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Turkey is moving ever further away from US influence. Only half a century ago it was a devoted ally, willing to provide thousands of troops to promote America’s plans in Korea in exchange for NATO membership, and the only Muslim nation, which supported Israel’s actions during the Suez crisis. Not so long ago it was a backward agrarian country with an unstable political life, a hard life for the working class and a whole set of ethnic and religious contradictions. Just recently Turkey was known for its 60% yearly inflation rate, was legendary for its corruption and foreign debt, and as a bastion of US influence in the Middle East. The 21st century has arrived and leading American analysts are asking each other a question “What to do?” Turkey has slipped away from US control, became independent and refuses to toe the US line more and more. Leading American experts on the Middle East attempt to answer these questions in a detailed study: “Countering Turkey’s Strategic Drift” published on Heritage Foundation’s website.
Why Turkey is Moving Away from US?
In the article “Countering Turkey’s Strategic Drift”, well-known American experts on Europe and the Middle East Ariel Cohen, Sally McNamara and James Phillips attempt to analyze the reasons for changes in Turkish policy and give recommendations to the US government on how to resolve the contradictions. Their position is quite balanced and, in general, coincides with the views of the American political establishment. In their opinion, Turkey’s political slide away from the US is taking place for the most part for the following reasons:- Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey no longer needs US protection from the Soviet threat
- Ankara’s change of political direction is obviously linked with the EU’s refusal to accept Turkey as a full member
The authors are partially correct in their reasoning about changes in Turkey. However, I would not overemphasize the role of the “Soviet threat”: in 1953 he Soviet Union renounced its claims on Turkish territory, which were raised by Stalin in 1945, and already in the 1960’s-1970’s there was a normalization in relations between the two countries. Not everything is so simple in Turkey’s relations with the EU either. The Turkish society is far from unanimous in its support for the potential accession of their country to the EU. If at the turn of the century, almost 75% of the population supported the process of European integration, then now, in spite of the promotion by the governing party, less than 50% of Turks support it, while 32% oppose it.
As far as the creeping Islamization, the American experts are only paying attention to some of its aspects, while forgetting about the reasons behind it. The authors of the study justifiably note that Turkey is currently undergoing a changeover of its elite. The old, secular, Westernist nationalist bureaucracy, which created the Republic in 1923 found itself unable to resolve the problems of Turkish society in the XXI century. However, it was replaced no by even more Western-oriented liberals, who had the support of the United States in the 1990’s, but, as the experts correctly note, by those from “Central Anatolia and the Black Sea region,” the very same people who were not reached by the tentacles of secularization during the long period of republican rule. At the same time as the Turkish secular elite slowly moved from nationalism to liberalism, the absolute majority of the population retained their membership in Sufi orders banned by Ataturk, which have by now created strong holdings; attended semi-underground courses on the Koran, and dreamed of the greatness of the Ottoman Empire, and…had 4-6 children per family. There was a natural growth of the potentially Islamic electorate, which guaranteed the massive victory by the current party in power, the Justice and Development Party (AK parti) in 2002.
The religious businessmen from Anatolia, who ended up in power to their own surprise, did not at first have their own foreign policy concept, but, it was eventually formed under the influence of various circumstances. At first, Turkey, despite enormous pressure from the United States and Israel, refused to take part in the occupation of Iraq. Then it basically supported Russia in its conflict with Georgia, and now it supports the Iranian nuclear program and levels harsh criticism against Israel. The authors are correct when they note that these changes in foreign policy are rooted in the Turkish domestic situation, but they completely forget about the possible influence of the US on these changes.
Currently, Turkey holds the first place in the world in the intensity of anti-American sentiments among the population. This worries Washington, but is its search for the reasons behind this going in the right direction? It seems that the experts at the Heritage Foundation, which aspires for “US leadership”, are significantly underplaying the US influence in the Middle East. For Muslim, the decisive factor in forming their opinion of the United States was America’s expansionist policies in the region, which can well be alluded to as “intrusion into the lands of Islam,” to which Muslim religious authorities respond with calls for Jihad. Another significant irritant is the support the US has been providing for Israel for over 50 years. An important factor for Turks was the sharp activation of Kurdish separatism following the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Turkish outposts from that country. Contemporary experts see a definite connection between Kurdish terrorism in Southeast Turkey, which was almost defeated by 2003 and the US occupation of Iraq.
Lately, more and more coverage in Turkey is being devoted to the US peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Not so long ago, a whole series of articles about significant civilian casualties in Afghanistan and about the protection offered to the drug lords by the government in Kabul appeared in the Turkish press. At one time, Turkey was also one of the leading drug producers, which was due in part to the American presence in the country. The Turkish drug mafia was destroyed only in 1974, coinciding with a crisis in Turkish-American relations with the crisis in Cyprus serving as background.
The Armenian question, which is brought up by the US Congress every time that there is tension between Ankara and Washington is also an important reason, and not just a consequence of Turkey’s negative view of the US, as the authors claim. Turkish politicians have repeatedly brought to attention the methods of blackmail used by the United States in its approach to the question of genocide and view it as an attempt to lay guilt on the modern Turkish nation for ambiguous crimes of the past.
However, the main reason for the differences between Ankara and Washington is deeper. Turkish and American opponents have cardinally different views about the modern world political system. American experts write in their article: “The main reason why Turkey is moving farther away from Europe and the US is that it wants to become an independent pole of the forming multi-polar world.” This cannot satisfy supporters of unipolar international system, “leadership for the United States, ” the motto of the Heritage Foundation, which ordered the study.
The Turkish Republic, needing protection from a foreign enemy, torn apart by internal political strife, experiencing a deficit of goods, technologies, and credit fully satisfied the United States. Such was the Turkey of the Cold War era, impoverished, starving, surrounded on all sides by enemy states. The modern powerful Turkey, an exporter of goods and technology on the world market, gaining the trust of its closest neighbors in a short time, turned out to be too independent in its actions
Why is the US so afraid of an independent Turkey?
To be continued…
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