O&Z Goes To Turkey

March 4, 2013 § 4 Comments

I am headed to Turkey later today for the second part of the Young Turkey Young America program (in case you have forgotten or are new to this blog, explanation here) and will be spending the next two weeks in Ankara and Istanbul getting the Turkish perspective on the current state of U.S.-Turkey relations. As I noted after the first part of this program in September, the relationship between the two countries seemed stronger than ever, and U.S. government officials, business leaders, and foreign policy analysts were overwhelmingly positive about Turkey’s global role and its importance to U.S. interests. Turkey was seen as a crucial and helpful ally, President Obama and Prime Minister Erdoğan clearly had a strong personal relationship, and everything was humming along as smoothly as possible.

Since then, however, some storm clouds have developed on the horizon, and I will be very interested to see whether the wide variety of Turkish officials with whom we are meeting are as positive about the U.S. as American officials were about Turkey back in the fall. In the period since then, a number of issues have either cropped up anew or have intensified, and Washington and Ankara do not seem to be as much on the same page as they were before. The two governments have had sharper disagreements over the proper course to pursue in Syria, with Turkey wanting to aggressively arm the rebels and the Obama administration (wisely in my view) holding back. There is also friction over Iraq and how much independence the Kurdistan Regional Government in the north should have from Baghdad. Issues surrounding freedom of speech and imprisonment of journalists have become more prominent as well, and Ambassador Francis Ricciardone was called on the carpet after criticizing the government over the Ergenekon trials. Then there is the lingering Israel issue, with Erdoğan’s Zionism-equals-fascism comment last week only the latest in a long line of vitriol directed at Jerusalem that complicates Turkey’s standing here in Washington. In September I wrote the following:

The deterioration in relations between Turkey and Israel is clearly weighing on policymakers’ minds, and it was repeatedly brought up as something that needs to be fixed before it starts to adversely affect Turkey’s relationship with the U.S. A couple of people made allusions to the fact that Israel is always going to politically win out over Turkey in the U.S. and so it is vital for Turkey that the two countries repair their ties. Given the prevailing view in Turkey that the fallout with Israel has been relatively cost-free, I think that some of my Turkish colleagues were surprised to hear that this was an issue that could possibly bleed over into U.S.-Turkey bilateral ties. It’s not terribly surprising from my perspective given that Israel and Turkey are two of the most important U.S. allies in the region and the U.S. would like to go back to the era of being able to coordinate with them in concert, but I’m not sure my Turkish friends had thought about it much from this angle.

I think this is even more salient now than it was a few months ago, and with the establishment of an Israel-Hellenic caucus in Congress and arms deals with Turkey either being held up or not being introduced into committee at all, there is no doubt in my mind that Turkey’s feud with Israel is adversely impacting its interests in the U.S. Furthermore, the danger for Ankara is that its standing among policymakers is contingent upon it being seen as a helpful ally because it does not have a real independent base of support here otherwise. Unlike Israel, which has a strong relationship with the U.S. for a host of reasons – including the strength of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups – but that all stem from the fact that Israel is immensely popular with most Americans and even loved by many, Turkey does not enjoy this same status. If Erdoğan and his government keep on having disagreements with Washington over Syria, Iraq, Israel, and other issues, Turkey’s relationship with the U.S. is bound to suffer a decline, no matter how often Obama and Erdoğan talk on the phone.

Over the next two weeks, aside from enjoying time spent with good friends in one of my favorite places in the whole world, I will be thinking about these issues and trying to assess U.S.-Turkey relations in the larger context of everything else taking place. The relationship is one of critical importance, and while nobody expects both countries to agree on everything or to see eye to eye on every issue,  it behooves them both to ensure that bumps in the road do not turn into roadblocks. So with that, an iyi yolculuklar to me, and I will do my best to blog what I can over the next couple of weeks.

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Daniel Pipes Jumps The Shark, And Other Oddities

October 19, 2012 § 1 Comment

In keeping with this week’s O&Z theme of highlighting poor commentary and analysis, the thread running throughout today’s gallimaufry is going to be more of the same. I’m not sure why I’ve been pulling an Andy Rooney routine lately, but there seems to be an unusually large amount of nonsensical drivel floating out there, so let’s plunge right into the dung heap.

Starting us off with first prize for the week, the month, and possibly the year is Daniel Pipes’ error-riddled and borderline hallucinatory head-scratcherat the National Review on Turkey and Syria. He opens it with this:

Why is the Turkish government acting so aggressively against the Assad regime in Syria?

Perhaps Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes that lobbing artillery shells into Syria will help bring a satellite government to power in Damascus. Maybe he expects that sending a Turkish war plane into Syrian air space or forcing down a Syrian civilian plane en route from Russia will win him favor in the West and bring in NATO to intervene. Conceivably, it’s all a grand diversion from an imminent economic crisis due to borrowing too much.

Hmmm, let’s see…why is Turkey acting so aggressively? Don’t have the answer yet? Perhaps it’s because Turkey isn’t acting aggressively at all, but is responding to Syrian shells landing on Turkish territory and killing Turkish civilians. One would never know from reading Pipes that Syria shot down a Turkish plane, is hosting Kurdish terrorists who are launching attacks on Turkey, and ends up shelling Turkish border towns on an almost daily basis these past few weeks. I’m not sure that I’ve ever read a more Orwellian assault on basic facts than what is contained in this first paragraph. If you decide that you want to keep on reading – although I caution that if you do you are putting yourself at risk of an aneurysm – you will learn some other wonderful things about Turkey that you might not have been aware of, such as the fact that Erdoğan’s goal is to bring sharia to Turkey or that Turkey has abandoned the U.S. security umbrella (which must make it pretty awkward that we are still basing nuclear missiles on Turkish territory). You’ll also get to see some truly great logical consistency at work, such as when you compare, “Erdogan’s actions fit into a context going back a half-century” with the opening sentence of the very next paragraph, which is, “A new era began in November 2002 when Erdogan’s AKP, a clever Islamist party that avoids terrorism and global-caliphate rants, replaced the center-right and -left parties that long had dominated Ankara.” I could go on all day, but Brent Sasley beat me to it, so just read his takedown of Pipes instead.

Then you have David Brooks, who I always read and often find thoughtful but who wrote an entire column this week based on a ridiculous premise. Brooks listed a set of criteria for selecting a president who will make Washington less dysfunctional after opening with the following.

Voters have been astonishingly clear. In 2000, they elected George W. Bush after he promised to change the tone in Washington. In 2008, they elected Barack Obama after he promised to move the country beyond stale partisan debates. In this year’s first presidential debate, surveys show that viewers loved Mitt Romney’s talk of professionalism and bipartisanship.

In other words, primary campaigns are won by the candidate who can most convincingly champion the party’s agenda, but general election campaigns are won by the candidate who can most plausibly fix the political system.

With all due respect to Mr. Brooks, this is ridiculous. He plucked out something that he happens to care about, and without any evidence or data at all asserted that this is what decides elections. It’s no different than claiming that voters elected President Obama in 2008 because he is left-handed and then writing 800 words on why left-handed people make better leaders, or that President Bush won in 2000 because general election campaigns are won by the candidate who has more experience clearing brush. Bush and Obama both promised lots of things, so where is the evidence that it is a promise to change the tone in Washington that is decisive? As anyone familiar with basic political science knows, the economy is actually the best determinant of who will win the election, and the previous election fit into that pattern perfectly. So while voters might like to hear candidates who talk about bipartisanship, making a definitive statement that “general election campaigns are won by the candidate who can most plausibly fix the political system” based on nothing but conjecture is unlikely to convince anyone who cares about things like evidence, causation, or facts.

Finally, there is the story of Felix Baumgartner. For anyone who spent this week marooned on a desert island or happens to be Amish, Baumgartner took a ballon 24 miles up into space and then jumped down back to Earth, breaking the sound barrier in the process. It was an incredible feat which millions of people, myself included, watched live on Youtube, and it was a stunt that is actually going to lead to some important scientific and technological breakthroughs. There were many declarations last Sunday that Baumgartner’s skydive is going to inspire a new generation of astronauts and revitalize the desire for space exploration, and if that happens it will be a wonderful outcome. If you enter “Felix Baumgartner” into Google News you get 8.46 million hits, so his jump got plenty of warranted attention. It may come as a surprise to you though that Baumgartner’s jump was only the second most consequential development this month in the realm of space exploration, because the event that dwarfed Baumgartner by a magnitude of thousands didn’t get nearly enough attention. It turns out that NASA’s Voyager 1 probe, which was launched in 1977, just became the first man-made object to leave the solar system (!!!). Do you have any idea how astonishing that is? We have exited the freaking solar system and are now in uncharted territory, and somehow nobody seems to know or care. Comparing Baumgartner to Voyager 1 is like comparing the discovery of gravity to me finding a $5 bill in my coat pocket from last winter, and yet it is Baumgartner’s jump that is inspiring people rather than the fact that we have just exited our own star system. If you put “NASA Voyager” into Google News, you get 3,640 results. I weep for our future.

Turkey’s Dysfunctional Politics

August 15, 2012 § 1 Comment

If someone told you that there was a country whose government sealed off a district and cut off all information to the outside world and its own citizens for weeks in order to fight violent separatists, where a member of parliament was kidnapped by a terrorist group, where there are thousands of refugees streaming across the border, where the army is engaged in a virtual war inside its own borders but the parties in parliament cannot agree to even meet to discuss the best course of action, you would be justified in thinking that the country being described is well on its way to being a failed state. I am of course listing events that have taken place over the past month in Turkey, which is certainly nowhere close to being a failed state, but I do so to illustrate just how quickly Turkey’s fortunes are slipping. By any measure, Turkey has had an incredible run over the last half decade as its economy has boomed and its global clout has increased, but as Turkey deals with chaos next door in Syria and chaos at home with the PKK, it appears that darker days lie ahead.

To a large extent, all of this is out of Turkey’s control. Irrespective of how shoddily the government has dealt with the Kurdish issue, the PKK is a terrorist group that cannot be allowed to run free in pockets of southeastern Turkey. Similarly, there is nothing Turkey could have done to prevent the Syrian civil war (even if it is not handling the situation so well now). The problem is that Turkey’s politics is increasingly looking broken, and a dysfunctional political system exacerbates all of the dilemmas that Turkey currently faces.

On the Kurds and the PKK, the dysfunction starts at the top. Erdoğan has moved from the standard nationalist/Kemalist policy he inherited to the short-lived Kurdish Opening to a more limited recognition of Kurdish identity that does not go nearly far enough in solving the problem. All signs point to the AKP and the MHP banding together to ensure that Kurdish identity and Kurdish rights are buried in the new Turkish constitution, and Erdoğan believes that eradicating the PKK will solve all problems. This is not a policy as much as it is wishful thinking, and the reluctance to sit down and figure out the hard but necessary steps to be taken is not an indication of a strict zero tolerance policy on terrorism but an indication of political amateurishness. It is incredible – and I mean this in the literal sense of stretching the bounds of credulity rather than in any positive sense – that the AKP and CHP cannot agree to both attend a special session of parliament to talk about PKK attacks in the aftermath of Hüseyin Aygün’s kidnapping and whatever is going on in Şemdinli. Imagine if Nancy Pelosi called for a special House session following al-Qaida attacks in New Mexico that were met with an overwhelming but secret military response, and John Boehner and the GOP simply refused to attend so as not to legitimate al-Qaida. It demonstrates the astonishing arrogance of the AKP and the feckless impotence of the CHP, and neither of these things make for a functioning and efficient political system.

A similar dynamic is at work when it comes to Syria. Nobody is going to look at the Turkish government’s Syria policy and describe it as successful. Erdoğan clung to Assad for too long, and then cut him loose with assorted threats on which Turkey has not and cannot make good. The endless whispers of buffer zones and calls for international intervention are entirely hollow since they have zero chance of happening, and because Turkey is hamstrung, it could not even mount an effective response to shots across the border or the downing of the Turkish jet (and as Claire Berlinski has extensively pointed out, we still don’t know the full story of what happened). The CHP has been hammering away at the AKP’s ineffectiveness on Syria, and yet it’s ever so brilliant plan is an international conference. Have you ever heard of a more uninspired, platitudinous, hopelessly naive solution than the following one expressed by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu? “After expressing their views on the issue at the opening of the conference, the Syrian administration and opposition should negotiate under the supervision of the secretary-general of the UN. In the final portion of the conference, a document of agreement prepared by the secretary-general of the UN, reflecting an agreement between the Syrian opposition and administration could be submitted to the UN Security Council.” This is the best that Turkey’s main opposition party can come up with?

A dysfunctional political system with parties that cannot agree to even talk to each other without a bevy of flying insults and outrageous accusations is not a hallmark of a rising power. It is the mark of a state bound to crash against its own limits. An important component of Turkey’s foreign policy is crumbling as its relations with Syria and Iran deteriorate to open hostility, but Ankara should be paying more attention to its own domestic political problems, because Turkey’s external strength is supported first and foremost by its internal political foundation, which is dangerously teetering.

The Politics of Russia in Israel

June 27, 2012 § 1 Comment

Vladimir Putin was in Israel this week, and the government rolled out the red carpet for him. Shimon Peres hosted a state dinner for him and he held meetings with Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, and he inaugurated a memorial in Netanya to Soviet soldiers who were killed in WWII. The Israeli welcoming embrace might seem strange given that Israel and the Soviet Union had an acrimonious relationship and that Putin is not exactly seen as a paragon of virtue these days, but it is actually a no-brainer from a domestic political standpoint. There are over 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel out of a total population of 7.6 million, and there are many prominent Russian-Jewish politicians, from Natan Sharansky to current Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. With the fall of the Soviet Union, many of these Russian olim no longer feel as acrimonious toward their former homeland as they once did, and they still have deep ties to Russia that make the Russian issue a political winner.

This point was really driven home for me this morning reading Marc Tracy’s post-Birthright thoughts on how his trip to Israel has made him feel more viscerally connected and emotionally attached to Israel even though he is an American Jew and not an Israeli. This connection felt by American Jews is one of the primary drivers behind the U.S.-Israel bond, as a particularly active and vocal (and yes, influential – let’s not sell ourselves short) segment of Americans feel so strongly about Israel. In Israel, the same holds true about the Russian population, who are Israeli citizens and may have not been to Russia or other former Soviet countries since they left but nevertheless feel a strong pull and sense of nostalgia toward their previous home. This relationship goes both ways, as the new annual $1 million prize that Israel is going to bestow on recipients whose contributions to sciences or the arts reflect Jewish values is being funded by a group of Jewish Russian oligarchs. It makes sense for Israeli politicians to take advantage of this sentiment through stronger ties with Russia and wanting to have their pictures taken with Putin when he visits.

The question for me is whether this is a good idea for Israel geostrategically once you set aside the domestic political benefits, and my answer is no. To begin with, as Elise Labott points out, Israel and Russia do not see eye to eye on many foreign policy issues these days. The two countries are working at cross purposes when it comes to Iran and Syria, and yesterday Putin met with Mahmoud Abbas and implicitly backed the Palestinian president’s view that Israel is the party responsible for the deadlock in peace negotiations. Peres spent much of the visit publicly pressuring Putin to come around to the Israeli view of things, commenting during the memorial dedication ceremony that the country that defeated fascism will not tolerate similarly odious regimes in Iran and Syria, and expressing his view during the state dinner that Russia will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. This seems more like wishful thinking than an expression of confidence, since Russia has so far shown little inclination to budge on these issues and did not hint at any changes in policy during Putin’s meetings with Israeli leaders. Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman, and other Israeli officials are assiduously working to court Russia, but to no avail. At some point, the closer relationship with Russia is going to come to a head, and it will be easier if there are fewer messy entanglements at that point.

Aside from the fact that Israel is destined to endlessly bang its head against the wall when it comes to Russian policy, there is another good reason for Israel to distance itself from Russia. Putin under Russia has evidenced an increasingly authoritarian bent, with Putin’s domestic opponents harassed and jailed, opposition political parties eviscerated, and charges of election rigging and voter fraud. Russia today is no longer a democracy, and Freedom House this year assigned it a 6 for political rights and a 5 for civil liberties (with 7 being the worst score a state can achieve). In short, Israel is trying to tighten its relationship with a deeply illiberal state, and one with which it foten disagrees on matters of foreign policy. In doing so, it risks damaging its relationship with other democracies and European states that do not look kindly upon Russian intransigence. Israel often evinces a view that any friend is a good one, but cozying up to Russia is not going to advance Israel’s international standing or leave it feeling less isolated. This is a classic example of losing sight of what is strategically prudent in the long term in favor of short term tactical political gain. Israel does not have to publicly repudiate Russia or Putin or lead the Mitt Romney vanguard that views Russia as the top geopolitical threat in the world today, but it also does not need to spend its time trying to be Russia’s best friend. Israel should work to keep its relationship with Russia as non-acrimonious as it can while holding Russia at arm’s length.

Obama and Erdoğan

June 8, 2012 § Leave a Comment

David Ignatius’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post argued that the heart of the U.S.-Turkey relationship is the one between President Obama and Prime Minister Erdoğan. Ignatius detailed the way in which Obama has asked Erdoğan for a number of favors, such as reopening the Halki seminary and installing the X-Band radar system in Turkey, with the implication being that such moves would never have occurred had Obama not assiduously worked to develop a close friendship with his Turkish counterpart. Ignatius concludes with the following: “It seems fair to say that no world leader has a greater stake in Obama’s reelection than the Turkish prime minister.”

It’s tough to argue with the notion that the Obama-Erdoğan relationship has paid dividends for both countries. By all accounts, the two men like and trust each other, and this mutual respect and friendship definitely makes things easier. It is no coincidence, for instance, that Obama relies on Erdoğan to convey messages to Iran. I think that Ignatius takes things a bit too far though, and is ignoring important structural factors to instead tell a good story that chalks everything up to a personal relationship. The clues to what is really going on lie in Ignatius’s piece itself, where he notes that since the AKP has come to power Turkey’s annual average growth rate is 5.3% and its GDP and foreign reserves have tripled, and refers to Turkey’s regional ascendancy and the darkening of the Arab Spring. Turkey is a country that is unmistakably on the rise, and the U.S. heavily relies on it now and will continue to do so in the future because Turkey is a NATO member and has credibility in the Arab world, a vibrant economy with a large merchant class, a large and modernly equipped military, and most importantly a democratic political system. No matter who the president is come January 20, the U.S. is going to be leaning on Turkey to advance its interests in the Middle East, and Turkey has embraced its bridging role wholeheartedly.

Let’s take the two foreign policy examples Ignatius mentions, the X-Band radar and Turkey’s reversal on Libya. He says that Obama persuaded Erdoğan on both of these issues, but Turkey’s coming around on both of them likely would have happened anyway. The radar system was a NATO priority, and when push comes to shove, Turkey is not going to piss off its NATO allies or weaken its own defense umbrella by letting Iran dictate what security measures it takes. On Libya, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu quickly realized that Turkey had misread things and stumbled early on, and given that Ankara lagged behind on Syria, they aren’t going to make that same mistake again. Where the relationship between the two leaders factors in is that Obama might have convinced Erdoğan to install the NATO radar in a quicker fashion, which is certainly useful and important but also ancillary to the main point, which is that it was firmly in Turkey’s interests to do so no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office. The same goes for prying Turkey away from Iran. I have noted in the past that Turkey is looking to disentangle from Iran for economic reasons, and while Obama is certainly able to speed this process along by appealing to Erdoğan personally, it would be slowly taking place anyway. Turkey does not want to play the part with Iran that Russia is now playing with Syria of being its international patron and defender, and Erdoğan does not need Obama to convince him of that.

This is not to minimize the value of personal relationships in the conduct of foreign policy. I have heard multiple people who have served in high government positions stress that the one thing that surprised them most about their job was how much personalities and relationships matter, and I am certainly in no position to argue with this given my absence of firsthand knowledge. Yet, the fact remains that states are going to generally act within their own interests, broadly defined, and Ignatius does not point to anything that has specifically happened from a foreign policy standpoint that would have been different were Obama and Erdoğan not good buddies. No doubt Erdoğan treasures and benefits from his relationship with Obama and wants to see him reelected, but if Mitt Romney is our next president, I don’t think that Erdoğan needs to be too worried about anything.

Friday Gallimaufry

June 1, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Since there isn’t any one particular subject that I feel compelled to write about today, I thought I’d pay tribute to my all-time favorite website and share some brief thoughts on a bunch of interesting items in the news.

Israeli politicians this week can’t seem to keep their feet out of their mouths. First Kadima MK Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich called for “all human rights activists” to be arrested, imprisoned, and then “transported to camps we are building.” The camps she is referring to are detention centers the government is building for migrants who are entering Israel illegally, but Shamalov-Berkovich apparently thinks they can be put to better use for people whose views she simply doesn’t like. Not to be outdone, Shas MK and Interior Minister Eli Yishai called South Tel Aviv – which has become an African immigrant stronghold – the garbage can of the country and claimed that many Israeli women have been raped by African migrants but are not coming forward and reporting it because they are afraid of the stigma of AIDS. He did not provide any evidence for this assertion, and was immediately rebutted by those who would know better. Somehow I get the feeling that Eli Yishai might be an Antoine Dodson fan.

The New York Times has a long report on President Obama’s efforts to launch an all-out cyber war against Iran’s nuclear program, detailing his decision to accelerate the cyber attacks in order to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. I look forward to the spin from the usual quarters explaining how this demonstrates that Obama hates Israel, has no desire to prevent a nuclear Iran, and is selling out Israel’s security in order to curry favor with Muslims.

Also in the NYT today is a story about the Russian Orthodox Church’s opposition to intervention in Syria and how this in some ways guides Russian policy. Vladimir Putin has turned to the church for political support, and the church’s mission of protecting Christian minorities in the Middle East is bumping up against any Russian will to get rid of Assad (to the extent that any really exists at all). This is a useful reminder of what an immensely powerful religious lobby actually looks like and how it affects a state’s foreign policy, as opposed to an intellectually lazy and factually questionable argument along the same lines.

Finally, this op-ed by New York-based Turkish reporter Aydoğan Vatandaş on how U.S.-Israeli relations and its impact on American Jews affects the U.S. presidential race was interesting for a bunch of reasons. First, the reasons that Vatandaş lists for why the Israeli government is disappointed with the Obama administration includes the U.S. relationship with Turkey and focuses on Turkey’s request for Predator drones. I don’t think that Israel expects the U.S. to ditch Turkey, and I also don’t think that Israel is overly concerned about the U.S. selling Predators to Ankara for strategic reasons, since if Turkey and Israel ever actually exchanged hostilities, drones would not play a role. Israel does not, however, want the U.S. to sell Predators to Turkey simply as a way of pressuring Turkey to reconcile, and Vatandaş is strangely optimistic that the sale will occur, which has almost no chance of getting through Congress at the moment. The other thing that jumped out at me was some of the questionable or overly simplistic analysis, capped off by the conclusion, which reads, “It may sound strange, but what I have observed in America is that most American Jews today define themselves as Jews but also tend to be very secular. And, in terms of politics, they tend to be very liberal.” This is a fairly obvious point to any American who follows politics, but to a Turkish audience it might not be, and it got me wondering about whether my own analysis of Turkey reads as simplistically (or perhaps wrongly) to a Turkish audience. Something to think about…

PKK Pressure Both Internal and External

May 25, 2012 § 2 Comments

Turkey suffered a terrible bout of PKK terrorism today, with a bomb killing one policeman in central Turkey on top of the news that the PKK has abducted ten civilians in Diyarbakır. There are two primary reasons that there is a new round of PKK violence, one of which appears to be in Turkey’s power to control and one which is not. The first is a result of internal politics, namely the ongoing controversy over the Uludere drone strike that killed 34 civilians last year. The strike itself was bad enough as it stirred up enormous anger and resentment, but those feelings were magnified further this week after Interior Minister Idris Şahin referred to those killed as “PKK extras” and said that the government did not owe anyone an apology over the matter. This has prompted a furious backlash, including from AKP deputy chair Hüseyin Çelik who blasted Şahin’s remarks as inhumane and reiterated that his position was not shared by Prime Minister Erdoğan or the government. The damage has been done though, and the government’s continuing clumsy efforts to close the door on the episode are not going to alleviate things much, if at all. While Ankara paid the victims compensation, it has held the line on issuing an apology and has been unwilling to go further than expressing regret (which is ironically the same stance that Israel has taken on the Mavi Marmara deaths). This is, of course, not making the PKK any less popular in southeastern Turkey, and while there is absolutely zero justification for terrorist violence at all, the government is not making it easier to get that message to stick. Increased support for the PKK among Turkey’s Kurds leads to more terrorist attacks, and that is part of what is now going on.

The other set of pressures is external and has to do with Syria. The government in Damascus has been holding the threat of PKK support over Turkey’s head if it does not back off its tough stance against Assad, and by some accounts this seems to be working. Soner Çağaptay argues that Turkey’s fear of a Syrian Kurdistan with a strong PKK presence has led Ankara to take a wait and see attitude when it comes to Assad after its earlier aggressive position. The Syrian support for the PKK is also driving the new PKK attacks in Turkey since they have a new base for training, logistics, and safe haven that they have been lacking since the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq cracked down on them after repeated Turkish entreaties to do so. It also does not help things that the removal of Syria as a massive trading partner is leading to renewed economic depression in Diyarbakır, since increased trade and economic activity in southeastern Turkey was designed to make Turkey’s Kurdish population happier and thus less likely to support separatism or autonomy. Neither Syrian support for the PKK nor the drop-off in trade is in Turkey’s power to alter, but  these factors are starting to give rise to a slow burn underneath the Kurdish issue that is making the government’s life a lot more difficult.

What all of this means is that PKK terrorism, which has dwindled in recent years, is probably making a comeback. Turkey can do some things to alleviate it, such as actually resolving the Uludere issue to Kurds’ satisfaction rather than letting it linger and endless live on, but the situation in Syria is largely out of Turkey’s hands and certainly no longer a problem of its own making. The PKK violence against civilians this week is unfortunately a bad sign that this is going to be an unstable and bloody summer.

Why It’s Good To Know About A Topic Before Writing On It

May 21, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Paul Alster had a column yesterday in the Times of Israel predicting a reconciliation between Israel and Turkey. Seems like a reasonable enough proposition, particularly in light of the news that Israel has repaired and returned four Heron drones belonging to Turkey after agreeing to fix them over a year ago. Sure, there are other factors to weigh, such as the Turkish warning to Israel just last week not to violate Northern Cyprus’s airspace or the reports of Turkey vetoing Israel’s participation in this weekend’s NATO summit, but let’s assume that Paul Alster is a glass half full kind of guy. Reasonable people can differ on this issue, and for every sign that the freeze between the two countries is only getting deeper, there are signs of thawing in the relationship.

On the other hand, the specific arguments made by Alster in support of the proposition that Turkey and Israel are going to mend their relationship border on the patently ridiculous, and his command of the facts is, to put it charitably, a bit suspect. Let’s look at some representative examples.

Erdogan (who went out of his way to antagonize and inflame relations with Israel at every possible opportunity) seems to have realized what a grave misjudgement he made in allying himself to two of the most despotic leaders on the planet, and by association being tarnished with the very dirty brush that has seen them gain pariah status across the globe.

I hardly think that Turkey has been tarnished with any brush that puts it at risk of becoming a pariah. At the moment, Turkey is being touted as a model by all sorts of Islamist political parties across the Arab world, is increasingly relied upon by the United States as a vital ally in the Middle East, has the second largest military of all NATO members, is once again making some progress on its EU bid, and is universally viewed as one of the most important actors of the coming decades. Does this sound to you like Turkey’s international status has been put at risk in any way? Undoubtedly Turkey waited too long to give up on Assad, but after that initial stumble Turkey’s reputation does not seem very much worse for the wear.

Exactly what was truly behind Erdogan’s posturing is hard to figure, as he had long been pushing for membership in the EU, and his cozying up to Iran and Syria was hardly likely to endear him to Turkey‘s potential European partners. This ill-conceived strategic gamble has clearly backfired and quickly blown up in Erdogan’s face. The prospect of the EU admitting a new member-state that is joined at the hip with two of the world’s most corrupt and authoritarian regimes was never going to prove a vote winner in Brussels; the tactic seeming to reveal a significant flaw in the political maneuvering of a man who has gradually been losing his way, only three years after he appeared to be a major player with growing influence on the international scene.

Hard as it may be to figure out for Alster, let’s see if we can come up with some reason for Erdoğan’s “posturing” in which he tried to develop closer ties with his neighbors. Might it be Turkey’s stated policy of zero problems with neighbors? Guess it wasn’t that hard to figure out after all.

As for this argument with regard to the EU, Turkey was not exactly sailing effortlessly toward EU membership before it consciously improved its relations with Syria and Iran. More saliently, there are a number of reasons why Turkey is having problems with its accession bid, from European cultural bias to worrying government suppression of the press to discredited witch hunts of military officers. Being “joined at the hip” with Iran and Syria is so far down the list of things that EU member states are worried about that to mention it betrays a staggering lack of knowledge about the real issues surrounding Turkey’s EU bid.

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

Herman van Rompuy: Nice to see you again Tayyip. I must say, you have made amazing progress in your efforts to join the EU. Who would have thought that just months after Sarkozy was out of office you would have made your peace with Cyprus and successfully negotiated all 35 chapters needed to gain accession to our club? We have never before seen such singleminded devotion by an EU applicant.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Thank you Herman. My fellow countrymen and I are most excited to take our spots in the European Commission, the European Council, the Council of Europe, and your various other bodies that have such wonderfully differentiated names. So when do I get my official EU membership badge?

Herman van Rompuy: Unfortunately, you made the grave mistake of being joined at the hip with Syria and Iran, which is the single greatest flaw we have ever encountered from a prospective EU member and is the subject of the double secret 36th chapter which you have now violated. As such, you are no longer considered to be a “major player with growing influence” – after all, your credibility with Iran, Pakistan, and Sunni Arab states is worthless to us, as is your rapidly expanding economy and military strength. Please confine yourself to Kadıköy and all points east from now on, as we have voted in Brussels to revoke your Europe visitation privileges.

CURTAIN

In recent months, with Iran becoming increasingly isolated by the international community as a result of its alleged development of nuclear weapons, and the Syrian government continuing to massacre large numbers of its own people while driving many more to seek refuge in Turkey — causing a growing humanitarian crisis within Turkey’s own borders — Erdogan’s government, amid rumors that Ankara is keen to re-establish relations with Jerusalem, has been noticeably short on its previously stinging anti-Israel rhetoric.

Right, I forgot about how popular Israel is among the international community. That BBC poll released just last week revealing Israel to be ranked above only Iran and Pakistan in favorability, and in which majorities in Spain, France, Germany, and Britain viewed Israel negatively, didn’t accurately capture the public relations value in Europe for Turkey of cozying up to Israel following Iran’s isolation and Syria’s horrific massacre of civilians (both of which everyone knows are Turkey’s fault, of course). That is precisely why Turkey’s top officials have in the past six months ceased berating reporters for not focusing on Israel’s nuclear weapons or accusing Israel of not wanting peace with the Palestinians or bragging about isolating Israel and bringing it to its knees. Isn’t it great how that previously stinging rhetoric has just disappeared?

This easing of the tensions in the eastern Mediterranean is surely more down to necessity on the part of the Turks than to a sea change in the attitude of their leader. With the door to Europe slammed in their face, Syria and Iran remaining on the international blacklist, no improvement in their relationship with Greece, and problems on their eastern front with Syrian refugees and Kurdish separatists, Turkey is surely keen to find friends in the region.

Yes, Turkey’s isolation is really terrible. Granted, the P5+1 talks were held in Istanbul last month, and Turkey is fresh off the NATO summit in Chicago, and Turkey’s approval rating in the Arab world is 78%, but Turkey is still desperate for a friend, and that is why it is going to make up with Israel. Not because the world’s superpower is pushing for it, not because it benefits Turkey’s tourism industry and export markets, not because the two countries have a long history of military cooperation, but because Turkey is feeling terribly isolated and lonely. I mean, everyone knows that Turkey is just another term for Iranian/Syrian province, right? And oh, let’s not forget about Alster’s reference to Turkey’s “majority secular population” in which 83% of Turks identify themselves as religious and 55% self-identify as either “extremely” or “highly” religious.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. I do not know what your expertise is, Mr. Alster, but it is clearly not this. Israel and Turkey may very well reconcile, but just as a broken clock showing the right time twice a day is not evidence that it is working, an Israeli-Turkish rapprochement will not be a testament to your analytical skills in the realm of foreign affairs.

This Is Why The CHP Is Irrelevant

April 30, 2012 § Leave a Comment

The AKP, like most democratic political parties, has designs on becoming something of a permanent ruling party. Luckily for them, the opposition CHP is all too happy to play the role of the Washington Generals to the AKP’s Harlem Globetrotters. Fresh off Davutoğlu’s aggressive statements last week on Syria and Turkey’s role in the world, CHP deputy leader Osman Korutürk decided that the proper response was to blast the AKP’s policy on Syria, which he dubbed as damaging to Turkey.

Defining the policy a failure, CHP Deputy Chairman Osman Korutürk maintained that “Turkey has turned into an interventionist country, meddling in the internal affairs of its neighbors, instigating war and taking part in regional conflicts.” “Turkey has become an isolated country within the international community due to its Syria policy. It pretended to back Annan’s peace plan but has created a perception that it supports a military intervention in Syria,” Korutürk added.

There are two simple lessons that the CHP needs to learn. First, nobody wants to listen to politicians telling you how terrible and unworthy you are. It is simply not a recipe for winning elections, particularly in a country like Turkey that has very strong nationalist feelings and state pride. When refugees are pouring across the border, it just won’t do to talks about Turkish meddling or war-mongering. It is tone deaf at best, dangerously cynical at worst. In addition, Syria is a strange issue on which to go after the AKP. The government might have dragged its heels at the outset, waiting interminably for Assad to carry out the various reforms that he had promised his buddy Erdoğan were forthcoming, but Ankara has arrived at a place where it has a principled and praiseworthy position on Syria. Why in the world would the CHP attack Erdoğan and Davutoğlu on this aside from just wanting to jump up and down and wave their arms in the hopes of getting some attention? The strategy here basically seems to be to look at what the AKP is doing on foreign policy and then do the opposite, irrespective of the actual policy or issue at hand. There is a reason that the CHP has been out of power for three decades, and this type of nonsense is not going to help matters.

Second, it is not enough to just tear down the other side without having a coherent policy of your own. What would the CHP have Turkey do in Syria? Is Korutürk arguing that it is actually in Turkey’s interests to just leave Assad alone to do his own thing? Note that Korutürk did not accuse the government of trying to intervene in Syria themselves, but rather of supporting a military intervention in Syria, which implies an international force of some sort, whether it be NATO or the UN. This is an aggressive posture to be sure, but given that this is precisely what happened in Libya, it doesn’t read as being totally outrageous or unprecedented. It is unclear to me why the CHP thinks that Turkey has in any way instigated war or how it believes Ankara is now isolated, and what its solution is to contain the enormous problem in Turkey’s backyard that is spilling over into Turkey itself. Also, bear in mind that this is the very same party that was going hard after the AKP one year ago for being inconsistent on the Arab Spring, supporting the people in one instance and the regime in another, and now its position is that Turkey should just sit on its hands in every situation? Rather than generating endless sound and fury, the CHP needs to take a step back, figure out what its position actually is, and become proactive rather than always react to what the government is doing. Until this happens, Davutoğlu is going to continue running circles around the CHP’s foreign policy voices and the party will keep on consigning itself to irrelevance.

China Will Test Turkey’s Notion of Virtuous Power

April 9, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Prime Minister Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Davutoğlu arrived in China today for the first visit by a Turkish PM in nearly three decades, with the aim of increasing trade and business ties including sealing the deal with China for it to build Turkey’s second nuclear power plant (the first is being built by Russia). A stronger relationship with China is undoubtedly good for Turkey’s economy and Chinese investment in Turkey will help to maintain Turkish growth, particularly given the fears of a hard landing raised by Turkish economic performance in the last quarter of 2011, which dropped off considerably from the first three quarters. Closer ties with China will, however, present a different sort of problem related to Turkey’s growing influence in global politics.

Sunday’s article in Zaman about Erdoğan’s visit to Xinjiang noted Turkey’s hard line against Muslim Uyghur separatists and Turkish support for Chinese territorial integrity. This in some sense a difficult position for Turkey to take given the large contingent of Turkish Uyghurs, but in another sense it is reminiscent of Turkey’s position on its Kurdish population, as Turkey too wants to avoid a separate Kurdistan at all costs and thus is sympathetic to Beijing’s position. On other high profile issues involving the global community, however, China and Turkey are moving in separate directions. China has been following Russia’s lead in blocking a stronger international response led by the U.N. to the fighting in Syria, which puts it directly at odds with Erdoğan’s call for Assad to leave and his condemnation of the U.N. for not doing more to protect civilians from Assad’s brutality. There is virtually no chance of China coming along to Turkey’s position given China’s championing of the principle of absolute sovereignty and opposing all interventions on humanitarian grounds, which is one of the bedrocks of Chinese foreign policy. On Iran, Turkey seems to be slowly moving closer to the West’s position of suspecting that Iran’s nuclear program is not solely a civilian one, and this too puts it at odds with China.

For the Turkey of ten years ago, these differences with China would not matter. Turkey would have been happy to discuss little but increased trade and economic opportunities and left it at that. The Turkey of 2012 though has ambitions to be a global power, and has inserted itself quite starkly into the forefront of both the Syrian and Iranian issues. In addition, President Gül last week announced a new Turkish defense doctrine of being a “virtuous power,” and subsuming humanitarian issues in Syria or possible nuclear intransigence in Iran to new opportunities for Turkish business presents a conflict with this idea of incorporating justice and human values into foreign policy. This is a tough balancing act for Turkey to pull off, and it is one instantly familiar to anyone who has studied American foreign policy in the post-WWII era. The U.S. often finds its values and its interests at odds, and the trick is finding a way to reconcile the two and emerge with a foreign policy that advances the latter without entirely selling out the former. As Turkey becomes a larger and more responsible geopolitical player, it will find itself running into this problem with increasing regularity, and it will be interesting to see if Davutoğlu and Gül, who both often speak in the language of justice and virtue with regards to foreign policy, continue pushing these ideas over the next decade as Turkey faces an array of contradictions that it has largely avoided in the past. These next few days in China will particularly bear watching to see how Erdoğan and Davutoğlu reconcile their desire to gain Chinese cooperation on Syria with their push for Chinese investment in Turkey and a larger market for Turkish manufacturing.

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