29
October 2002
2. "Strong-Arm Democracy", it’s official. After four military coups since 1960, the Turkish Army doesn’t interfere with civilian politics anymore. Just look at Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular politician, banned last month by Turkey’s Supreme Court from running in this weekend’s general election.
3. "How Turks will vote is anyone's guess", Turks are approaching their November 4 election with anger at their politicians, annoyance at Europe, and uncertainty regarding a possible war with Iraq. The attitudes shaping their voting are quite clear, but the outcome is totally uncertain.
4. "Fed up Istanbul voters vow to punish city leaders in Sunday's vote", in the suburbs of Istanbul where Turkey's 18-month economic crisis has left residents cynical and angry, voters say the ballot they cast in Sunday's general election will aim to punish the existing political leadership, whom they blame for their predicament.
5. "One Kurdish Fighter Killed in Battle", a bloody clash between Kurdish fighters and Turkish troops was reported in the Tunceli province, east of the Turkish capital, Ankara.
6. "Heads up on Turkey", it is not yet clear that the United States will use force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But in discussion of that possibility to date one proposition has never been challenged: You can't do it without Turkey.
1. - The New York Times - "Trying to Weaken Saddam Sanctions Will Pay Later":
WASHINGTON / 29 October 2002
by William Safire
If the U.N. Security Council fails to adopt a resolution holding
Iraq "in material breach" of its many disarmament agreements,
that refusal will have consequences for the United Nations and several
of its member nations.
The State Department cannot say that, of course, because our diplomacy
with council members rests on persuasion, not threats. But should
the United Nations deny the fact of Saddam's repeated and sustained
defiance of its irresolute resolutions, the world body will henceforth
play only in a little league of nations.
Every diplomat knows what "in material breach" means: As
called for in the resolution put forward by the U.S. and Britain,
that phrase clears the way for the liberation of Iraq. If Saddam does
not promptly come into total compliance with no-nonsense inspections,
we would have the useful, though not necessary, U.N. coloration for
our overthrow of the outlaw regime.
Russia, France, China and Mexico lead the pack wanting to strip that
triggering phrase from the declared U.S. position. If they succeed,
their "no" votes would assert that Saddam is not in material
breach of a dozen previous Security Council orders, which Baghdad
would interpret as a legal triumph. It would also show that Colin
Powell's faith in the U.N. system and his own persuasive powers has
been grievously misplaced.
What would be the consequences of a victory by Saddam over the U.S.
in the Security Council? If President Bush were to meekly accept the
rebuff of a further watering-down of the U.S.-British resolution,
his administration would become a laughingstock. Worse, the world
would have no way to restrain nuclear blackmail.
That won't happen. Should Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac lead the
council down the path of appeasement, Bush will undertake the liberation
of the Iraqi people with an ad hoc coalition of genuine allies. And
here is one pundit's assessment of the likely consequences:
After our victory in the second Gulf War, Britain would replace France
as the chief European dealer in Iraqi oil and equipment. Syria, the
Security Council member that has been the black-market conduit for
Saddam's black gold, would be frozen out. The government of New Iraq,
under the tutelage and initial control of the victorious coalition,
and prosperous after shedding the burden of a huge army and corrupt
Baath Party, would reimburse the U.S. and Britain for much of their
costs in the war and transitional government out of future oil revenues
and contracts.
If Turkey's powerful army on Iraq's border significantly shortens
the war, its longtime claim to royalties from the Kirkuk oil fields
would at last be honored. This would recompense the Turks for the
decade of economic distress caused by the gulf wars, and be an incentive
for them to patch up relations with pro-democracy Iraqi Kurds fighting
Saddam at their side.
The evolving democratic government of New Iraq would repudiate the
corrupt $8 billion "debt" that Russia claims was run up
by Saddam. Even more troubling to Putin will be the heavy investment
to be made by the U.S. and British companies that will sharply increase
the drilling and refining capacity of the only nation whose oil reserves
rival those of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
Rising production from a non-OPEC Iraq, matched by Saudi price cuts
from princes desperate to hold market share, could well reduce world
oil prices by a third. This would be a great boon to the poor in many
developing nations, rejuvenate Japan and encourage prosperity worldwide,
though it would temporarily impoverish Putin's Russia, now wholly
dependent on oil revenues.
Such economic consequences to nations that help or hinder us in the
United Nations this week do not compare to the human-rights benefits
to millions of Iraqis liberated from oppression and to Arabs from
Cairo to Gaza in dire need of an example of freedom.
That moral dimension of the need to overthrow Saddam is of no interest
to ultrapragmatists in the Security Council. That is why our resolution
holding him "in material breach" of U.N. orders to stop
building mass-murder weapons and encouraging world terror is bottomed
on self-defense against a serial aggressor. But the Paris-Moscow-Beijing
axis of greed -- whose commerce-driven politicians seek to prop up
the doomed Saddam in the United Nations -- will find its policy highly
unprofitable.
2. - Newsweek - "Strong-Arm Democracy":
Turkey’s generals won’t step aside—even for the
EU
By Owen Matthews / Nov. 4 issue
It’s official. After four military coups since 1960, the Turkish
Army doesn’t interfere with civilian politics anymore. Just look
at Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular politician, banned
last month by Turkey’s Supreme Court from running in this weekend’s
general election.
To most, the case looked suspiciously like a rerun of the Army’s
last and quietest coup, in February 1998, when it removed a previous
government for the same reason as it did Erdogan—for being overly
Islamic in a rigidly secular country. But no, says Turkey’s foreign
minister, Sukru Gurel. This was no pre-emptive coup. It was an example
of “Turkey’s independent judiciary” at work.
If Gurel’s outburst sounds indignant, it’s because Turkey’s
nationalist establishment is circling the wagons in defense of Ankara’s
tightly rationed version of democracy. The “attack” comes
from the European Union, which wants Turkey to conform to its own,
more liberal, vision of governance before it considers admitting Turkey
to the club. The EU, which Turkey yearns to join, has just weighed
the country’s progress toward the Copenhagen Criteria for new
members—and found it wanting. Its report, issued earlier this
month to howls of protest across the Turkish political spectrum, listed
the usual criticisms—human-rights abuses, repression of minorities
and limited freedom of speech. Erdogan, for instance, was banned from
running because of a 1999 conviction for “Islamic sedition.”
His crime: reading a passage from a well-known poem that contained
religious references at a rally. But it was a different demand that
struck a particularly raw nerve. Brussels wants Ankara’s military
to stop meddling in civilian politics.
In the past, Eurocrats have glossed over this issue. But as Turkey
moves closer toward membership, Brussels is voicing its concerns more
unequivocally. “Turkey has to be a functional democracy and have
a transparent political process,” says a senior European Commission
official. “That means no behind-the-scenes forces picking and
choosing which politicians can run and which can’t.” Trouble
is, by taking on the Army, the EU is attacking the holiest of sacred
cows. In Turkey, the military is more than just a national defense
force—it’s the backbone of the state. The military is, according
to virtually every opinion poll, the single most trusted and respected
institution in the country. (Parliament, by contrast, ranks at the
bottom.)
Gen. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the career officer who founded the modern
Turkish republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, entrusted the
military with continuing his reforming, pro-Western zeal, and it has
followed that path ever since. Contemporary “Kemalism” enshrines
secularism, unity, progress and democracy as the cornerstones of government
and society. But as Emin Sirin, a parliamentary candidate for Erdogan’s
AK Party, points out, “The secularism and unity part usually
override the democracy part.” From elites to the man in the street,
Turks see the Army as the guarantor of stability and modernity.
That’s led to a strange paradox. On paper, the European Union
and the Army should be on the same side. Both profess to want a progressive
Turkey, integrated into Western civilization. Both distrust political
Islam and want to crack down on Islamist extremists. But in practice,
their visions of Turkey’s future are set to clash. The EU may
endorse many of the Army’s policies, but it fundamentally opposes
its role in enforcing them. If a head-on collision has been avoided,
it’s only because the EU has so far focused on more-easily solved
differences—which Turkey has been ready to address. This summer
the Turkish Parliament enacted a raft of reforms intended to pave
its way into the Union. It banned the death penalty, eased restrictions
on free speech and allowed broadcasting and teaching in Kurdish, the
native language of 12 million Turkish citizens—all steps that
were welcomed by Brussels, and for which the military took credit.
Just because the military has become more liberal, however, doesn’t
mean it’s any less willing to exert its power. Take this summer’s
reforms. They were passed with the Army’s blessing, not independently
of it, notes journalist Cengiz Candar, senior columnist for the Sabah
newspaper before he was removed in 1998 for criticizing the military.
(He now writes for the small-circulation Yeni Safak.) What has changed
is the military’s style of exercising power. “The Army sees
that 70 percent of the country wants to be integrated into Europe,”
Candar says, and so makes what he calls necessary “cosmetic”
concessions. Thus in addition to giving ground on human-rights issues,
it has also increased the number of civilians on the powerful National
Security Council (NSC), which brings the country’s top political
and military officials together to discuss key domestic and international
issues.
But that reform has done little to assuage Europe’s fears that
the secretive NSC still plays a disproportionately large role in governing
the country. Officially, the NSC has only an advisory role in Turkish
politics. “In practice,” reads the recent EU report, “Its
opinions carry more weight then mere recommendations.” Tinkering
with the institutional makeup or structure of the NSC isn’t likely
to change this fact. The habits of obedience—or at least deference—to
the military are pervasive in Turkish society. “The rules are
unwritten but exist in the mind of every Turk,” says Candar.
“When it comes to Iraq, Cyprus or the Kurdish question, the military
has a say. It’s automatic.”
Even if there’s been a change of style, the latest reform package
hasn’t actually gone that far in improving the quality of Turkey’s
democracy. According to the EU, 40 books were banned between January
and May 2002, and more than 100 cases are pending against journalists
charged with “insulting state institutions” or “supporting
illegal organizations.” Thousands of students and activists are
still jailed for “crimes” that in Europe would be considered
part of the political process—supporting Kurdish rights too zealously,
for instance, or joining hunger strikers protesting prison conditions.
The banning of Erdogan, and legal proceedings launched last week against
his AK Party, are probably the clearest signs of the establishment’s
continuing opposition to expressions of democracy with which it disagrees.
Just how the mechanisms of influence between the military and the
judiciary work is murky. But consider this: in April, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok,
who became chief of the general staff in August, denounced Erdogan
for his alleged Islamic sympathies, despite the fact that Erdogan
has forsworn extremism, seeks to join Europe and argues for the separation
of religion and the state. Referring to the date on which the Army
removed the mildly Islamist government of Erdogan’s former mentor,
Necmettin Erbakan, from power, Ozkok vowed to “continue the Feb.
28 process for a thousand years.” Four months later, Erdogan
was duly banned from running by Turkey’s Supreme Court despite
the fact that he led the polls by nearly 20 points and was an odds-on
favorite to become prime minister. Officially, of course, the Army
had no role in what was described as a purely judicial proceeding.
But many are skeptical. “Turkey’s judiciary consider themselves
to be primarily servants of the state,” says a senior European
parliamentarian who favors Turkish accession. “I don’t think
anyone in Brussels seriously thinks the ban was anything other than
political.”
The problem for the EU is that the Army has good reason to preserve
its role. If not for the Army, Turkey could be riven by ethnic and
religious factionalism. Generations of civilian politicians have proved
to be woefully corrupt and ineffectual. (In the Nov. 3 election, one
quarter of the candidates standing for Parliament have criminal records
or face criminal charges—and are assured immunity if elected.)
And from the perspective of the anarchic 1970s, when communists and
nationalists shot each other on the streets, the Army is indeed a
powerful force for stability. For the military—which has always
quickly handed power back to the civilians after every coup—the
ultimate question is this: when can Turks trust their elected leaders
enough to relinquish the safety net the Army provides? Gen. Cevik
Bir, former deputy chief of the general staff, says that it’s
the politicians and the people who want the Army to take a role, not
vice versa. “The Army is not interested in politics,” says
Bir. “But we have been tasked to protect the Turkish state as
well as our land... Our aim is to help Turkey reach civilization,
and the EU is a way to achieve that. But Europe doesn’t want
to see things from our perspective.”
Perhaps time will break the deadlock. Greece, Spain and Portugal were
admitted to the EU after the overthrow of military dictatorships.
It’s fair to ask whether Turkey should be held to a higher standard,
especially given the comparatively benign role of the Turkish generals.
Turkey’s strong military also suits its other ally, the United
States, just fine because Washington needs the Turks to back its campaign
against Iraq. The United States has even appealed to the EU to speed
Turkey’s accession, calling it “a U.S. strategic interest”—though
so far Brussels hasn’t been swayed by Washington’s special
pleading.
It’s not surprising that Brussels isn’t rushing to integrate
Turkey—it’s already preparing to digest 10 new members,
due to join by the end of 2004, plus several others likely to join
a few years later. Turkey is at the bottom of the list. Unlike even
Bulgaria and Romania, it hasn’t even been granted a start date
for accession talks.
The Turks want that, badly, if only as an acknowledgment of the reforms
they’ve already passed. But it’s pretty clear that Europe
won’t give Ankara a firm date for talks at its Copenhagen summit
in December. Brussels says it hasn’t seen enough improvement
in Turkey to justify such a commitment—but some Turks charge
that the real reason is that the EU is wary of admitting a large Muslim
nation to what some angrily call a “Christian club.” Turkey’s
population of 67 million would make it the second largest country
in the EU—and before long the biggest—radically changing
the complexion of the Union. In fact, there is a clash of civilizations—but
it’s less between Muslim and Christian as it is a conflict between
two visions of democracy. One errs on the side of freedom, the other
on the side of order. The danger is that the EU will demand too much
and offer too little, just as the Turks expect too much and think
they don’t need to change much more. That’s not a recipe
for a happy partnership. If today’s bad feelings grow, the two
sides may remain on separate tracks. And in Turkey, Ataturk’s
vision of modernity could well trump Brussels’s.
3. - The Jerusalem Post - "How Turks will vote is anyone's guess":
October 28, 2002
By Barry Rubin
Turks are approaching their November 4 election with anger at their politicians, annoyance at Europe, and uncertainty regarding a possible war with Iraq. The attitudes shaping their voting are quite clear, but the outcome is totally uncertain.
The main issue affecting the balloting is a mood of disillusionment with all the traditional political parties and leaders. This has been a common theme in Turkish politics during the last 20 years. Again and again, Turks have been disappointed with the quality of their governments.
As a result, at the ballot boxes they have successively turned to center, Islamist, right-wing nationalist, and leftist parties, which in turn have formed a bewildering variety of coalitions. Yet dissatisfaction with each government has then led to a new winner at the next voting opportunity.
The current government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has a social-democratic party in partnership with a centrist and right-wing party. The new grievance is the economic collapse that put an end to Turkey's impressive trend of growth and development since the 1970s. This is combined with the fact that Ecevit is too old to continue in power and too stubborn to yield it to others.
While governments are often not responsible for economic downturns, in this case there are good reasons to argue that Ecevit's personal behavior - including quarrels with high officials that undermined faith in the economy - and his government's failure to pass needed laws or act strongly against corruption played a major role in starting the crisis.
Part of the response to this discontent with existing groups has been the formation of several new parties, whose performance in the election is hard to predict.
Given that Turkey requires a party to achieve 10 percent of the vote before being able to send members to parliament, many groups will not pass this barrier and thus votes for them will be, in effect, wasted.
The really important new party - and the one which polls predict
may get the highest number of votes - is the Ak (White) party. This
party's fate and the course it sets may prove of exceptional international
importance, for the Ak party is running as a moderate Islamic grouping,
a sort of equivalent to Europe's Christian Democratic parties.
For example, the party favors Turkey's membership in the European Union and good relations with Israel.
If it succeeds and proves really moderate, the Ak party could be a trendsetter for Islamist politics elsewhere. Many Turkish secularists, and that category includes a majority of the population and the powerful military establishment, are suspicious, not sure whether this group is something new, or merely a wolf in sheep's clothing.
It emerged from a split in the far more radical Islamist party, which completely fumbled its own opportunity to rule as head of a coalition because of its traditionalist, hard-line policies. The army finally intervened to force that coalition's resignation.
Symbolic of this ambiguity is the fact that the party's leader is Recep Tayip Erdogan. Erdogan built a good reputation as the clean-government mayor of Istanbul, but he was also banned from politics for life by the courts after reading a poem which implied a desire to overthrow Turkey's existing system and turn that country into an Islamist state, like Iran.
Barred from political activity, Erdogan continues to lead the party; but he would not be allowed to take office if his list won.
THE KEY question in the election's outcome will be whether the Ak party leads Turkey's next government. If it does, everyone will be closely watching its every move and statement to decide whether it represents a new dawn of moderate Islamist politics or a Trojan horse for extremists.
While almost all the parties in the election favor Turkey's membership in the EU, in this respect the country is also at a turning point. During the last two years EU demands for reforms in Turkey have generated some real change and strengthened domestic forces, which want economic improvements, more democracy and civil liberties.
Now, however, the EU's continued refusal to advance Turkey's candidacy while its enemy Cyprus is pushed quickly toward membership is leading Turks to conclude that the EU will never accept them. They believe - and they probably aren't wrong - that the EU's negative attitude toward Turkey is inspired not by fair-minded judging but by racism, anti-Muslim prejudice, and the desire to avoid the additional Turkish migrant workers and expenditures Turkish membership would bring.
It is likely that anti-EU feeling will grow quickly in Turkey, as Turks feel that the game is rigged against them. This also means the disappearance of any leverage the EU has to encourage reform and wider democracy in Turkey.
A third issue, the potential US-led war against Iraq, is not a major factor in the election. No party opposes cooperating with the United States. Turks know a conflict might include an attack on them by Iraq, but they are not an easily frightened nation.
Turkey wants to ensure that no independent Kurdish state emerges from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. That, however, is not a difficult condition to meet since the US, the Iraqi opposition and the Kurds themselves seem content with the idea of a federalist Iraq.
There is another point about a war, though, that many outsiders miss.
If a new government comes to power in Iraq and the sanctions are ended, Turkey may profit more than any other country. The large Iraqi oil pipeline with Turkey would reopen, thousands of trucks would cross the frontier daily, and Turkish workers and contractors would play a central role in rebuilding Iraq. And that just might end the current economic crisis.
Whatever its precise results, Turkey's election, like its predecessors, is likely to bring lots of surprises.
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center. His latest books are The Tragedy of the Middle East
and Anti-American Terrorism in the Middle East.
4.
- AFP - "Fed up Istanbul voters vow to punish city leaders
in Sunday's vote":
ISTANBUL / October 28, 2002
by Jerome Bastion
In the suburbs of Istanbul where Turkey's 18-month economic crisis
has left residents cynical and angry, voters say the ballot they cast
in Sunday's general election will aim to punish the existing political
leadership, whom they blame for their predicament.
"Right or left, they're all the same! What we want is a leader
who will work, who will think of the people and not of himself,"
said Suleyman, 35, the owner of a small grocery in Gazi, one of Istanbul's
western suburbs.
"You'll see, people are going to choose someone new this time,
someone who was never in government," he said.
Though empty, his store was one of the few open in a once-busy street
where more shops are now shuttered rather than open for business.
Suleyman said his turnover has dropped by 50 percent since last year,
and his once varied sales now amounted mostly to bread and potatoes.
Turkey's financial crisis hit in 2001, when the economy contracted
by 9.4 percent, the Turkish lira lost almost half its value against
the dollar, and inflation soared to 8.5 percent.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in a review
on Turkey released last week, reported some progress, forecasting
the economy would grow by about four percent this year and inflation
to 35 percent.
But the OECD warned that political stability was the key to further
reforms.
The recession, the worst yet in Turkish history, is felt keenly by
many municipalities. The mayor's office in the suburb of Gaziosmanpasa
said it distributes twice as many daily meals to the needy than it
did last year.
"If the new government manages to give a job to at least one
member of each family, we would no longer have to feed everyone,"
said Ekrem Yavuz, who heads
the communal kitchen set up when Islamists took control of most city
halls in and around Istanbul in the 1994 elections.
Yavuz said his facility feeds some 14,000 people, many of them children,
each day. He said the food was distributed "without any electoral
motives" to people confirmed to be living below the poverty line.
"We expect the right to return to power because the left failed,
and this (governmental) coalition never did manage to get along. We
need someone who will take care of the problems of the people,"
he said.
The one-year-old Justice and Development Party (AK), a moderate Islamist
group headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is tipped to win over the fractured
mainstream parties in Sunday's vote.
Many remember Erdogan when he took over as mayor of his hometown Istanbul
in 1994. He managed to improve water supplies and clean streets in
this chaotic city of 10 million inhabitants before he was ousted and
jailed for sedition in a secular backlash in the late 1990s, which
has barred him from the current race.
Muharrem, a pensioner wearing an AK pin who relies on the daily free
meal program, called the current government "catastrophic"
and said a "strong" team must be brought in.
In the nearby Yesiltepe district, peopled mainly by Kurds, 24-year-old
barber Sakir Kaya spends his time at a local cafe because he gets
so few customers.
Earning an average 10 dollars (euros) a day for four employees, he
has tried in vain to sell his business and move abroad. "We have
no faith in any future government," he said.
"Even the democratic reforms got through only because of intervention
from the European Union," he said, adding that he would vote
for Mesut Yilmaz, the current deputy prime minister in charge of European
affairs, since there was no pro-Kurd party with any chance of getting
into parliament.
In the tearoom of a local mosque in Gaziosmanpasa, customers groan
about what they see as lack of religious freedom and dim hopes for
"democracy".
"I will vote for the only candidate who is devoted to his work,
who showed as manager of Istanbul he can do the job," said an
old man with a beard, fingering his AK pin.
But he said he expected little from the poll. "The believers
will remain politically marginalized and the courts will reduce the
AK to zero," he said.
5.
- Palestine - Chronicle - "One Kurdish Fighter Killed in Battle":
ANKARA / October 28, 2002
A bloody clash between Kurdish fighters and Turkish troops was reported in the Tunceli province, east of the Turkish capital, Ankara.
One Kurdish fighter was killed in the clash and five Turkish soldiers were wounded, two seriously, according to the Turkish Anatolia news agency.
The Tunceli province is located in a mainly Kurdish southeast, some 470 miles east of Ankara.
Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party declared a unilateral cease-fire in 1999, and expressed their willingness to initiate a dialogue with the Turkish government as an attempt to end a bloody 15-year-old civil war in Turkey.
The Turkish army, who razed hundreds of Kurdish villages in past years, showed little interest in dialogue, and called on all the rebels to surrender.
Kurdish groups, spearheaded by the Workers Party have fought for a regional autonomy as a result of what they see as years of discrimination and human rights abuses by the Turkish government.
Over 37,000 people, mostly Kurdish civilians and rebels were killed in the bitter conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were also made homeless as a result.
Turkey’s war with the rebels has frequently extended to northern
Iraq, where a large Kurdish population lives. Turkey invaded that
part of Iraq several times in its unrelenting attacks and clashes
with Kurdish fighters.
6. - The Washington Times - "Heads up on Turkey":
28 October 2002
By Mark R. Parris, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey
It is not yet clear that the United States will use force to remove
Saddam Hussein from power. But in discussion of that possibility to
date one proposition has never been challenged: You can't do it without
Turkey.
The conventional wisdom here in America is that, much as the Turks
dread the prospect of a war next door, their interest in helping to
shape post-Saddam Iraq ultimately leaves them no choice but to be
cooperative. That is probably true as far as it goes. But there is
no room for complacency. Turkey will have a lot on its plate during
the period ahead. If we are not paying attention, there could be some
unpleasant surprises.
For starters, national elections Nov. 3 will bring a new government
to power in Ankara. Polls suggest that the AK Party, formed last year
by elements of previously-banned Islamist parties, will either form
that government or be the top party in a new coalition. The AK's skillful
efforts to re-badge itself as a center-right, non-religious party
have reduced the risk that Turkey's powerful secular establishment
will block its participation in government. But it will probably take
until the end of November, and quite possibly longer, before it is
clear who will be in charge. (The fact that the AK's leader, R.T.
Erdogan, has been legally disqualified from running for office, further
complicates that question.)
During this period, Bulent Ecevit's badly divided coalition government
of three parties, none of which is likely to be represented in parliament
after Nov. 3, will remain in a caretaker capacity. That may be significant.
Mr. Ecevit was never comfortable even with the Clinton administration's
more nuanced approach toward Iraq; in recent weeks he has grown increasingly
outspoken in his criticism of U.S. Iraq policy.
Leaving Iraq aside, Turkey's new government, if in place by early
December, will face as its first order of business an event Turks
view as a defining moment: the Dec. 12 Copenhagen EU summit. Having
pushed through EU-mandated reforms on hot-button issues like the death
penalty and Kurdish language rights, Turks want the Europeans to give
them a date for starting negotiations on EU membership. It is not
clear the EU will comply.
What is clear is that the summit will start the process of bringing
Cyprus into the EU, even in the absence of a settlement among the
island's Greek and Turkish communities. The Ecevit government has
in the past threatened annexation of north Cyprus should this occur.
Its successor would not necessarily be bound by such statements. But
the double-whammy of being denied a date and seeing Cyprus's own membership
cinched would put the new prime minister under enormous popular pressure
to respond in ways that could poison relations between Turkey and
Europe for years to come and fuel nationalist sentiment at home.
That will, in turn, make it more difficult to handle the third urgent
task facing Turkey's new government — sustaining a fragile economic
recovery. IMF-backed reforms (and an injection of tens of billions
of new loans) have stabilized Turkey's economy since a February 2001
financial meltdown, and growth and inflation rates are now moving
in the right directions. But unemployment, poverty and consequent
popular resentment remain widespread. The IMF and "foreign influence"
have during the current election campaign become lightning rods for
such resentment, and the AK Party, while pledging to continue the
reform program, has raised the possibility of "adjustments."
If the new government yields to popular pressures to relax program
requirements, the recovery could be put at risk, along with the IMF's
(and, indirectly, our) $30 billion investment in Turkey.
Add to this daunting agenda an American request to participate in
an unpopular war with Iraq, and a legitimate question arises as to
whether a new, untried leadership can take the strain. The answer
is that it probably can — if the Bush administration has its
eye on the ball and is giving that leadership timely, relevant support.
The ground for that can be laid even before we know for sure who will
be governing Turkey next. There are indications this is happening.
Bush administration efforts to avoid a Turkish-EU train wreck in Copenhagen
appear properly to have intensified in recent weeks. Settling the
Cyprus dispute by Dec. 12 will be a challenge. But, if the Europeans
are prepared to be at all sensible, it should be possible to avoid
a situation where the new Turkish government has to respond to being
left out in the cold before it has even had a chance to engage on
Cyprus and other issues relevant to Turkey's EU candidacy.
The administration has also made a good start at consulting on Iraq.
But only a start. Turks continue to fear the economic consequences
of a war and want reassurance we will do more to alleviate those consequences
than we did in 1991. And while most Turks believe we are sincere in
our commitment to maintain Iraq's territorial integrity, they do not
yet have an adequate understanding of what that means for the area
they care most about — predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq. Turkish
popular opinion thus remains solidly opposed to U.S. military intervention.
Won't the Turkish military simply tell the new government to do what
we want? Not necessarily. Before the first Gulf War, Turkey's chief
of staff resigned in protest against Turgut Ozal's advocacy of more
extensive Turkish military involvement. Turkey's current military
leadership, when it has spoken at all, has sounded bearish on the
prospect of a new war.
With everything else he will have to face in his opening days or weeks
in office, therefore, Turkey's next prime minister is likely to need
good, hard answers when asked by a skeptical public (and perhaps some
reluctant generals) what Turkey will get for supporting America's
Iraq policy. The Bush administration ought to be sure it can provide
those answers, if — or when — they are needed.
Mark R. Parris, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1997 to 2000,
is currently counselor to the Turkish Research Program at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy.