Directionless Turkey

Turkısh Daıly News

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Two years ago Turks had confused minds. The majority of them saw their future in a club that they privately believed wanted their country to disintegrate (even to be destroyed) out of historic hostility. Today, they are more confused. They may be sliding away from the West and towards the East, at least in theory; however, in reality their slide is directionless.

byBurak Bekdil

Two years ago Turks had confused minds. The majority of them saw their future in a club that they privately believed wanted their country to disintegrate (even to be destroyed) out of historic hostility. Today, they are more confused. They may be sliding away from the West and towards the East, at least in theory; however, in reality their slide is directionless.
Three recent opinion surveys illustrate a visible swing from the West towards the East:
1 -- The latest Eurobarometer survey found only 44 percent of Turks thought EU membership would be a good thing for Turkey, compared to 55 percent last autumn and 66 percent last spring.
2 -- The Transatlantic Trends Survey 2006 revealed that Turks feel twice as warm towards Iran as they do towards the United States. That survey puts Turkish support for EU membership at 54 percent, down from 73 percent two years earlier.
3 -- According to pollsters Taylor Nelson Sofres; (a) 72 percent of Turks blame the Lebanon war on Israel (compared to 59 percent even in Lebanon); (b) excluding Israel and Lebanon, 64 percent then blame the war on the United States (compared to a world average of 34 percent); and (c) 44 percent of Turks sympathize with Hezbollah in the Israel-Lebanon war, while only 10 percent sympathize with Israel.
There is empirical evidence that supports the findings of all three surveys. Anti-American, anti-Israeli (not necessarily anti-Semitic) and anti-European behavior has never been this visible and, more importantly, this apolitical. That is, these sentiments of antipathy are no longer limited to the extremist ideologies of the 1970s (radical Islam and many variants of the ultra-left). These days, Turkey's streets are not safe for the subjects of this hatred.
So if not to the West, quo vadis Turkey?
“Eurasianism,” these days one of the many umbrella terms that bring together nationalists and most of the ultra-left (Maoists, Marxists, Leninists and even Trotskysts), looks like an impossible dream, just like its post-Bolshevik Revolution version, pan-Turkism, was. Only a “crazy Turk” would believe in the possible resurgence of Enver Pasha's ambitions in the lands that are today, in real-politik terms, more Soviet/Russian, Chinese, Shia and even U.S. than Turkish.
Could Turkey, then, see any prospects at the western end of the emerging eastern axis of Russia, Iran, (perhaps India) and China? True, politics has always made strange bedfellows, but are Iran and Russia viable targets for strategic partnership, as Gen. Tuncer Kilinç, former head of the National Security Council, proposed four years ago? Could Kilinç have prophesized so precisely at a time when all the others were too busy polishing the idea of a European future? Equilibrium suggests not.
The justification for the proposed Turco-Persian alliance is often based on (a) common religion; (b) a peaceful past as evinced by the fact that the Turkish-Iranian border has remained unchanged since the 1639 Treaty of Kasr-i Sirin (the Treaty of Zuhab); (c) Iran's helping hand in Turkey's fight against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK); (d) increasing economic cooperation, including a major energy supply line from Iran.
All the same, (a) Turkey's ruling elite are Sunni and since the advent of Islam, the Shia and Sunnis have only allied against “infidels,” otherwise fighting bloody wars, as they still do; (b) the peaceful past is a myth, as evinced by a full-scale war in 1733 when the Persians fought to take Baghdad from the Ottomans; the Zand Dynasty's attack on Ottoman Basra in 1775, an invasion which lasted until 1821 when another war broke out and lasted till 1823; an 1840 conflict over the control of what is today Iran's Khorramshar; Iranian support in 1930 for Kurdish uprisings and subsequent dispute over the border; and finally the alleged killings of Turkish intellectuals by cells operated by Mullah Tehran in attempts to “export” his regime; (c) Iran's fight against the PKK is only conjectural, since the Tehran regime systematically harbored the PKK before it noticed Kurdish separatism threatened its own security too; (d) an eastern neighbor with nuclear weapons is more of a threat for Turkey than a trading partner and a steady supplier of natural gas and crude oil.
It is true that Turkey's (mostly economic) relations with Russia have developed exponentially. But this is in essence a trade partnership rather than a strategic alliance. There is still deep mutual distrust among the security apparatus of both states, despite some thawing since Cold War times.
A good majority of Turks physically or sentimentally sympathize with Russia's own PKK, the Chechen terrorists. It is still fresh in many memories, that hot July day when thousands of Turks were mourning over coffins wrapped in the Crescent and Star --soldiers killed by the PKK -- bigger crowds were holding funeral prayers in absentia in several Turkish cities for Shamil Basayev, the legendary Chechen terrorist commander.
Turks are in a bizarre state of mind, they are allies with the United States but they see Washington as their biggest security threat (see various public opinion polls), and they hate Americans. They want to join the European Union but they suspect a European gambit to destroy their country. Their military is their most-trusted institution that at the same time carries out “deep” cooperation with the Israeli military. Some see Russia as a hope but most of them sympathize with those who kill Russian children. Some see Iran as a potential partner, but the Persian state appears on top of their National Security Council's threat paper. Their government's genes are truly Islamic but it shyly courts what most of them see as the Satan (see Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's “let's-mend-the-fences” smiles at the White House next month).
Turks' “pro-eastern” sentiments are a reality, but they are not necessarily “pro-eastern” in ethos; they are more “reactive,” than truly pro-eastern. The Crescent and Star may seem to be sliding away from the West and drifting to the East, but in fact it is sailing towards the unknown waters of “directionlessness.”