THE TURKEY SPECTATOR: The End of the Affair
BERMAN, ILAN
HAT HAPPENED TO the U.S.-Turkish alliance? These days, that question has become something of a recurring theme within the Washington Beltway. Relations between Washington and Ankara have...
...Quite simply, Turkey—once a bastion of stability in the turbulent Middle East—is steadily drifting away from the West...
...As of this writing, Turkish forces have commenced military incursions into Iraqi territory to root out PKK outposts and squelch cross-border attacks...
...close to half of all Turks are now said to identify themselves as Muslim, up from just a third when the AKP first took power in 2002...
...plans for a northern front against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq...
...And, after repeated entreaties to Washington, Ankara is now taking matters into its own hands...
...The Turkish government has been battling the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a radical separatist group that seeks the creation of an independent Kurdish state on (and within) Turkey’s southeastern flank, since the early 1980s...
...The resulting chill has been slowto dissipate, despite repeated overtures and olive branches from policymakers in both countries...
...Relations between Washington and Ankara have been on the rocks ever since the spring of 2003, when the Turkish parliament up-ended U.S...
...These days, that question has become something of a recurring theme within the Washington Beltway...
...Today, however, Ankara seems further away from that objective than ever, blocked by protectionist EU politicians who have precious little idea about what to do with a majority Muslim member, and even less desire to find out...
...atrocities —and Jewish organ-harvesting—in Iraq) to blockbuster books like Metal Storm, about a Turkish alliance with Europe and Russia that staves off an American invasion...
...This past summer, the AKP scored a resounding political victory in national parliamentary elections, capturing 341 of the seats in Turkey’s 550-member legislature...
...At home, this adjustment has yielded a dramatic surge in anti-American sentiment...
...All of which calls Ankara’s role in the War on Terror into question, since aTurkey ever more closely aligned with regimes hostile to the United States will not— indeed, cannot—be a reliable American ally...
...In the process, they have sent Turks the unmistakable impression that they are not wanted...
...For the past two decades, membership in the European community of nations has been the central goal of Turkish foreign T H E T U R K E Y S P E C T A T O R 70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2007/JANUARY 2008 The End of the Affair by Ilan Berman W DECEMBER 2007/JANUARY 2008 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 1 policy, and the common aspiration of the majority of its citizens...
...This fall, however, bilateral ties have taken a dramatic turn for the worse...
...Government officials have studiously avoided speaking out publicly in favor of the United States, despite Ankara’s regular diplomatic and strategic contacts with Washington...
...To them, the young, dynamic Muslim population of NATO’s only Middle Eastern member represents a fundamental challenge to the established political order on the Old Continent...
...Paradoxically, the U.S...
...Even before America overthrew Saddam, Iraq’s predominantly Kurdish north had been an oasis of economic and political stability—due in large part to the security afforded by continued U.S...
...Officials in Europe do not see it that way, however...
...The Pew Center’s most recent survey on global attitudes, released this past summer, found that only 27 percent of Turks had a favorable view of the European Union—down from nearly 60 percent just three years earlier...
...They have even avoided curbing the growing anti-American invective emanating from the country’s Islamist press, despite their significant power over that constituency...
...After all, whatever its drawbacks, Turkey’s particular brand of political Islam would appear to be a preferable alternative to the radical strain of Wahhabism now visible in the banlieue of Paris and in Copenhagen’s cul-de-sacs...
...Over the past several years, the AKP has deftly outmaneuvered its chief ideological rival on a number of strategic and political fronts, curbing its control over defense policy and greatly diminishing its domestic power...
...Back in 2002, more than half of all Turks held favorable views of the United States...
...Today, according to Pew, that number is down to 9 percent—making Turkey one of the most anti-American countries in the world, more so than Egypt (21 percent favorable), Pakistan (15 percent), or even the Palestinian Territories (13 percent...
...Yet the political objective of the AKP remains, in the words of its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the eventual transformation of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular republic into an “Islamic state...
...And, armed with this mandate, the AKP has set about altering Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy trajectory...
...invasion of Iraq has made this problem worse...
...Whether Washington can establish a new modus vivendiwith this increasingly Islamist Turkey remains to be seen...
...Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is an outgrowth of former premier Necmettin Erbakan’s Refah (Welfare) Party, and like the now-defunct Refah it is grounded in Islamist values...
...What is already clear, however, is that one of America’s most reliable allies in the Middle East is transforming, slowly but surely, into something very different...
...Under the guise of an “independent” foreign policy, Ankara has drifted toward accommodation with its traditional rivals in the Middle East, Iran and Syria...
...The AKP, for its part, may not be directly responsible for these smears, but it is certainly complicit in them...
...Turkish officials often intone that, as a result of its strategic location and geopolitical outlook, their country must pursue a policy of “strategic depth”—a simultaneous orientation toward both east and west...
...With the fall of Baghdad, the semi-autonomous government of Iraqi “Kurdistan” gained even greater prominence and more political independence...
...Previously, the United States could count on Turkey’s military, the traditional guardian of Ataturk’s secular legacy, to serve as a counterweight to these trends...
...The most obvious reason is Iraq...
...It has normalized its historically tense relations with the Assad regime, signing at least two military agreements over the past four years and, in the process, launching what Turkish officials call a “new era” of ties between Ankara and Damascus...
...The results have been dramatic: Turkish officials claim that over the past three years, the PKK has found a new patron, and a fresh base of operations, in Jalal Talibani’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG...
...All of which plays directly into the hands of Ankara’s Islamists...
...That drift has everything to do with the rising power of Islamist ideals in Turkish society...
...These sentiments have been fueled by a rich diet of antiAmerican pop culture, from movies such as the Valley of the Wolves (a big-budget flick depicting U.S...
...and British air patrols under Operation Northern Watch...
...Bluster about Islamist global solidarity has been replaced by populist rhetoric and progressive economic policies, netting real gains for ordinary Turks...
...That goal is more popular than one would think...
...Ilan Bermanis vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C...
...In a very real sense, the PKK is Turkey’s al Qaeda, responsible for the deaths of an estimated 37,000 Turkish citizens over the course of its bloody 23-year insurgency...
...It has also cooperated more and more closely with the Iranian regime on counterterrorism and security matters since signing a landmark bilateral security accord with Tehran in 2004...
...But no longer...
...I L A N B E R M A N Under the guise of an “independent” foreign policy, Ankara has drifted toward accommodation with its traditional rivals in the Middle East, Iran and Syria...
...The AKP’s political gains reflect its rising appeal...
...And a deep sense of distrust with Europe is now palpable across the Turkish political spectrum...
...As a result, they have delayed, deferred, and impeded Turkey’s accession to the European Union...
...This stance may seem somewhat counterintuitive...
...But while Erbakan and Refah were plainspoken about their views (Erbakan famously lobbied for the creation of an “Islamic NATO” to supplant Turkey’s ties with the West, incurring the wrath of the country’smilitary), the AKP has been more savvy—and more subtle...
...Since taking power, however, the AKP has shown a clear preference for the former...
...And without its historic anchor to the West, Ankara is drifting into uncharted waters...
...In this effort, it has been greatly assisted by the most unlikely of sources: Europe...
...INCREASINGLY, THAT FEELING ISMUTUAL.Membership in the European Union, once an aspiration for the majority of Turkish society, has become something of a bête noir in Turkish politics...
...Beyond the immediate crisis over Iraqi “Kurdistan,” however, lurks a deeper and even more serious problem...
Vol. 40 • January 2008 • No. 10
