NEWS...
Al Trh
TURKEY HOLDS KEY TO POWER IN ASIA
by Xan Similey
The White House is scrambling to create a coherent policy
towards at least 55 million Turkic speakers who are suddenly
emerging into nation-states out of the debris of the Soviet
Union.
So far, American policy makers are grateful that Turkey proper,
with its own population of 57 million, is trying to cajole the
former Soviet Central Asian peoples, nearly all of whom speak a
language close to Turkish, into becoming secular an pro-Western.
But, if the economies of new states dive, if ethnic violence
breaks out, if the new governments become oppressive and popular,
Islamic fundamentalism could pull the new states in a very different
anti-Western direction.
Worse, Turkish dismay at Europe's reluctance to welcome it into
the EC could encourage an anti-Western drift to the east in Turkey
itself. Iran, Saudi Arabia and to a lesser, Pakistan are already
competing with Turkey for influence in former Soviet Central Asia.
"Turkey is a fine example of a democratic, Islamic state.", George
Bush's National Security Adviser, General Brent Scowcroft, told the
Sunday Telegraph, optimistically acknowledgingTurkey's key role in
the area as a crucial strategic ally within NATO.
"Turkey has become the key power in the Caucasus, in respect
even to Rusia", says a former senior CIA analyst Graham Fuller,
an expert on the area.
"It's very, very significant that Turkey is trying to play a
fundamentally neutral and mediating role between Armenia and
Azerbaijan." he adds. "That's a major turning point in Turkish
decision-making. It'll give them far greater clout in the region."
The US secretary of State, James Baker and George Bush himself
are distinctly queasy about the stability and eventual disposition
of the newly independent Muslim states east of Turkey and are
clearly reluctant to recognise any of them until they meet a string
of strict conditions, especially on the vexed question of nuclear
weapons.
"The tctical nukes (in Central Asia) are being consolidated and
shipped around", says General Scowcroft hopefully, arguing that
the strategic missiles, which could hit a variety of targets
in Asia and the Middle East, are America's chief concern.
But in that context, Mr. Baker gravely noted that while
Byelorussian and Ukranian leaders quickly reasurred him
that their nukes would be rapidly removed or destroyed, the
leader of Turkic-speaking Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
at first refused to eliminate his until Russia does the same.
The kazakh leader later recanted, but his initial readiness to
bargain rattled the Americans. Kazakhstan is the only Central
Asian republic with strategic ICBMs as well as tactical missiles.
Some Americam experts, however, say fears about nuclear
proliferation in Central Asia are exaggerated. "You are
not a nuclear power because you have nukes on your territory."
says one. "The Kazakhs don't have control over them, launching
skills or the ability to manufacture them. They are not a
nuclear power, any more than South Korea is."
"The scandal of US negligence is that we don't have (diplomatic)
officers anywhere in the former union outside Russia except in
the Baltic and in one small apartment pretending to be a consulate
in Kiev." says a senior staffer on the Senate foreign relations
committee. "We should have done it a year ago, when we could have
arrenged it all through Moscow. We haven't got a single person
down there."
The British Foreign Office believes that one diplomatic mission
would probably suffice to cover the whole of the former Soviet
Central Asia. No firm plans have been made, but Alma Ata is
thought the most likely city for such a mission.
The US State Department is hastily trying to set up offices in
Alma Ata and Tashkent, the Uzbekistan capital, as well as in
five other cities across the former Soviet Union. But Baku and
three other Muslim republics will still have no permanent American
representation. Delicate negotiations over recognition and
reciprocity are likely. One Uzbek-speaking officer has recently
been posted to the American embassy in Moscow.
"Several dozens" American diplomats are undergoing crash courses
in Turkish, while the half-dozen American universities that teach
Turkish languages are being scoured for interpreters. The CIA has
been feverishly trying to improve its analysis of the region.
"It's frightening how ignorant they are" says a leading Harward
scholar, noting that high-tech satellite surveillance and classical
Kremlinological studies of changes in the Uzbek Communist Party
central committee are virtually worthless for assessing the popular
mood on the ground.
"The administration has been very reluctant to hasten the decline of
the Soviet Union by premature recognition of the republics, and even
more reluctant towards the Muslim republics" says Mr. Fuller. "They
didn't want to deal with it until they had to deal with it."
The handful of American experts on the area agree that a striking
lack of attention has been paid to one of the world's largest
ethnic-linguistic groups, numbering more than 160 million, according
to some calculations.
"Into the void steps James Baker III", half-joked a close adviser to
Mr. Bush when the Secretary of State set off last week to Moscow,
stopping at two former Soviet Muslim republics-Kazakhstan and Kirghizia.
Some Turks reckon there are as many as 70 million ex-Soviet Turkic
speakers scattered across the ex-union; seven million Tatars mostly
along the Volga; several million Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks and others
in Southern Russia near the Caucasus; seven million Azeris west of the
Caspian; little groups such as the 200,000 Christian but Turkic-speaking
Gagauz are demanding secession from secessionist Moldovia; and a host
of Siberian tribes such as the 350,000 gold and dimond digging Yakuts,
who extend almost as far as the Bering Straits.
In the swathe of Soviet Central Asia from the Caspian to China and
running along the Iranian and Afghan borders, all except three million
Persian-speaking Tajiks are Turkic-speakers, of whom the most numerous
are 18 million Uzbeks.
In the tradition of Kemal Ataturk, for whom the Bolshevik Revolution
meant a sharp end to notions of Pan-Turkism and eastward and northward
adventures, encouraging his Europe-looking modernism, Turkish
governments have been careful not to get entangled in Soviet Central
Asia. Until recently Turkish diplomats in Moscow barely travelled
through the Turkic-speaking parts of the USSR.
But in the past few months they have been extraordinarily active.
On Thursday, Turkish leaders embraced Uzbekistan's presidend, Islam
Kerimov, in Ankara, where he signed deals on telecommunications,
Turkish TV and radio programmes, direct flights and trade. Last month,
Kazakistan's leader did the same. The Kirgiz president Askar Akayev,
is about to follow.
Last month Ankara recognised Azerbaijan as independent. Last week
it recognised all former Soviet republics claiming independence,
including Turkic-speaking ones. An eastward Turkish drive, mainly
diplomatic, cultural and trade-minded, is in top gear.
The most striking aspect of the new policy, however, is Ankara's
cosiness towards Armenia, which desperately needs cooperation in
forging road and rail links to the Turkish port of Trebizond on
the Black Sea and reassurance that it won't be mangled in a Turkish
pincer...
Across Central Asia, Turkish-style secularism, strongly nationalistic
and so far mainly anti-Russian, seems the more likely to take root.
But the situation is so fluid that nobody in Washington is confident.
"There is still a visceral fear in Washington, a lot of concern about
Islam, on any given day." says Mr. Fuller.
22.Dec.1991 THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
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