'REALISM ABOUT TURKEY'
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Realism About Turkey
By Serge Trifkovic
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=1024
FrontPageMagazine.com
Thursday, February 13, 2003
One in a series of excerpts adapted by Robert Locke from
Dr. Serge Trifkovic's new book The Sword of the Prophet:
A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam.
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.
Footnotes
1. Human Rights Watch, 1999.
- - -
Serge Trifkovic received his PhD from the University of
Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral research
at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past
journalistic outlets have included the BBC World Service,
the Voice of America, CNN International, MSNBC, U.S. News
& World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia
Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain
Dealer. He is foreign affairs editor of Chronicles.
Source - http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6096
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Panchaang for 12 Maagh 5103, Thursday, February 13, 2003:
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