Tweet
The Business Insider
August 18, 2011 Thursday 9:47 PM EST
Turkey Could Help Restore The Balance Between The U.S. And The Middle East
With the Middle East in flames and news coming faster than governments
can react, nothing is more important than to step back from the fray,
take a deep breath and get some perspective. Historical perspective.
That is particularly true when looking at what historians may consider
the most important change in the Middle East recent years: the
re-emergence of Turkey as an important regional player. The changes in
Turkey's foreign policy are deep and real, the consequences are
unpredictable and large, and every other power interested in the
Middle East (which means every power whose citizens like to drive cars
and stay warm in the winter) needs to take account of Turkey's new
approach.
One starting place to get a sense of what Turkey is trying to do seems
unlikely: look at Greece 100 years ago. Back when a Venezilos was the
prime minister of Greece (rather than just the finance minister as is
the case today), he had a Big Idea: the famous . The Ottoman Empire
had lost World War One and was breaking up; it was obviously time for
Greece to restore the Byzantine Empire by conquering what is now the
west coast of Turkey and other Greek-inhabited regions of modern
Turkey, including the ancient Greek imperial capital of
Constantinople.
It was a big idea and it led to the biggest catastrophe in modern
Greek history: Turkish armies under the formidable general Mustafa
Kemal (later Atatürk) drove the Greeks into the sea. Hundreds of
thousands of Greeks fled or were kicked out of the emerging republic
of Turkey in a pattern that would continue until almost the last
remaining Greeks left the city now officially known as Istanbul a
generation ago. (Hundreds of thousands of Turks and Muslims were
forced out of Greece during the same period of time.)
But now it's the Turks who have their own Big Idea and, like the Greek
one, it's a dream of turning east to restore their ancient imperial
glory. And like the Greek idea, it might even work - for a while.
The head of the Ottoman Empire wasn't just a secular ruler. He was
widely acknowledged as the Caliph of Islam, the successor to the power
of the followers of the prophet Muhammed. By destroying the Byzantine
Empire and twice besieging the seat of the Holy Roman Emperors in
Vienna, the Sultans established themselves at the head of what once
looked like Islam's inevitable and divinely ordained conquest of
Europe. By putting Mecca under his protection (despite occasional
rebellions by pesky Wahhabi rebels), he protected the annual
pilgrimage and the holy shrines; until Osama bin Laden's father began
rebuilding Mecca and Medina in line with Saudi ideas, Ottoman design
and religious sympathies shaped the landscape of pilgrimage.
In World War One the Caliph/Sultan declared both a conventional war
and a jihad against the western Allies; the British, whose empire at
the time included an estimated one half of the world's Muslim
population, were worried that the Caliph's call would touch off a
broader imperial struggle. It didn't, and the Caliph lost the war,
and Mustafa Kemal made Turkey a secular republic.
Kemal Atatürk and his followers believed that entanglements in the
east would only lead modern Turkey away from its true interest:
joining the west on equal terms. Like the Japanese modernizers,
Atatürk believed that his country had to adopt western ways rapidly or
it would be carved up by expansionist European powers.
He was not delusional; at the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 the World War
One Allies did exactly that, giving large chunks of Turkish territory
to Armenia (at Woodrow Wilson's prodding) and Greece, while assigning
the majority of what remained to the victors as "spheres of
influence". Plans were also afoot to establish a Kurdish state in the
east.
Atatürk defeated the Greeks and the west to establish modern Turkey's
boundaries, and he was determined that Turkish "backwardness" would
never leave his country exposed to this kind of danger again. That
meant turning Turkey's back on the "primitive" east, Islamic law,
Arabic script and everything that lured the new secular Republic away
from the stern task of modernization. The Turkish armed forces,
immensely prestigious after their victory over the powers behind
Sèvres, saw themselves as the custodians of Atatürk's legacy - a role
that they only finally seem to have abandoned this summer when the
chiefs of the Turkish military resigned, allowing Erdogan to replace
them with nominees of his choice.
Now that Prime Minister Erdogan, (pronounced AIR doe wan) has defeated
Turkey's secularists, he is looking to rebuild Turkey's role as the
leader of the Islamic world. In the Middle East he will have some
success. The prestige of Turkey's modernization and the admiration
for its democratic transition from French-style secularism to
something more, well, American gives him lots of prestige - especially
in the ex-Ottoman world. This is a change.
For many years Arab nationalists hated the Ottomans as a corrupt and
imperial power who ruined Arab development prospects while failing to
defend the Islamic world from imperialist Europe. That hatred was
especially strong in modern Syria and Lebanon where Arab nationalists
(often led by missionary-educated Christian Arabs) were increasingly
influential as the empire stumbled and western influence grew.
In any case, Erdogan's AK Party is interested in overturning Atatürk's
secularism and overcoming his rejection of Turkey's Ottoman heritage.
For many AK supporters, the Ottoman era wasn't an era of darkness and
backwardness that Turkey needs to forget. It was in some respects at
least a golden age of prosperity and peace, when a Turkish Sultan was
the Caliph of Islam and Islam was the most widespread and, perhaps,
respected religion in the world. Europeans trembled at the thought of
the Great Turk, and from Hungary and Algeria through Egypt and Iraq,
his word was law.
For many Turks, a new arc of history now looks clear. The Turks under
Atatürk and the Kemalists modernized; now they are returning to their
Islamic roots with a unique blend of advanced technology and economic
success. This is not about conquest or the restoration of an actual
empire - the Turks are subtler than were the Greeks. Where the
Ottomans ruled by fire and the sword, the modern Turks will lead Islam
by example and inspiration; Turks have achieved while Arabs can only
dream. Now Turkey, in this view, returns to lead the Arabs into the
light and Turkey's unique role and prestige among the Arabs will give
it new power and stature in the west. One can see why many young
Turks are optimistic about the most glorious prospects Turks have seen
since Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conqueror) entered Constantinople in 1453.
These bright hopes color the way that some Turks look at events next
door. Syria was much more a part of the late Ottoman world than Egypt
where first local rulers and later the British had replaced Ottoman
authority in all but name long before the empire fell. Syria was
different. Unlike the rebellious provinces in Europe, filled with
disloyal and ungrateful Christians constantly intriguing with European
powers to win independence, Syria was relatively quiet under Ottoman
rule. More, the Sunni majority was more supportive of Ottoman rule
than were the subversive Christian and Alawi minorities.
These days a Sunni Turk can look at Syria and see a Sunni majority
oppressed by secularism, heresy and dictatorship all at once. On the
one hand, that creates strong domestic pressure on Erdogan to "do
something" about the butcheries so close at hand; on the other, it
creates unrealistic expectations about the Syrian public's reaction to
greater Turkish regional leadership.
For Erdogan's government, the first stages of its "return to the east"
were generally pleasant. Strong criticism of Israel's attack on Gaza
and his tough response to Israel's attack on last year's Gaza flotilla
made Erdogan enormously popular in the Arab world. His reputation for
opposing the US war in Iraq also raised his profile. Better
commercial relations with Syria and Iran boosted Turkish exports and
trade. His intervention into the Iranian nuclear issue had little
effect on the course of the dispute but played well at home where
voters saw Turkey emerging as a global leader on an issue that
mattered to them.
More, Turkey's role as the de facto head of western Sunnism looked
promising. The state of the Sunni Arab world is deeply depressing.
The fall of Saddam Hussein, the ever-tightening relationship of Syria
and Iran, the growing Shi'a power in Lebanon and more recently Iran's
success (with Syrian help) at building its influence in Gaza, paint a
disturbing picture of Sunni fecklessness and decline. Dominated by
corrupt dinosaurs like former Egyptian president Mubarak or ruled by
immensely wealthy and not particularly courageous or attractive royal
families, the western Sunni world hungered for leadership that Turkey
might be ready to provide.
The great idea of a return to the east was looking good.
But Atatürk's instinct that Turkey needed to turn west was based on
more than a sense that the west was where the power and the money
could be found. It was also based on a sense that the east was a
trap: full of danger and complications that could endanger Turkey's
stability if Turks were sucked into its quarrels.
Nationalism, tribalism and sectarianism were the forces that shredded
the Ottoman Empire. The nineteenth century brought "national
revivals" to various ethnic minorities throughout the empire -
starting with the Greeks and the Serbs and finishing with the Arabs
and the Jews. Tribal rivalries in the Arab world undermined the
effectiveness of Ottoman rule; Kurdish, Armenian and Greek minorities
threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey.
These days, the world west of Turkey has mostly been ethnically
cleansed and homogenized. The German minorities in central and
eastern Europe were expelled back to Germany after 1945; except in the
Caucasus the Soviets also cleaned ethnic house, moving Poles hundreds
of miles west and shifting Turkish and other minorities to the east
from places like the Crimea. The Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the
struggle over Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians were one (one hopes)
among the last European flare ups of the long wars of the nations
which gradually forged modern nation states out of the ethnic and
religious hodgepodge of Europe 150 years ago. Tens of millions died
and tens of millions more were driven from their homes, but except for
some occasional belches and booms, the volcano has finished exploding.
That is not true to Turkey's east. Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Armenia,
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iraq (to say nothing of Israel and the
Palestinian territories) are still on the ethnic and sectarian boil.
None of these countries have borders that match up with their ethnic
composition; religious divisions still have the power to kill; tribal
loyalties are oblivious to artificial boundary lines. There is
probably a lot of killing still to be done and a lot of ethnic and
religious refugees to be made before these countries settle down into
something like a final form.
Involvement with the east might start with expanding Turkish trade and
enhancing Turkey's diplomatic and Islamic profiles; it will be very
difficult to ensure that it does not entangle Turkey into intractable
conflicts across the region. Indeed, Turkish foreign policy has
already been destabilized by the Armenian-Azerbaijani and
Israel-Palestinian rivalries, and the Kurdish question in Iraq, Syria
and Iran brings Turkey new and vexing headaches every day.
Asserting itself as an Islamic and Middle Eastern power plunges Turkey
more deeply into this morass; it also triggers religious and ethnic
tensions within Turkey itself. The AK is predominantly a Sunni party
but up to a fifth of Turks belong to the Alevi faith, a form of Islam
that is rooted in Twelver Shi'ism but has a more tolerant and
universalist view than, say, the bigoted orthodoxies of Tehran. Many
Alevi oppose the AK Party and what some see as its Sunni sectarianism;
a secular government sounds very attractive when you belong to a
religious minority.
And of course there are the Kurds. Numbers as usual are
controversial, but there are probably about as many Kurds as Alevis in
Turkey; in total the two populations probably account for a bit more
than a third of the total Turkish population of 73,000,000. Under the
Kemalists, a policy of "Turkification" tried to make good Turks out of
the Kurds - with very mixed success.
Any eastern expansion of Turkish influence immediately deepens
Turkey's engagement with the Kurdish question. The parts of Syria,
Iraq and Iran closest to Turkey have large Kurdish minorities; Turkey
fears that if any part of this multinational Kurdish territory gained
independence, Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey would get support - and
that an independent state could use the UN and other forums to get
publicity for the cause.
At the same time, moving east and south sharpens Turkey's definition
as a Sunni power. The Ottomans and the Iranians were regional rivals
for centuries; the Ottomans ruled over most of modern Iraq and the two
empires struggled for influence in the Caucasus and in other border
regions. Today, when Iran is busy cementing the "Shi'a crescent" from
Iran through Lebanon, any assertion of Turkish power would immediately
lead to a contest between the two. Iraq is likely to be a flashpoint;
Turkey cannot help but be concerned with Iraq given its proximity, its
oil potential and its large and organized Kurdish autonomous zone.
Iraq is also a balance-tipper. If Iraq tilts toward Iran the Middle
East has one kind of shape and Iran is a major player across the
Fertile Crescent. If Iraq resists Iran, the Iranians are thrust to
the margins of the Middle East. Turkey's interests in Iraq run
closely parallel to those of the US: it wants Iraq to have a strong
national government that is free of Iranian influence and ultimately
Turkey probably cares about that more than does the United States.
The regional dynamics are even more complex. In a rivalry between
Turkey and Iran, Russia would not look on indifferently; Russia would
be unwilling to see a NATO power extend its reach into a region where
Russia has strong interests. For now, when the Saudis are as worried
about a rising Iran and what they see as an irresolute US, they are
likely to welcome Turkish influence as a counterbalance to Iran. The
minute the Iranian threat begins to diminish, however, the Saudis and
the Turks are likely to fall out. Saudi Islam and Turkish Islam are
very different, and the House of Saud (which rebelled against the
Ottoman sultans more than once) would likely see a too-strong Turkey
with a more liberal Islam as a serious religious threat.
To face east for Turkey is to face a sea of troubles - but there is
the allure of all that trade and the vision of a greater global role.
Before the Syrian rebellion, Turkey thought it had found a way to
square the circle. Its famous "no problems" foreign policy sought
good relations with the neighbors and while the Assads were firmly in
control, it worked pretty well. Trade relations between Turkey and
Syria boomed, and the stability of the Assad regime kept all the messy
political implications of the Turkish initiative at bay.
The Syrian rebellion changed all that. Erdogan and his government are
trapped between the need to support the rights of their co-believers
and the fear of chaos and greater Iranian influence in Syria. At
times the Turks have tried to support Assad while counseling him to go
easy on the dissidents; when Assad ignores this advice it makes Turks
look weak. More recently, the Turks have shifted to criticize the
bloodshed, but that naturally leads to the question, "What are you
going to do about it?"
So far, the answer is nothing; that again makes the Turks look weak.
This has been unpleasant; the return to the east has gone from a
no-brainer to a no-gainer in Turkish foreign policy.
The dilemmas Turkey faces today are both like and unlike Greece's
problems 100 years ago. The problem with the Greek 'big idea' was
that Turkey was too strong. The problem with the Turkish 'big idea'
is that its eastern neighbors are too unstable and too weak.
Where the dilemmas are similar is that neither country can accomplish
its objectives without strong support from outside the region. Greece
believed that the western Allies and the United States (which had
never declared war on the Ottoman Empire but for humanitarian and
religious reasons was deeply interested in the fate of the Armenians,
Arabs and Jews) would support its eastward expansion. That didn't
happen; World War One had exhausted the Allies and with the whole
world unsettled after the war they were not interested in yet another
conflict in the ruins of Europe. The Americans were turning inward;
Woodrow Wilson at one point was interested in the US assuming a League
of Nations mandate over Armenia and perhaps more; rising US
isolationism and Wilson's shattered physical and political health
after the failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles took the US out
of the picture. Without outside help and lots of it, the Greek
adventure was doomed.
Turkey will also need outside partners to take on Iran, balance the
Saudis and play a leading role in building stable, modern societies in
the Arab world. In particular, the logic of a more ambitious Turkish
approach to the Middle East points toward a renewed partnership with
the US. That would be a difficult balancing act for both countries;
much of Turkey's popularity in the Arab world today is due to a
perception that it is an alternative to US leadership in the region
rather than a US ally. The history of bad feeling over Iraq (somewhat
lessened by cooperation over the complicated Kurdish issue) is an
obstacle, and neither Erdogan, his party or indeed his country wants
to be seen as America's regional deputy. Concretely, greater Turkish
influence in the region would inevitably drag Turkey into the
Palestinian issue; it is hard to see how Turkey, the US, Israel and
the Palestinians could make that work, and how disagreements over
Israel-Palestinian questions could be contained without throwing the
broader relationship off-kilter at least from time to time.
There are other problems as well. Some of the Wikileaks cables point
to a clash of cultures between American diplomats and AK leaders; like
many populist movements newly arrived in the halls of power, the AK
brings some attitudes and expectations to the diplomatic process that
don't mesh well with the normal ways states do business. The views of
many Turks about how the world should work and how Turkey should be
treated are both very strong and very much at odds with the way
experienced diplomats work. The interests of the two countries are
not identical: the US, like the Saudis, is more interested in Turkey
as a balancing power to keep Iran in check than it is in promoting a
new era of Turkish leadership in the Levant.
This all leads to the conclusion that the new Turkish and Middle
Eastern realities are going to be hard for the various interested
parties inside and outside the region to understand and accommodate.
As new Arab regimes begin to pull themselves together and develop new
political and economic goals for their countries, the picture will
become even more complex.
Erdogan and the "neo-Ottomans" (the phrase is widely used but not
helpful) are right and wrong. They are right that Turkey today cannot
avoid deepening its relationships with other regional powers in the
former Ottoman lands. They are right that many people in the Arab
world have a new appreciation for Turkey's success as a modernizer and
democratizer. They are right that the economic opportunities of the
region can help Turkey sustain its prosperity and that Turkish
merchants and Turkish firms can compete with Europeans, Americans and
Asians. But they are wrong if they think that Turkey can stabilize
the Middle East or even that greater involvement to the east and south
will not bring new dangers and costs.
A deeper Turkish involvement in the region may well be necessary and
has its advantages from a Turkish point of view; but Turks are likely
to find the life of a Middle Eastern power is frustrating. In this at
least, Americans can fully sympathize. We know just how that feels.
On the whole, in spite of the inevitable clashes and disagreements, a
greater Turkish presence in the Middle East will likely be welcome in
Washington. US foreign policy is ultimately much stronger when we are
an offshore balancer rather than an on-site occupying power. In the
Middle East the impotence and division of the Sunni Arabs in contrast
with Iran's aggressive stance creates an imbalance which the US
currently must try to make up on our own. Turkey can help restore that
balance, something that would ultimately let the US shrink its Middle
Eastern footprint without compromising vital interests.
Turkey, on the other hand, is likely to benefit from Washington's
tacit support - especially if the relationship is not too public and
it doesn't look as if Washington rather than Ankara is running the
show.
Much can and usually does go wrong when big historical changes take
place. Turkey is likely to have a rocky road as it turns back on the
road Atatürk abandoned, and Turkish-US relations are likely to cause
intermittent heartburn and table thumping in both countries.
Nevertheless, it looks as if their shared interests lead the US and
Turkey to update and renegotiate their sixty year old partnership in a
changing region.
This post originally appeared on The American Interest.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
August 18, 2011 Thursday 9:47 PM EST
Turkey Could Help Restore The Balance Between The U.S. And The Middle East
With the Middle East in flames and news coming faster than governments
can react, nothing is more important than to step back from the fray,
take a deep breath and get some perspective. Historical perspective.
That is particularly true when looking at what historians may consider
the most important change in the Middle East recent years: the
re-emergence of Turkey as an important regional player. The changes in
Turkey's foreign policy are deep and real, the consequences are
unpredictable and large, and every other power interested in the
Middle East (which means every power whose citizens like to drive cars
and stay warm in the winter) needs to take account of Turkey's new
approach.
One starting place to get a sense of what Turkey is trying to do seems
unlikely: look at Greece 100 years ago. Back when a Venezilos was the
prime minister of Greece (rather than just the finance minister as is
the case today), he had a Big Idea: the famous . The Ottoman Empire
had lost World War One and was breaking up; it was obviously time for
Greece to restore the Byzantine Empire by conquering what is now the
west coast of Turkey and other Greek-inhabited regions of modern
Turkey, including the ancient Greek imperial capital of
Constantinople.
It was a big idea and it led to the biggest catastrophe in modern
Greek history: Turkish armies under the formidable general Mustafa
Kemal (later Atatürk) drove the Greeks into the sea. Hundreds of
thousands of Greeks fled or were kicked out of the emerging republic
of Turkey in a pattern that would continue until almost the last
remaining Greeks left the city now officially known as Istanbul a
generation ago. (Hundreds of thousands of Turks and Muslims were
forced out of Greece during the same period of time.)
But now it's the Turks who have their own Big Idea and, like the Greek
one, it's a dream of turning east to restore their ancient imperial
glory. And like the Greek idea, it might even work - for a while.
The head of the Ottoman Empire wasn't just a secular ruler. He was
widely acknowledged as the Caliph of Islam, the successor to the power
of the followers of the prophet Muhammed. By destroying the Byzantine
Empire and twice besieging the seat of the Holy Roman Emperors in
Vienna, the Sultans established themselves at the head of what once
looked like Islam's inevitable and divinely ordained conquest of
Europe. By putting Mecca under his protection (despite occasional
rebellions by pesky Wahhabi rebels), he protected the annual
pilgrimage and the holy shrines; until Osama bin Laden's father began
rebuilding Mecca and Medina in line with Saudi ideas, Ottoman design
and religious sympathies shaped the landscape of pilgrimage.
In World War One the Caliph/Sultan declared both a conventional war
and a jihad against the western Allies; the British, whose empire at
the time included an estimated one half of the world's Muslim
population, were worried that the Caliph's call would touch off a
broader imperial struggle. It didn't, and the Caliph lost the war,
and Mustafa Kemal made Turkey a secular republic.
Kemal Atatürk and his followers believed that entanglements in the
east would only lead modern Turkey away from its true interest:
joining the west on equal terms. Like the Japanese modernizers,
Atatürk believed that his country had to adopt western ways rapidly or
it would be carved up by expansionist European powers.
He was not delusional; at the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 the World War
One Allies did exactly that, giving large chunks of Turkish territory
to Armenia (at Woodrow Wilson's prodding) and Greece, while assigning
the majority of what remained to the victors as "spheres of
influence". Plans were also afoot to establish a Kurdish state in the
east.
Atatürk defeated the Greeks and the west to establish modern Turkey's
boundaries, and he was determined that Turkish "backwardness" would
never leave his country exposed to this kind of danger again. That
meant turning Turkey's back on the "primitive" east, Islamic law,
Arabic script and everything that lured the new secular Republic away
from the stern task of modernization. The Turkish armed forces,
immensely prestigious after their victory over the powers behind
Sèvres, saw themselves as the custodians of Atatürk's legacy - a role
that they only finally seem to have abandoned this summer when the
chiefs of the Turkish military resigned, allowing Erdogan to replace
them with nominees of his choice.
Now that Prime Minister Erdogan, (pronounced AIR doe wan) has defeated
Turkey's secularists, he is looking to rebuild Turkey's role as the
leader of the Islamic world. In the Middle East he will have some
success. The prestige of Turkey's modernization and the admiration
for its democratic transition from French-style secularism to
something more, well, American gives him lots of prestige - especially
in the ex-Ottoman world. This is a change.
For many years Arab nationalists hated the Ottomans as a corrupt and
imperial power who ruined Arab development prospects while failing to
defend the Islamic world from imperialist Europe. That hatred was
especially strong in modern Syria and Lebanon where Arab nationalists
(often led by missionary-educated Christian Arabs) were increasingly
influential as the empire stumbled and western influence grew.
In any case, Erdogan's AK Party is interested in overturning Atatürk's
secularism and overcoming his rejection of Turkey's Ottoman heritage.
For many AK supporters, the Ottoman era wasn't an era of darkness and
backwardness that Turkey needs to forget. It was in some respects at
least a golden age of prosperity and peace, when a Turkish Sultan was
the Caliph of Islam and Islam was the most widespread and, perhaps,
respected religion in the world. Europeans trembled at the thought of
the Great Turk, and from Hungary and Algeria through Egypt and Iraq,
his word was law.
For many Turks, a new arc of history now looks clear. The Turks under
Atatürk and the Kemalists modernized; now they are returning to their
Islamic roots with a unique blend of advanced technology and economic
success. This is not about conquest or the restoration of an actual
empire - the Turks are subtler than were the Greeks. Where the
Ottomans ruled by fire and the sword, the modern Turks will lead Islam
by example and inspiration; Turks have achieved while Arabs can only
dream. Now Turkey, in this view, returns to lead the Arabs into the
light and Turkey's unique role and prestige among the Arabs will give
it new power and stature in the west. One can see why many young
Turks are optimistic about the most glorious prospects Turks have seen
since Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conqueror) entered Constantinople in 1453.
These bright hopes color the way that some Turks look at events next
door. Syria was much more a part of the late Ottoman world than Egypt
where first local rulers and later the British had replaced Ottoman
authority in all but name long before the empire fell. Syria was
different. Unlike the rebellious provinces in Europe, filled with
disloyal and ungrateful Christians constantly intriguing with European
powers to win independence, Syria was relatively quiet under Ottoman
rule. More, the Sunni majority was more supportive of Ottoman rule
than were the subversive Christian and Alawi minorities.
These days a Sunni Turk can look at Syria and see a Sunni majority
oppressed by secularism, heresy and dictatorship all at once. On the
one hand, that creates strong domestic pressure on Erdogan to "do
something" about the butcheries so close at hand; on the other, it
creates unrealistic expectations about the Syrian public's reaction to
greater Turkish regional leadership.
For Erdogan's government, the first stages of its "return to the east"
were generally pleasant. Strong criticism of Israel's attack on Gaza
and his tough response to Israel's attack on last year's Gaza flotilla
made Erdogan enormously popular in the Arab world. His reputation for
opposing the US war in Iraq also raised his profile. Better
commercial relations with Syria and Iran boosted Turkish exports and
trade. His intervention into the Iranian nuclear issue had little
effect on the course of the dispute but played well at home where
voters saw Turkey emerging as a global leader on an issue that
mattered to them.
More, Turkey's role as the de facto head of western Sunnism looked
promising. The state of the Sunni Arab world is deeply depressing.
The fall of Saddam Hussein, the ever-tightening relationship of Syria
and Iran, the growing Shi'a power in Lebanon and more recently Iran's
success (with Syrian help) at building its influence in Gaza, paint a
disturbing picture of Sunni fecklessness and decline. Dominated by
corrupt dinosaurs like former Egyptian president Mubarak or ruled by
immensely wealthy and not particularly courageous or attractive royal
families, the western Sunni world hungered for leadership that Turkey
might be ready to provide.
The great idea of a return to the east was looking good.
But Atatürk's instinct that Turkey needed to turn west was based on
more than a sense that the west was where the power and the money
could be found. It was also based on a sense that the east was a
trap: full of danger and complications that could endanger Turkey's
stability if Turks were sucked into its quarrels.
Nationalism, tribalism and sectarianism were the forces that shredded
the Ottoman Empire. The nineteenth century brought "national
revivals" to various ethnic minorities throughout the empire -
starting with the Greeks and the Serbs and finishing with the Arabs
and the Jews. Tribal rivalries in the Arab world undermined the
effectiveness of Ottoman rule; Kurdish, Armenian and Greek minorities
threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey.
These days, the world west of Turkey has mostly been ethnically
cleansed and homogenized. The German minorities in central and
eastern Europe were expelled back to Germany after 1945; except in the
Caucasus the Soviets also cleaned ethnic house, moving Poles hundreds
of miles west and shifting Turkish and other minorities to the east
from places like the Crimea. The Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the
struggle over Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians were one (one hopes)
among the last European flare ups of the long wars of the nations
which gradually forged modern nation states out of the ethnic and
religious hodgepodge of Europe 150 years ago. Tens of millions died
and tens of millions more were driven from their homes, but except for
some occasional belches and booms, the volcano has finished exploding.
That is not true to Turkey's east. Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Armenia,
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iraq (to say nothing of Israel and the
Palestinian territories) are still on the ethnic and sectarian boil.
None of these countries have borders that match up with their ethnic
composition; religious divisions still have the power to kill; tribal
loyalties are oblivious to artificial boundary lines. There is
probably a lot of killing still to be done and a lot of ethnic and
religious refugees to be made before these countries settle down into
something like a final form.
Involvement with the east might start with expanding Turkish trade and
enhancing Turkey's diplomatic and Islamic profiles; it will be very
difficult to ensure that it does not entangle Turkey into intractable
conflicts across the region. Indeed, Turkish foreign policy has
already been destabilized by the Armenian-Azerbaijani and
Israel-Palestinian rivalries, and the Kurdish question in Iraq, Syria
and Iran brings Turkey new and vexing headaches every day.
Asserting itself as an Islamic and Middle Eastern power plunges Turkey
more deeply into this morass; it also triggers religious and ethnic
tensions within Turkey itself. The AK is predominantly a Sunni party
but up to a fifth of Turks belong to the Alevi faith, a form of Islam
that is rooted in Twelver Shi'ism but has a more tolerant and
universalist view than, say, the bigoted orthodoxies of Tehran. Many
Alevi oppose the AK Party and what some see as its Sunni sectarianism;
a secular government sounds very attractive when you belong to a
religious minority.
And of course there are the Kurds. Numbers as usual are
controversial, but there are probably about as many Kurds as Alevis in
Turkey; in total the two populations probably account for a bit more
than a third of the total Turkish population of 73,000,000. Under the
Kemalists, a policy of "Turkification" tried to make good Turks out of
the Kurds - with very mixed success.
Any eastern expansion of Turkish influence immediately deepens
Turkey's engagement with the Kurdish question. The parts of Syria,
Iraq and Iran closest to Turkey have large Kurdish minorities; Turkey
fears that if any part of this multinational Kurdish territory gained
independence, Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey would get support - and
that an independent state could use the UN and other forums to get
publicity for the cause.
At the same time, moving east and south sharpens Turkey's definition
as a Sunni power. The Ottomans and the Iranians were regional rivals
for centuries; the Ottomans ruled over most of modern Iraq and the two
empires struggled for influence in the Caucasus and in other border
regions. Today, when Iran is busy cementing the "Shi'a crescent" from
Iran through Lebanon, any assertion of Turkish power would immediately
lead to a contest between the two. Iraq is likely to be a flashpoint;
Turkey cannot help but be concerned with Iraq given its proximity, its
oil potential and its large and organized Kurdish autonomous zone.
Iraq is also a balance-tipper. If Iraq tilts toward Iran the Middle
East has one kind of shape and Iran is a major player across the
Fertile Crescent. If Iraq resists Iran, the Iranians are thrust to
the margins of the Middle East. Turkey's interests in Iraq run
closely parallel to those of the US: it wants Iraq to have a strong
national government that is free of Iranian influence and ultimately
Turkey probably cares about that more than does the United States.
The regional dynamics are even more complex. In a rivalry between
Turkey and Iran, Russia would not look on indifferently; Russia would
be unwilling to see a NATO power extend its reach into a region where
Russia has strong interests. For now, when the Saudis are as worried
about a rising Iran and what they see as an irresolute US, they are
likely to welcome Turkish influence as a counterbalance to Iran. The
minute the Iranian threat begins to diminish, however, the Saudis and
the Turks are likely to fall out. Saudi Islam and Turkish Islam are
very different, and the House of Saud (which rebelled against the
Ottoman sultans more than once) would likely see a too-strong Turkey
with a more liberal Islam as a serious religious threat.
To face east for Turkey is to face a sea of troubles - but there is
the allure of all that trade and the vision of a greater global role.
Before the Syrian rebellion, Turkey thought it had found a way to
square the circle. Its famous "no problems" foreign policy sought
good relations with the neighbors and while the Assads were firmly in
control, it worked pretty well. Trade relations between Turkey and
Syria boomed, and the stability of the Assad regime kept all the messy
political implications of the Turkish initiative at bay.
The Syrian rebellion changed all that. Erdogan and his government are
trapped between the need to support the rights of their co-believers
and the fear of chaos and greater Iranian influence in Syria. At
times the Turks have tried to support Assad while counseling him to go
easy on the dissidents; when Assad ignores this advice it makes Turks
look weak. More recently, the Turks have shifted to criticize the
bloodshed, but that naturally leads to the question, "What are you
going to do about it?"
So far, the answer is nothing; that again makes the Turks look weak.
This has been unpleasant; the return to the east has gone from a
no-brainer to a no-gainer in Turkish foreign policy.
The dilemmas Turkey faces today are both like and unlike Greece's
problems 100 years ago. The problem with the Greek 'big idea' was
that Turkey was too strong. The problem with the Turkish 'big idea'
is that its eastern neighbors are too unstable and too weak.
Where the dilemmas are similar is that neither country can accomplish
its objectives without strong support from outside the region. Greece
believed that the western Allies and the United States (which had
never declared war on the Ottoman Empire but for humanitarian and
religious reasons was deeply interested in the fate of the Armenians,
Arabs and Jews) would support its eastward expansion. That didn't
happen; World War One had exhausted the Allies and with the whole
world unsettled after the war they were not interested in yet another
conflict in the ruins of Europe. The Americans were turning inward;
Woodrow Wilson at one point was interested in the US assuming a League
of Nations mandate over Armenia and perhaps more; rising US
isolationism and Wilson's shattered physical and political health
after the failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles took the US out
of the picture. Without outside help and lots of it, the Greek
adventure was doomed.
Turkey will also need outside partners to take on Iran, balance the
Saudis and play a leading role in building stable, modern societies in
the Arab world. In particular, the logic of a more ambitious Turkish
approach to the Middle East points toward a renewed partnership with
the US. That would be a difficult balancing act for both countries;
much of Turkey's popularity in the Arab world today is due to a
perception that it is an alternative to US leadership in the region
rather than a US ally. The history of bad feeling over Iraq (somewhat
lessened by cooperation over the complicated Kurdish issue) is an
obstacle, and neither Erdogan, his party or indeed his country wants
to be seen as America's regional deputy. Concretely, greater Turkish
influence in the region would inevitably drag Turkey into the
Palestinian issue; it is hard to see how Turkey, the US, Israel and
the Palestinians could make that work, and how disagreements over
Israel-Palestinian questions could be contained without throwing the
broader relationship off-kilter at least from time to time.
There are other problems as well. Some of the Wikileaks cables point
to a clash of cultures between American diplomats and AK leaders; like
many populist movements newly arrived in the halls of power, the AK
brings some attitudes and expectations to the diplomatic process that
don't mesh well with the normal ways states do business. The views of
many Turks about how the world should work and how Turkey should be
treated are both very strong and very much at odds with the way
experienced diplomats work. The interests of the two countries are
not identical: the US, like the Saudis, is more interested in Turkey
as a balancing power to keep Iran in check than it is in promoting a
new era of Turkish leadership in the Levant.
This all leads to the conclusion that the new Turkish and Middle
Eastern realities are going to be hard for the various interested
parties inside and outside the region to understand and accommodate.
As new Arab regimes begin to pull themselves together and develop new
political and economic goals for their countries, the picture will
become even more complex.
Erdogan and the "neo-Ottomans" (the phrase is widely used but not
helpful) are right and wrong. They are right that Turkey today cannot
avoid deepening its relationships with other regional powers in the
former Ottoman lands. They are right that many people in the Arab
world have a new appreciation for Turkey's success as a modernizer and
democratizer. They are right that the economic opportunities of the
region can help Turkey sustain its prosperity and that Turkish
merchants and Turkish firms can compete with Europeans, Americans and
Asians. But they are wrong if they think that Turkey can stabilize
the Middle East or even that greater involvement to the east and south
will not bring new dangers and costs.
A deeper Turkish involvement in the region may well be necessary and
has its advantages from a Turkish point of view; but Turks are likely
to find the life of a Middle Eastern power is frustrating. In this at
least, Americans can fully sympathize. We know just how that feels.
On the whole, in spite of the inevitable clashes and disagreements, a
greater Turkish presence in the Middle East will likely be welcome in
Washington. US foreign policy is ultimately much stronger when we are
an offshore balancer rather than an on-site occupying power. In the
Middle East the impotence and division of the Sunni Arabs in contrast
with Iran's aggressive stance creates an imbalance which the US
currently must try to make up on our own. Turkey can help restore that
balance, something that would ultimately let the US shrink its Middle
Eastern footprint without compromising vital interests.
Turkey, on the other hand, is likely to benefit from Washington's
tacit support - especially if the relationship is not too public and
it doesn't look as if Washington rather than Ankara is running the
show.
Much can and usually does go wrong when big historical changes take
place. Turkey is likely to have a rocky road as it turns back on the
road Atatürk abandoned, and Turkish-US relations are likely to cause
intermittent heartburn and table thumping in both countries.
Nevertheless, it looks as if their shared interests lead the US and
Turkey to update and renegotiate their sixty year old partnership in a
changing region.
This post originally appeared on The American Interest.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress