The Prime Minister of Turkey is visiting Washington.
This is much more important than most of these state visits are. Building a relationship with the new Turkey is a critical mission for President Obama. Some American allies became less important with the end of the Cold War; Turkey is one of the ones whose importance in world politics has grown.
The trouble is not only that Turkey (always a key ally) is not only more important than it used to be. Turkey is becoming, politically and culturally, a much more complicated place than ever before, and Turkey’s neighborhood is becoming more complicated and explosive. After all, Turkey has land borders with Iran, Syria and Iraq. It sits on key pipeline and sea transit lines between the rich oil and gas fields of the Caucasus and beyond through which much of Europe’s oil and gas supplies must pass. It is a major political player in the volatile Caucasus; Turkey’s role in the complicated politics involving Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Georgia and Iran is hugely important if that troubled region is to find some stability and peace. Economically and politically, Turkey is a major player in the Balkans; Turkish companies and Turkish investment are vital for the future of countries like Bulgaria, Kosovo and Bosnia. Meanwhile, Turkey’s controversial attempt to join the European Union is interlocked with the angry dispute between Turks and Cyprus on that divided island. The tension between the Islamic world and the west puts Turkey on yet another hot spot; as a historically secular and western looking country, the Turkish Republic has made heroic efforts to bridge the divide between the two worlds — and the tension and costs of that effort are shaping Turkish politics these days in new and unpredictable ways.
As it struggles with all these forces, Turkish society today is debating various grand strategies. Should it continue on the ‘Kemalist’ path laid out by Kemal Ataturk when he established the modern, secular republic and resolutely press towards the west? Should it return to an ‘Ottoman’ foreign policy as an independent great power whose roots and influence in the East give it greater clout in the West? Should it work with the other Turkic peoples of west and central Asia to try to rebuild a kind of pan-Turkish alliance stretching all the way from the Aegean to Uzbekistan? Can Turkey serve as a mediator in this troubled world — an honest broker where east and west, north and south can meet on neutral ground?
These questions are related to questions about Turkey’s development at home. Kemalists want to preserve the aggressively secular and somewhat authoritarian republic that, under the guidance and sometimes direct leadership of the army, characterized Turkish politics for most of the last century. Secular Turks and others worry that the new turn toward Islamic piety in Turkish society will lead to a loss of personal and political freedom. Like the Jacobins in France, and the PRI following Mexico’s bloody civil war, the Turkish government historically cracked down on most public expressions of religion as a way to limit its power in the public sphere. Women were not only free to appear in public with their hair uncovered; women wearing the Turkish equivalent of the hijab were barred from government employment and university classes. These restrictions are eroding today, but secular Turks worry that the Islamists, now pleading for tolerance and individual freedom, will change their tune once they solidify their power.
These Kemalist Turks, strong allies of the U.S. during the Cold War, have been hard hit not only by changes in Turkish domestic politics but by changes in the international landscape. Europe’s reluctance to admit Turkey to the EU suggests that the Kemalist dream of full integration may never come true. U.S. policy in the region, especially the cooperation with Iraqi Kurds, threatened what Kemalists see as vital national interests. Disappointment with Europe and intense frustration and even rage against U.S. policy make it hard for Kemalists to see a way forward abroad, even as the continuing electoral popularity of the more Islamically-inclined party of the current prime minister make the domestic political scene look pretty bleak.
But life isn’t going so well for the Easternizers, either. Some of the early steps in an ‘eastern’ policy have been embarrassing; Prime Minister Erdogan’s grandstanding on the stage with Israeli President Shimon Peres at Davos played well in domestic politics, but his defense of Sudan’s actions in Darfur helped neither Turkey nor him. Turks sometimes have a hard time understanding that their nostalgia for the Ottoman period — when the Sultan of Turkey was the Caliph of Islam and his writ ran from Morocco to the Persian frontier, from the Indian Ocean to the gates of Vienna — is not widely shared among their neighbors. Turkey’s attempts so far to shift its foreign policy to the east have not had much success. Today, for example, Iran rather unceremoniously rejected Turkey’s offer to mediate in its nuclear dispute with the west. Yesterday saw Israel politely but firmly reject a Turkish mediating role in its peace talks with Syria.
Meanwhile, the news from the west is also depressing. The Greek Cypriots, now members of the EU and using that power to carry on their long running blood feud with the Turks, have threatened to block progress on Turkey’s application to the EU unless Turkey makes further and presumably humiliating concessions. This comes against the background of the regrettable Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets in their Alpine Disneyland of a country. Mustafa Akyol’s comment on the subject, which compares Islamophobia in Europe to the anti-Semitism that ultimately led to the Holocaust, may strike some readers as over the top, but Akyol is a thoughtful man and his column should make westerners think hard about the consequences of our actions. (In a subsequent column, Akyol addressed some of the concerns raised by the first.)
President Obama has taken some of the right steps to repair the American relationship with this vital ally, but the road ahead will be tough. The United States can’t deliver what the Turks most want — an open door into Europe; the rising political forces in Turkey don’t want to deliver what the U.S. wants — military help in Afghanistan and a re-invigoration of the Turkish relationship with Israel. If the signals emanating from the White House lately are correct, and U.S.-Iranian relations are about to move back into a more confrontational pattern, that too will cause problems: problems for Turkey which has strong trade links with Iran and which deeply values stability in its contentious eastern neighborhood, and problems in Turkish-American relations.
The smartest thing is probably for Obama to keep his expectations for Turkish help in Afghanistan low, while the two leaders work together on ways to enhance Turkey’s appeal to the EU. The big prize for the United States isn’t a few hundred or even a few thousand Turkish military forces in Afghanistan (although Turkish troops are among the most formidable fighters in NATO); the big prize is a renewed partnership between the two countries moving forward.