.
The Bush-Erdogan summit in Washington in November 2007 marked
the beginning of a new era in U.S.-Turkish relations. The Bush
administration put pressure on Congress to squelch a resolution
calling on Ankara to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and Turkey
got a more sympathetic audience for its security concerns related to
the PKK in northern Iraq. Both sides now keep communication channels
open in order to avoid the kind of dips in relations that have taken
place in the past.
It is in the U.S. interest for Turkey to play an expanded peacemaking
role in the region. But for Turkey to do so, it must continue on its
current path of democratic reform. By supporting the military's return
in Turkey and a more hardline approach to Iran, U.S. neoconservatives
want to turn the clock back on Turkish reform and plunge the entire
region into even greater chaos.
--Boundary_(ID_BZXTorolKbJIe+S/ir9gQA)--