12
February 2003
2. "Analysis: Turks edge toward faith freedom", Turkey gradually seems to adjust its religious freedoms to European norms as it tries to win acceptance into the European Union, a top Roman Catholic expert told United Press International Tuesday.
3. "US plans to run post-Hussein Iraq, opposition says", the US is preparing to install a transitional American military government in Iraq following the fall of President Saddam.
4. "Iran will be one of the winners of the war", last week's exchange of smiles and handshakes between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Harazi were a source of gnashed teeth in Washington.
5. "Special forces and CIA agents have moved into northern Iraq via Turkey", at least 1,000 American Central Intelligence Agency and Special Operations troops have passed through Turkey into northern Iraq in preparation for a military operation aimed at toppling the regime of President Saddam Hussein.
6. "Realism About Turkey", it is no secret that in America’s desperate search for allies in the Moslem world, Turkey is at the top of the list of our supposed "friends," both because of its strategic location and because of its supposed success in creating a secular Moslem society.
1. - The Kurdish Observer - “CPT will put the subject of solitary confinement on the agenda”:
11 February 2003
Thomas Schmidt, Secretary General of European Association of Lawyers in favor of Democracy and Human Rights (EALDH), stated that Turkey violated UN principles by imposing solitary confinement to KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan. Talking to MHA, Schmidt assessed the isolation legally and politically and said the following: "Roles of lawyers are determined by UN. Prisoners have the right to access to their lawyers periodically and Turkey violates the rule."
CEMAL UCAR/ MHA/FRANKFURT
Thomas Schmidt, Secretary General of European Association of Lawyers in favor of Democracy and Human Rights (EALDH), stated that Turkey violated UN principles by imposing solitary confinement to KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan. Talking to MHA, Schmidt assessed the isolation legally and politically and said the following: “Roles of lawyers are determined by UN. Prisoners have the right to access to their lawyers periodically and Turkey violates the rule.” The Secretary General reminded that European Council, Committee for Preventing Torture (CPT) might put the subject on their agenda. “We call on the Turkish government to allow Mr Ocalan to see his lawyers at least once week under international rules,” said Schmidt.
Schmidt also reminded that Turkey had ratified a number of international
agreements on human rights and adjusted some of its laws accordingly.
“But unfortunately it does not mean that Turkey put them into
practice,” said he. He pointed out that the European Union would
call on Turkey to comply with the international law and it would involve
whether it respected human rights on the example of Ocalan.
2. - UPI - "Analysis: Turks edge toward faith freedom":
By Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI Religion Editor
WASHINGTON / February 11, 2003
Turkey gradually seems to adjust its religious freedoms to European norms as it tries to win acceptance into the European Union, a top Roman Catholic expert told United Press International Tuesday.
"Curiously, Christians and radical Islamists in Turkey favor their country's attempt to get into the EU because they know the Turkish authorities would have to play by its rules," said the Rev. Hans Voecking, Islamic affairs adviser to the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Europe.
While there is little discrimination against Jews and most Christians in daily life, according to a U.S. State Department analysis, religious freedoms in Turkey are far from complete. For example, neither members of religious minorities nor radical Islamists may become officers in the military or attain senior positions in the state bureaucracy, Voecking related.
The reason for this is the secular nature of the Turkish state. "The Turks would like Europeans to believe that their country adheres to similar principles as France (whose constitution affirms the strict division between church and state). This is not quite so," explained Voecking, a member of the White Fathers, a missionary order.
To begin with, the government's Directorate of Religious Affairs, called the Diyanet, oversees Muslim religious facilities and education, the State Department reports. Some groups claim that the Diyanet reflects only the beliefs of the Sunni Islamist mainstream.
It regulates the operation of the country's more than 70,000 mosques, whose imams are civil servants, as are the muftis (religious jurists). Many of the sermons delivered every Friday from Turkish pulpits were written at the Directorate, Voecking said.
Helmut Wiesmann, a senior official in the Catholic Bishops Conference of Germany, claimed in a recent article in Herder Korrespondenz, a Catholic publication, that the Diyanet employed 123,000 people from theologians to cleaning men. According to Voecking, the government finances more than 20 university-level Muslim divinity schools.
"Mosques are mushrooming all over the place, often paid for by Saudi Arabia," he continued, "while no new churches are allowed to be built and the cost of the renovation of olds ones must not exceed $400." United Press International tried to verify these and other claims in telephone calls to the press and religious affairs counselors at the Turkish Embassy in Washington Tuesday. They did not return UPI's calls.
The State Department says that 99 percent of the 65.6 million Turks are Muslims, primarily Sunnis. However, some 12 million Turks adhere to the Alawi Muslim minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Their religious leaders do not receive government salaries.
The Alawis claim that their doctrines are not taught in the religious instruction classes that are mandatory at secular schools for all Muslims and also members of those Christian denominations that are not covered by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty between the Turkish government and the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox and the Jews.
This means that young Protestant and Catholic pupils at primary and secondary schools must submit to instruction in the Islamic faith. The same applies to young members of the ancient Syrian Orthodox (Syriac) Church, which -- like the Chaldeans (Assyrian Christians affiliated with Rome) -- have been caught in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in southeastern Anatolia, according to Freedom House scholar Paul Marshall.
Most of its members have fled to Istanbul and other large cities, where they have no churches of their own. They may not build new sanctuaries and if they use the churches of denominations recognized by the Lausanne Treaty, these can be confiscated. Should they celebrate Mass in private dwellings, they risk arrest.
Wiesmann reported that Christians in Turkey were stigmatized by the numerical code 31 in their identity papers -- much as the letter "J" in passports or ID cards identified Jews in Nazi Germany. "This has stopped several years ago," said Voecking, with some satisfaction.
Perhaps it is worth remembering that more than 20 percent of all Turks at the beginning of the 20th century were Christians; today their share has dwindled down to 0.6 percent. Much of the decline was of course due to the genocide of between 500,000 and 1.5 million Armenian Christians immediately following World War I. There are no more than 45,000 Armenians left in the country.
The State Department, Voecking and Paul Marshall are cautiously laudatory
about Turkey's advances in the area of religious freedom. But, as
Voecking says, "much has to be done to make Turkey a pluralistic
society according to European standards -- and that may take decades."
3. - The Christian Science Monitor - "US plans to run post-Hussein Iraq, opposition says":
SULAYMANIYAH, IRAQ / February 11, 2003
The US is preparing to install a transitional American military government in Iraq following the fall of President Saddam Hussein, and select a group of Iraqis to draft a new Constitution for the country, according to Iraqi opposition leaders. Following months of speculation about US intentions for a post-Hussein era, it appears the US has decided against creating a transitional authority headed by Iraqis and instead plans to administer the country directly until a democratically elected government can take power.
At a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, last week, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy to the Iraqi opposition, briefed leaders of three groups opposed to Hussein about the plan. US officials "envisage an American administration initially, in conjunction with a consultative body of Iraqis," says one Kurdish official who is familiar with the Ankara meeting. Opposition leaders say they are all but certain that the US will proceed with a military overthrow of their longtime nemesis.
Apart from this consultative body, the US also plans to name a "judicial council" that would draft a new Constitution and prepare an election for a constitutional assembly that would ratify the new charter, apparently without a popular referendum. The process would take a year, says the Kurdish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Tuesday, two Bush administration officials presented the government's post-Hussein plan before a Senate committee. They outlined a three-stage plan to establish a legitimate Iraqi government, beginning with an interim military administration.
Some members of Iraq's notoriously fractious opposition are aghast at the US plan, including Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi. Two of Mr. Chalabi's supporters met with President Bush in a White House meeting on Jan. 10.
"To be kind, it is unworkable," says Chalabi. "Either reason will prevail, or time will demonstrate to the authors [of the US plan] the error of their ways. I shudder to think."
He and other opposition figures have long opposed any US administration of their country, which they argue will quickly be perceived as an American occupation of an Arab country.
But Barham Salih, prime minister of a Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, advises pragmatism. "Let's not get too hot about this," he said late Tuesday in an interview at his home. "Who is doing the heavy lifting?"
The answer is, of course, the US, and Mr. Salih's implication is
that shouldering the big load brings with it some prerogatives. He
maintains an eyes-on-the-prize approach to the debate over how to
run Iraq's affairs immediately after the leader is toppled: "The
key thing for us is getting rid of Saddam Hussein."
4. - Haaretz - "Iran will be one of the winners of the war":
February 12, 2003 / by Zvi Bar'el
Last week's exchange of smiles and handshakes between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Harazi were a source of gnashed teeth in Washington.
"Evidently, we must accept the fact that every country has a few strange friends," was the response of one American diplomat. Two days later, the Washington Post reported on a covert meeting held between American and Iranian representatives, in an effort to coordinate the two countries' positions prior to the war in Iraq. "I did not say that Britain's strange friends could not be our strange friends, as well," the same diplomat subsequently responded.
Nearly lost in the jumble of responses and reports on preparations for war was the noteworthy statement by Kamal Harazi himself, who explained that he saw no reason why relations between Iran and the U.S. could not be normalized, on condition that the U.S. modify its policy toward Iran.
In ordinary times, the British gesture toward Iran and the manifestation of policy disparities between Britain and the U.S. toward Iran would have earned a sharp rebuke from the U.S. administration, but when its alliance with Britain is the only stable thing going for the U.S., Washington has learned to hold its tongue. America also remained silent when Iranian president Mohammed Hatami visited India in late January. During the visit, the two countries signed several important accords, including an agreement on transfer of information and technology, and one on security cooperation in the event that India asks to use Iranian bases should war break out between it and Pakistan. The volume of trade between Iran and India was approximately NIS 120 million in 1991, but by last year, it had swelled to NIS 500 million. In years to come, trade between the two nations is expected to exceed $2 billion a year.
Iran is not concerned that India and Israel cooperate on security matters, as well. Perhaps it hopes that it will someday come to possess Israeli know-how. Essentially, for some time, Iran has not ruled out contacts with countries that carry on relations with Israel, as seen in its relations with Turkey, Germany and Russia, and its attempts to renew diplomatic relations with Egypt.
Washington has also been silent in the face of Iran's closer relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Clearly, the U.S. fully understands the implications of the Iranian "component" in its war with Iraq.
Afghan turning point
As usual, interpretations in Iran itself are divided between those in support of renewed relations with the U.S., and the conservative establishment, which continues to attack the U.S. As an example of the latter position, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani stated that the U.S. is more evil than Iraq. Rafsanjani supports the neutralization of Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, but if it comes at the price of American presence in the region, this outcome would, for him, constitute the greater evil. Conversely, the reformist-dominated Iranian parliament is constantly exhorting European representatives and American "academics" (official representatives under academic cover) to promote relations between Washington and Tehran. Even so, this same parliament approved a budgetary allocation of $1.5 million to underwrite an anti-American propaganda campaign. The allocation appears in a section of the state budget that is approved yearly. In keeping with the inherent contradictions of Iran's domestic policy, a court meted out stiff sentences last week to the directors of a public polling institute that reported that over 70 percent of Iranians are interested in renewing relations with the U.S.
"Iranian policy on the United States has not yet had the opportunity to be tested seriously," says a Turkish government official who, among other things, is responsible for Iran-Turkey diplomatic relations. "The U.S. has not sent Iran any serious messages that might spell out its criteria for a renewal of relations; the gestures made in the Clinton era have nearly been wiped clean in the President Bush era, and even more so by the addition of Iran to the axis of evil. The pursuit of Iranians in the U.S. has done little to improve the relationship, and the American administration seems to have a difficult time jettisoning a paradigm of American foreign policy for the past two decades or more, even though there are cogent reasons to revise the policy."
One of the significant turning points in the Iranian policy, hinted at by the Turkish government official, was the readiness demonstrated by Iran to cooperate with the U.S. in the Afghanistan war last year. Not only did Iran offer logistical assistance and a willingness to permit American helicopters to pass through its air space in order to rescue - if need be - American casualties, but Iran also made a large financial contribution toward rehabilitation in Afghanistan.
Moreover, Iran passed on information about Al-Qaida operatives, rounded up Taliban refugees who entered Iran, and last year engaged in an intensive hunt for tankers smuggling oil from Iraq. The most recent event occurred last week, when the Iranian coast guard in the Persian Gulf stopped a ship attempting to smuggle over 3,000 tons of crude oil from Iraq.
Iran welcomed the convening of the Iraqi opposition in London, and hosted opposition leaders two weeks ago in Tehran. Iran is adopting a policy of "active neutrality" vis-?-vis the upcoming war in Iraq. The practical significance of this is that Iran will not take action against American or British forces to prevent war; it supports the ouster of Saddam Hussein, but will take measures to prevent the war from spreading in its direction.
Iran's dilemma now concerns how to prevent the American attack from moving in its direction, but also how to gain a consequential share of influence over post-war Iraq. On the face of it, Iran now faces a better set of conditions than it faced when America was conducting its war in Afghanistan. Iraq has a Shi'ite majority; one of the groups represented in the Iraqi opposition is an important Shi'ite organization - The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose headquarters are in Tehran. Although the organization refuses to accept U.S. aid, it supports the American war policy against Saddam Hussein.
Iran and Turkey see eye to eye on the Kurdish question, as neither country is interested in seeing an independent Kurdish state, which might incite nationalist sentiments and territorial claims among their Kurdish citizens. Therefore, Iran is less wary of the term "democracy" as it pertains to Iraq, since in the event that free elections would be held in Iraq after the war, the Shi'ites would be assured a majority, meaning that Iranian influence is practically a given.
This Iranian advantage acts as a deterrent to the U.S., which has still not decided how to settle the contradiction of exporting democracy to Iraq and preventing the domination of the post-Saddam state by Shi'ites. But not only the U.S. is anxious about this possibility; so are the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Bahrainis and essentially every other state of the Gulf that has a large Shi'ite minority. They fear the possibility of another Shi'ite state coming into being in the region, one that would be liable to inflame ethnic aspirations in their countries, as well. Nor are they pleased that Iran, which until now has been held at a safe distance from the Arab states, would suddenly become a patron state wielding great influence in the Arab world.
Beyond that, Shi'ite domination is hardly the vision of the Iraqi state as viewed by the Kurds or the Turks. Although Turkey and Iran both wish to keep Iraq unified - and not divided into three countries - Turkey does not trust Iran not to sponsor a separate Shi'ite state in the south, which would in turn open up the possibility of the Kurds establishing a state of their own in the north. To complicate matters further, one Iranian commentator says that the U.S. should not be trusted on its principle of the non-division of Iraq after the administration's objective has been achieved, and Saddam is removed from power. The American administration issued such a promise to Turkey in order to persuade it to assist the American military.
Turkey apparently is not entirely convinced that the U.S. will make good on its promises. Last week, after the Turkish parliament gave America the go-ahead to upgrade Turkish bases to serve the American ground forces, Turkey dispatched several thousand troops to northern Iraq. The official pretext was to stanch the infiltration of thousands of Iraqi refugees into Turkey the real reason is to prevent the Kurds from establishing an independent state.
"In the two years since the formation of the new strategic ring, whose evolution is still undetermined," says the Turkish government official, "Iran is suddenly surrounded on all sides by America. Afghanistan in the east, the Persian Gulf in the south, and now maybe Iraq, as well. The Arab states essentially made a decision to be on the American side, even though they themselves are not doing the kicking. The global threat is no longer terror states, but terror organizations. You can sense that the region is moving toward an upheaval, and it is not surprising that everyone is anxious about it, because it is an upheaval without any guarantees as to its outcome. Given the situation, I would suggest that the U.S. reexamine its relations with Iran. If there is any country that is ready for true democracy, it is Iran; if there is any country that has strategic significance to peace in the region, it is Iran."
Europe has already taken the first moves in that direction. Britain
has renewed its diplomatic relations with Iran, and last week the
European Union began discussions with Tehran on the possibility of
signing cooperation agreements.
5. - South China Morning Post - "Special forces and CIA agents have moved into northern Iraq via Turkey":
ANKARA / February 12, 2003
by LYNNE O'DONNELL
At least 1,000 American Central Intelligence Agency and Special Operations troops have passed through Turkey into northern Iraq in preparation for a military operation aimed at toppling the regime of President Saddam Hussein.
The Americans have moved through Turkey's southeastern border in small groups in the past month to take up positions in the strategic regions currently under Kurdish control, a Turkish government source said.
The source, who did not want to be identified, said the Americans have been joined on the ground by more than 4,000 elite Turkish troops.
"They are preparing for joint operations once the war is declared," the source said.
The elite operatives have joined a permanent Turkish force that has been stationed in northern Iraq for the decade since the first Gulf War ended.
The recent build-up has been taking place despite the need for a parliament-approved constitutional amendment permitting Turkish troops to enter foreign countries.
The Turkish parliament is due to meet on Tuesday to vote on the amendment, and is widely expected to give its approval. If it does not, another Turkish government source said, Turkey's position "will be very complicated" while Washington had already made alternative preparations for the northern front - seen as vital to acquitting a fast and decisive operation against Iraq.
But with Turkey's involvement all but secured following a parliamentary vote on Friday allowing Washington to upgrade Turkish bases and ports, Turkey's military would move to a war footing as soon as the current annual Bayram holiday ended next weekend, the government source said.
"The Turkish army will leave bases that it uses during peace time, and concentrate its forces on wartime bases like Batman," the source said.
Turkish military would also quit bases that the Americans wanted to use exclusively, he said without elaboration. The joint operations in northern Iraq would be aimed at securing the region, which is currently controlled by different Kurdish groups that enjoy de facto independence under protection of the British-American Operation Northern Watch, which patrols no-fly zones and safe havens against attack by Iraqi forces.
The joint forces, operating under American command, were preparing to secure the oil-rich region around the strategic cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
"The Turkish army is already in control of northern Iraq so it is something of a tautology to make this parliamentary vote a condition of involvement in the war," said Professor Huseyin Bagci, of Ankara's Middle East Technical University.
"The Turkish troops will provide logistical and on-the-ground support to the United States. They know the region, it would be difficult for the US to do anything there without the Turkish army.
"Turkey will take control of Mosul and Kirkuk, and in the Kurdish areas," he said.
But he added that, despite Kurdish fears, Turkey would not take control of oil production facilities in the area.
Under the auspices of Operation Northern Watch, animosity between the Kurds and Turkey - fuelled by separatist aims that led to civil war and 30,000 deaths following the first Gulf War - has been contained. But a residual undercurrent of mistrust remains.
Hoshyar Zebari, of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, reflected that
mistrust when he said last week that Kurdish groups felt "a bit
uncomfortable about the mission" of Turkish troops in northern
Iraq.
6. - FrontPage Magazine - "Realism About Turkey":
February 13, 2003
by Serge Trifkovic
It is no secret that in America’s desperate search for allies in the Moslem world, Turkey is at the top of the list of our supposed "friends," both because of its strategic location and because of its supposed success in creating a secular Moslem society. While not wanting to scant the positive aspects of this nation, we should be distinctly realistic about its shortcomings. We got into enough trouble lying to ourselves about Saudi Arabia, the nation that largely – albeit indirectly – financed 9/11 due to its bizarre fundamentalist kleptocracy. Let’s not repeat the mistake of entertaining romantic illusions in a political marriage of convenience. Turkey has a serious dark side.
To understand contemporary Turkey, some history is required. 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 before the Great War was due mainly to the inability of Europe to agree on what to do with the spoils, leavened with some realization that breaking it would create a mess. This was the notorious "Eastern Question," which remained on the European diplomatic agenda until WWI.
After the Ottoman Empire collapsed by joining the losing side in WWI, Mustafa Kemal’s Turkish Republic emerged from the ashes. This coincided with the final curtain for the Christians of the Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1922 most of the Armenians and Greeks in Asia Minor were exterminated or ethnically cleansed. At least 1.5 million people died.
To this day, it is the official position of the Turkish government that this never happened. This is as if David-Irving style Holocaust denial were the official position of the German government. It is this reality that should be the focus of any consideration of modern Turkey. That the modern descendants of the Ottomans are perhaps among the least tolerant nations in the world — as is evinced by Turkey’s continuing persecution of not only fellow Muslims such as Kurds and Alawites but of Greeks, Cypriots and Armenians as well — echoes what the Eastern Christians endured.
Today, 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 in thirty years 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 end its brutal war against the Kurds in the eastern part of the country, which has been going on, accomplished by ruthless cultural suppression, for almost three decades and has claimed some 30,000 lives.
More egregious is Turkey’s refusal to make any concessions on Cyprus — invaded in July 1974 and partly occupied by 35,000 Turkish soldiers ever since. Over the past 28 years, Turkey has flooded the occupied northern part of the island with settlers from the mainland; their numbers by now exceed the number of native Turkish Cypriots, about 115,000 in 1974 as opposed to just over half a million Greeks. They occupied two-fifths of Cyprus and, in the best tradition of the prophet and the great caliphs, ordered Greeks inhabiting the area to leave within 24 hours. Greek houses and businesses were handed over to Turkish Cypriots. Greek villages and towns were attacked indiscriminately but in cities with mixed populations targets were selected: Christian churches were the first to go up in flames, or be converted into mosques. The final toll was 4,000 men, women and children dead, 1,619 missing and presumed dead. The entire Greek population of the Turkish-occupied part of the island was physically exterminated or ethnically cleansed. Forty percent of the island, including 65% of the arable land, 60% of all its water resources, two-thirds of its mineral wealth, 70% of its industries and four-fifths of tourist installations came under Turkish rule.
While other countries would be condemned, embargoed, or bombed for similar transgressions, Turkey’s status as a bona fide member of NATO and the essential pillar of U.S. strategy in the eastern Mediterranean, and the bridgehead of influence in the oil-rich Caspian basin, was never in doubt. Its position as an essential U.S. ally, and its ability to get away with murder, was further reinforced in 1979, when the entire U.S. strategy in the Middle East was thrown into disarray with the fall of the Shah of Iran. The Turks have exploited their supposed usefulness to us ruthlessly.
Almost a quarter of a century later, the axiom in Washington, that Turkey will remain "secular" and "pro-Western," looks tenuous at best, and it behooves us to examine the validity of those assumptions. What will happen if history repeats itself, if Ankara goes the way of Teheran, 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 abruptly 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 real 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 such lofty principle as mere democracy. To this day the Turkish army is regarded by the U.S. foreign policy establishment as the guarantor of Ankara’s permanently "pro-Western," secular orientation. But in the Middle East, "secularism" does not coincide with "democracy," as the vicious regimes in Iraq and Syria demonstrate.
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 and the lurking power behind the state, the generals of the Turkish army whose tough Kemalist ideology is all that stands between Turkey and chaos.
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 modern Turkish state in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk", the project introduced a secular concept of nationhood. However, 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 fact that political Islam has found such fertile ground in Turkey comes as a shock to many in our own government, revealing the ultimate dependence of the political system on the army. The CIA’s 1997 "State Failure Task Force" report identified Turkey as a nation in danger of collapse. The resulting erosion of the ruling stratum’s self-confidence has led to increased oppression. Journalists now risk fines, imprisonment, bans, or violent attacks if they write about "the role of Islam in politics and society" or "the proper role of the military in government and society."1 Turkey is a "guided democracy" at best, with no institution, judicial or civil, truly independent of the State, and with the military as the final guarantor of its pro-Western, secular orientation.
Just as enormous oil revenues could not resolve the problem in Iran, there is no reason to believe that the proposed massive injections of foreign aid and support, of whatever kind, will do the trick in Turkey. The Kemalist dream of strict secularism has never penetrated beyond the military and a relatively narrow stratum of urban elite centered in Istanbul.
The lack of cultural rootedness of Turkey’s political elites remains as serious a problem today as it was in Ataturk’s times, and in many minds the question about the dormant Islamic volcano is not if, but when. 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.
Inseparable from internal repression is Ankara’s external expansionism as a means of lessening political tensions and military threats in pursuit of territorial revisionism. In January of 1996, Ankara disputed Greek sovereignty over the Greek islet of Imia. Six months later Turkey claimed the Greek Island of Gavdos near Crete - 240 miles from the Turkish shore. And this is a country that wants to be allowed to join the European Union, further flooding the already-Islamized streets of Germany and other European nations with cheap Turkish labor?
With each passing year it is becoming more urgent for the U.S. government to break away from its unthinking Turkophilia. It is using its special status in Washington to develop itself as a regional power of considerable significance, and that position will not be subject to change if the Islamists take over. Turkey’s cultural and political influence is on the rise in its old holdings in the Balkans, as well as throughout the former Soviet Central Asia. Its proximity to the Caspian oil fields has fortified its position as a key U.S. ally in the area and a major recipient of American weapons and technology, whose air base at Incirlik is regularly used by the U.S. Air Force to bomb Iraq.
The Bush administration may yet discover that "democratization"
of Turkey may mean its irreversible Islamization. The latest crisis
should sound alarm bells in Washington that America needs alternative
scenarios to cover such eventuality. We have seen former friends turn
foe before in this part of the world, and it is time to plan for realistically-conceived
possibilities. Above all, let’s stop lying to ourselves on the
theory that flattering foreign nations can make them conform to our
wishes for what they should be.