Structural U.S.-Turkey Tension Isn’t Going Away

December 4, 2013 § 2 Comments

Ahmet Davutoğlu this week implicitly acknowledged that the U.S. and Turkey have seen better days in their relationship, saying that “relations are proceeding on a dynamic and honest ground,” which is not exactly the “model partnership” that the Turkish foreign minister was so fond of touting a couple of years ago. Whatever “dynamic and honest ground” means, unquestionably things are not going nearly so well as during President Obama’s first term, when Prime Minister Erdoğan was on Obama’s Oval Office speed dial and Turkey was viewed by U.S. policymakers as the key to a new Middle East. Many events have conspired to shatter that vision, and Turkey is no longer through such rose-colored glasses as it was. To my mind, the new status quo is not just a temporary blip in an otherwise robustly healthy relationship; there are major structural forces that are putting the U.S. and Turkey increasingly at odds over issues large and small, and three in particular stand out.

The first is that the U.S. perceives Turkey to be pursuing short term aims, oftentimes explicitly political ones, at the expense of long term goals, and the pursuit of these short term aims often conflicts with U.S. interests in the region. For instance, the rift that the Turkish government opened up with the Egyptian government following the military coup that dislodged Mohamed Morsi when Erdoğan not only insisted that Morsi be reinstated but refused to even acknowledge the new Egyptian officials as legitimate was an example of Turkey pursuing a policy that caused long term harm (to wit, the Turkish ambassador to Egypt was expelled last month) for no purpose other than domestic politics. Another obvious example is the continuing feud with Israel, where Turkey has continuously blocked Israeli participation in NATO summits, sold out Israeli intelligence assets in Iran to the Iranian government, bolstered Hamas and given it as much international credibility as it can at the Palestinian Authority’s expense, and dragged its feet in every way possible to avoid true reconciliation with Israel following Bibi Netanyahu’s apology last March for the Mavi Marmara deaths. In both of these cases, the U.S. would strongly prefer that Turkey work with its other allies in the region, and Turkey’s intransigence in both instances is not the result of any bigger plan or in the pursuit of foreign policy aims, but is rather almost entirely for domestic political consumption.

More serious than these two cases is the shortsighted Turkish policy of allowing jihadi fighters to stream across the border into Syria in order to join the fight against Bashar al-Assad – a policy that even Turkey now seems to realize was dangerously myopic – and the agreement to purchase an anti-missile defense system from China, about which I have already written at length. Turkey’s Syria policy has been an unmitigated disaster, and the Chinese anti-missile decision has caused huge waves with the U.S. and Turkey’s other NATO allies, and both are examples of Turkey pursuing what it perceives to be easy short term gains to the great detriment of long term strategic goals. While Turkey is, of course, free to do as it pleases, both of these decisions have created great fallout for the U.S. and thus cannot be simply ignored by the Obama administration or chalked up to internal Turkish business. They fit into a general pattern of Turkey rushing headlong into foreign policy decisions without taking a minute to look at the big picture and assess the impact of its actions on other parties, specifically the U.S. in this case, which is bound to cause some friction.

The second structural force driving the two apart is that their priorities in the Middle East are moving in divergent directions. Just as Turkey was deciding to ramp up its involvement in the region and become more active and vocal, the U.S. was deciding to ramp down, pivot to Asia, and leave the Middle East behind to the greatest extent possible. The U.S. has a couple of core things it wants to be involved in, such as coming to some resolution over Iran’s nuclear program and pushing Israel and the Palestinians to work out a comprehensive peace agreement, but otherwise it wants to bow out as much as feasible. This is why the U.S. basically threw its hands up at the Egyptian coup and looked for any way out of getting military involved in the Syrian civil war. Turkey, in contrast, wanted to be deeply involved in reshaping the region in the wake of the Arab Spring (or whatever it is we are calling it these days), and was particularly assertive when it came to loudly insisting that Assad had to go. The problem is that Turkey could not force Assad out on its own and so assumed that the U.S. or NATO would eventually take care of the job, and after it became apparent that this was not going to happen, Turkey felt a sense of betrayal. In essence, the problem is that Turkey wants to see certain outcomes, but those outcomes require the U.S. to make them happen, and the U.S. has absolutely zero desire to get any more involved than it already is. So you have a hyper-involved Turkey that wants more active U.S. involvement on certain fronts, and a U.S. that just wants to be left alone.

The third structural force contributing to tension is the basic power imbalance that exists between the two countries. The U.S. has its own set of interests and oftentimes Turkey’s wishes and views rank low down on the list of American priorities, but at the same time Turkey tends to interpret U.S. action through a distinctly Turkish prism. Thus, the U.S. instinct to stay out of Syria was a result of war-weariness after Afghanistan and Iraq, sequestration and other budgetary problems, politics leading up to the 2012 election, a desire not to increase tensions with Russia, a growing sense that the Syrian opposition was extremely problematic…I could keep on going, but Turkey was not part of the equation. In Turkey, however, U.S. inaction in Syria despite months and months of Turkish demands for NATO involvement and strident Turkish calls for Assad to leave has been interpreted as a purposeful slap in the face to Turkey. Many Turks believe that the U.S. led them down the garden path and implied that help would be coming, and the fact that Assad is still in power is because the U.S. wanted to humiliate Turkey. The best example of this overall general dynamic was the controversy in Turkey in August of last year over the photo of Obama holding a baseball bat while on the phone with Erdoğan. As I wrote at the time, this had nothing to do with Erdoğan and was nothing more than the White House releasing a photo in the midst of a presidential campaign designed to reinforce the image of Obama as a regular guy, but in Turkey it was imbued with all sorts of deeper meanings over the type of hidden message that Obama was trying to send to his Turkish counterpart. Because it is Turkey’s most powerful and most important ally, the U.S. will always have an outsized image in Turkey and Turks will imagine that anything the U.S. is doing is directed at them, when in reality many Americans probably couldn’t even tell you what language is spoken in Turkey (you have no idea how many times I have had someone ask me if I know Arabic after hearing that I study Turkey), place it on a map, or identity Ankara as its capital. This imbalance, where Turkey always has the U.S. on its mind but does not get reciprocal attention, is another source of tension.

Of these three forces, the first one can easily dissipate, and in fact there are signs that it is already happening, particularly when it comes to Turkey’s Syria policy. The other two, however, are here to stay, and are not easily overcome. Does it mean a major rift between the two allies? Absolutely not. But it does mean that the halcyon days of Barack and Tayyip’s late night gabfests and both public and private talk of model partnerships is over, and unlikely to return anytime soon.

Guest Post: Zero Problems But Few Common Interests

November 26, 2013 § Leave a comment

Today’s post comes to you courtesy of O&Z favorite and veteran guest poster Dov Friedman, and examines the reasons behind Turkey’s apparent shift back to its Zero Problems With Neighbors policy and why the strategy is unlikely to be too successful the second time around.

Turkey’s foreign policy activity appears resurgent of late.  In early November, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu hosted his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, for bilateral talks in Ankara.  Zarif, picking up on a cherished Davutoğlu theme, emphasized the countries’ shared ability to promote dialogue in service of regional peace and stability.  Two weeks ago, reciprocating Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari’s October visit to Ankara, Davutoğlu visited his counterpart in Iraq—where he extolled his own regional policy in vivid, splendid fashion.

Taken together, they at least signal an end to the oppositional forcefulness of Turkey’s Syria policy.  They may also indicate a broader effort by Turkey to reset regional relations.

The problem, Turkey may find, is akin to the one Alvy Singer faces in the lobster scenes in Annie Hall—that of trying to recreate a particular, wildly successful moment from the past.  The efforts to improve relations with Iran and Iraq are transparent and a bit clumsy—a sort of ersatz Zero Problems with Neighbors tactic.

In the years prior to the Arab Uprisings, Zero Problems was at its most effective as an aspect of a wider foreign policy strategy—one that leveraged regional relationships to facilitate, and at times mediate, among powers.  For a brief moment, that foreign policy vision raised the prospect that Turkey might be a vital presence in facilitating international political negotiations—a “central power” of sorts, to borrow Davutoğlu’s own conception.

Whether by fault or circumstance, that moment is gone.  Its evanescence explains Turkey’s efforts to recapture the magic of Zero Problems—and why that effort now appears futile.

Take, to begin, Egypt’s decision over the weekend to send off Turkey’s ambassador and downgrade relations.  The obvious immediate cause—as Steven Cook noted in a strong post yesterday—was Turkey’s ostentatious condemnation of the Egyptian military coup.  Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan foolhardily insisted on continuing to recognize the Mohamed Morsi government as Egypt’s legitimate rulers, and rarely passed up jabs at the military regime.  He did so because he believed vocal support of democratically elected governments bolstered Turkey’s regional influence.  The result is an embarrassing diplomatic fiasco for Turkey.

Yet, the interactions between Turkey and Egypt during Morsi’s year in power should have communicated to AK Party’s leadership the potential limits of Turkey’s regional influence.  After the Freedom and Justice Party’s victory, the AK Party government offered friendly—and wise—advice to its political Islamist brethren on the merits of blending conservative values with a secular constitution.  Morsi’s FJP politely told them to bug off.  Support from Turkey for the Muslim Brotherhood’s cause was one thing; advice on its political program for Egypt was another entirely.

In hindsight, that was the moment for serious Turkish introspection.  Regional actors might welcome Turkey’s support and collaborate to mutual benefit, but they were wholly uninterested in domestic political advice. Turkey’s facilitation- and mediation-focused foreign policy had clear benefits for Turkey’s role in both the international sphere and in relations with the U.S. and Europe, but it purchased little in the way of regional leadership.  At the very least, the FJP’s wakeup should have pushed Turkey to consider its core regional interests and work quietly to implement as many of them as possible.

But Turkey pursued misguided policies in Syria and now faces serious internal problems as a result.  Believing the regional trend would move toward conservative democratic movements—and believing in an opportunity for lasting Turkish influence—Turkey was bullish on the Syrian opposition. To support the protracted fight against Bashar Assad, Turkey tacitly facilitated the Saudi-backed jihadists, enabling free movement through Gaziantep’s airport and on to the Syrian border, while turning a blind eye to Gulf-funded safe houses on the Turkish side of the border—ones it publicly denies exist.

At the same time, Turkey refused for far too long to engage politically with the PYD—the PKK offshoot in northern Syria—, backing Massoud Barzani’s heavy-handed and futile efforts to extend his influence by sending KRG-affiliated peshmerga forces across the border.  This despite the PYD’s demonstrated commitment to fighting both al-Qaeda and Assad regime forces.

The result of these Syria policies?  This terrifying item on jihadi recruitment in Turkey’s southeast from the Guardian‘s excellent Istanbul-based correspondent, Connie Letsch.  It is a problem Turkey may contend with for years to come.

Which returns us to the recent visits with the Iraqi and Iranian foreign ministers.  As the Syrian civil war grinds on, and as Turkey bears the economic and social costs of 600,000 refugees, the government recalls its momentarily exalted international standing and seeks to diminish problems and mend relations with its neighbors to the east.

How deep can these ties possibly run?  On nearly every issue facing the region today, Turkey and Iran—and Iraq, by extension—are at odds.  Their divergence over Syria is well known.  Meanwhile, Turkey continues to foster close relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government, with the recent Erdoğan-Barzani meeting in Diyarbakır only the latest indicator.  Despite fears that the Turkey-PKK peace process was on life support, Erdoğan—to his credit—has renewed the push to move it forward.

On each of these issues, Iran’s and Iraq’s interests run counter to Turkey’s.  The KRG-Turkey partnership markedly increases the likelihood of an eventual bid for independence from Iraq.  Turkey is already on record supporting Kurdish oil claims and its constitutional interpretation.  Historically, Iran has fomented the PKK-Turkey conflict, which preoccupied Turkish military forces in the east and diminished the potential for PJAK mischief.  If Turkey truly ends the decades-long conflict with the PKK, Iran may face a more concerted, focused Kurdish opposition.

Despite the glaring reality that Turkey’s and Iran’s interests run at cross-purposes, Turkey petulantly lashed out in its diplomatic feud with Israel by gift-wrapping 10 Mossad agents for the Iranian regime.  At the moment it should have been recalibrating its strategic approach, Turkey simultaneously aided a country with the greatest capacity to upset its regional interests while irrevocably losing the trust of a country whose strengths complement Turkey’s well.

Undoubtedly, Turkey will continue to proclaim, in every way imaginable, a return to normalcy in foreign policy.  But through a mix of well-intentioned miscalculations and ill-advised, rash decisions, Turkey faces some troublingly intractable problems.  If only assuaging conflicts with its eastern neighbors were the solution.  But Erdoğan and Davutoğlu must understand as well as anyone that Zero Problems was effective not as an end in and of itself, but as a platform.  Perhaps they would be better off finding their diplomatic rhythm with those who share even the most basic of common regional interests.

Turkey and the U.S. – Hearing But Not Listening

November 21, 2013 § 5 Comments

I spent the better part of last week in Istanbul talking U.S. and Turkish foreign policy under the auspices of the Hollings Center, and I came away with a lot to mull over, but if there was one big overarching takeaway, it is that the U.S. and Turkey have a serious and real communication problem. There are structural issues that are complicating the bilateral relationship as well, and I’ll save those for a different post, but much of the recent downturn in relations (and yes, the relationship at the moment is at an ebb, no matter how much spin and damage control came from Ahmet Davutoğlu prior to his Washington visit this week) is resulting from a lack on both sides of understanding the other country’s priorities. The U.S. and Turkey are hearing each other, but not really listening.

This has manifested itself in a few ways, but the easiest way of illustrating the problem is by looking at the contretemps over Turkey’s decision to chose a Chinese firm to partner with in order to build an anti-missile defense system. When Turkey announced the decision, the reaction from the U.S. and other NATO allies was swift and furious. In their eyes, Turkey was turning its back on the NATO alliance and going with a Chinese firm – one that is under sanctions, no less – simply because it was cheaper. Turkey’s reaction to U.S. displeasure was that the U.S. does not understand the “new Turkey” that is stronger and more independent than it has been in the past, and does not feel like it needs to be tied down to whatever U.S. preferences are in every situation.

The Turkish decision, the U.S. reaction, and the Turkish counter-reaction have been acutely felt in both places, but in both instances they are partially predicated on fundamental misunderstandings of decision making and preferences in each country. Starting with Turkey, the decision to go with the Chinese tender was not made on the basis of price alone, nor was it done to stick a thumb in NATO’s eye. As Aaron Stein very accurately pointed out at the time, the Chinese firm offered a complete technology transfer and a favorable co-production agreement, and co-production was the most important factor in the decision on which of the four bids to accept. As multiple of my Turkish colleagues stressed to me last week, the Turkish defense industry has been on a mission for years to become self-sustaining, and the anti-missile defense system is no exception. Prime Minister Erdoğan actually changed the tender process midway through in order to incorporate co-production agreements, which effectively eliminated the U.S. bid since there are export control laws against this sort of thing. The point was not, however, to put the U.S. at a disadvantage, but to benefit the Turkish defense industry to the maximum possible amount. Yes, this had the side effect of making the U.S. bid a surefire loser, but that was not what Turkey was purposely aiming to do. According to the Turks, this was a strategic decision at heart, and while the Chinese bid was the highest rated one on both cost and price, it was the technology transfer and the co-production that were the decisive variables. The U.S. is understandably and justifiably upset at a NATO ally going to China to purchase an anti-missile system that is not able to be integrated into existing NATO defenses, but the U.S. government seems to be misunderstanding how the decision was made and what factors were most important to Turkey.

On the flip side, the Turks are downplaying U.S. and NATO anger under a mistaken impression that this is about lost money for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or a desire not to see Turkey pursue an independent defense policy. What Turkey does not understand is that accepting the Chinese bid is an enormous deal because the Chinese system cannot  and will not be integrated into NATO combat management systems – can you imagine giving the Chinese access to such sensitive information? – and Turkey is now cut out of the NATO sensor system. Following the deployment of the X-Band radar on Turkish territory and Patriot missile batteries in Gaziantep, Turkish obtuseness on this issue is puzzling, to say the least. I was told that the defense industry committee that made the decision to accept the Chinese bid did not involve the foreign ministry at all, which makes the picture a bit clearer, as had there been any type of foreign policy aspect to this decision, the Chinese firm would have been eliminated from the start. To reiterate, this is a Chinese firm that is under sanctions for violating the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act, and by going with this firm, the Turkish defense industry is opening itself up to its own round of sanctions. U.S. anger on this is genuine, yet the Turks keep on insisting that the Chinese system will be compatible with NATO – which is incorrect – and that the penalties for cooperating with a firm under sanctions won’t apply to Turkey – which is also incorrect. Turkey is convincing itself that U.S. anger is about not wanting to see an independent Turkey, which is a load of utter nonsense, and is missing the point about the message that it sends to the U.S. and NATO, who do not see why a desire for co-production outweighs a defense alliance that is more than half a century old.

The fallout from this decision is going to reverberate, and hopefully going forward each side will do a better job of realizing the core interests of the other. In the meantime though, if Turkey thinks it can smooth things over by referring ad nauseam to the countries’ shared values and pretending in hindsight that it welcomed the Gezi protests, then there is a delusion at the heart of Turkish foreign policymaking these days that is worse than I thought.

News Quiz, Erdoğan Edition

November 7, 2013 § 6 Comments

Particularly following the Turkish government’s response to the Gezi protests this past summer, an increasingly bright spotlight has been trained upon Prime Minister Erdoğan’s managerial inclination to micromanage seemingly small and insignificant details, his blanket rejections of things with which he does not agree, and his efforts at social engineering and shaping Turkish behavior. He is in the news this week for something he did that touches upon this portrayal of the prime minister, so in the style of the Bluff the Listener game on the NPR radio show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, guess which one of the following three stories about Erdoğan is the real one.

Story One: Prime Minister Erdoğan has threatened to sue the makers of Turkish Taffy, a candy which he says is not authentically Turkish and is harming Turkey’s image. Turkish Taffy, invented by a Turkish immigrant in New York after WWII, has been gaining popularity in recent years and came to Erdoğan’s attention when a visiting business delegation from the U.S. inquired where in Ankara they could find some “authentic native” taffy. Erdoğan insists that visitors to Turkey should be interested in lokum and baklava and instead are getting the impression that Turkish confection consists of corn syrup-based candy. In comments to reporters, Erdoğan said, “Taffy is not a Turkish sweet. This American company is using Turkey to further its own economic interests and defaming our proud legacy. We are looking into the appropriate legal steps to make sure that Turkey’s name is not used in connection with this foreign product.” The makers of Turkish Taffy say that they have been using the product name for more than half a century and have no intention of giving it up.

Story Two: On a trip to Finland, Prime Minister Erdoğan paid a visit to Rovio, the Finnish company behind the mobile gaming phenomenon Angry Birds, but let the game developers know that he has a problem with their game’s basic premise. In a meeting with Rovio’s CEO, Erdoğan asked, “Why are these birds angry? Doesn’t it have a negative effect on children?” The CEO explained that the birds are angry because the pigs have been stealing their eggs, and that Rovio has not received any reports of children being adversely impacted by the birds’ emotional state. Erdoğan has repeatedly voiced concerns about negative social cues that may be affecting Turkish youth, and with mobile technology very prevalent in Turkey, there is speculation that Erdoğan’s comments might be foreshadowing a new push to control mobile content. Previous governmental efforts have been launched to censor Internet content such as blocking Youtube and filtering websites that the government deems morally objectionable, and the government’s attacks on the evils of social media – and Twitter in particular – during the Gezi protests may be moving even farther afield to video games.

Story Three: The popular U.S. television program American Idol has spawned copycats in a number of countries, and Turkey is no exception. The producers of Turkstar, which was a singing reality competition that lasted only one season in 2004, are trying again in light of the popularity of American Idol, and their new show Türk Idol is right now in the midst of holding tryouts across Turkey. They have run into a serious obstacle, however, which is that Prime Minister Erdoğan has already declared his opposition to the show’s name. In remarks to AKP deputies in a party meeting this week, Erdoğan noted the notion of an idol offends religious sensibilities, and he hinted that the show’s title and the implication that it will create a figure to be emulated could even be used to prosecute the producers for insulting Islam. “Social entertainment is important,” Erdoğan was reported to have said, “but it must be done in a culturally appropriate way. We reject the idea that anyone who sings well should be venerated or that this person should be called an idol. We have received numerous complaints about this show, and we are not interfering in lifestyles but acting to protect concerned parents.” The show’s producers have indicated in light of the prime minister’s concerns that they are open to changing the show’s name, and stressed that the show’s title is not meant to make any religious claims.

Which one of these stories is the real one? For the answer, click here to read the actual news item describing what has the prime minister upset.

Israel’s Unnatural Dreams For Its Natural Gas

October 23, 2013 § 6 Comments

On Monday, Israel’s High Court cleared the way for Israel to export 40% of its new natural gas bonanza after rejecting petitions that challenged the government’s export plan. The Israeli government harbors high hopes of reaching $60 billion in profits over the next two decades from natural gas exports, and so the High Court’s decision is being celebrated as paving the way for an economic windfall. The problem is that there are some very big and intractable regional issues that have to be settled before Israel sees even a shekel from gas exports, and the prospect for all of this coming together is quite slim. If anything, Israel’s natural gas fields are going to end up sparking competition and regional destabilization rather than the opposite.

There are two ways for Israel to export its natural gas. The first is via pipeline to Turkey and hooking up with the planned TANAP or TAP pipelines in order to send Israeli gas to the rest of Europe. The prospects of Israel and Turkey cooperating on a pipeline deal at this point are laughable when the two sides cannot even agree on something as basic and simple as compensation for the Mavi Marmara deaths, not to mention the most recent unpleasantness between the two countries. Let’s assume for a moment though that cooler heads are able to prevail and mutual economic interests override the basic domestic politics of both countries, there is still a thornier problem of geography. A pipeline from Israel to Turkey has two possible routes. The first runs through Lebanon and Syria, which is a non-starter for all sorts of obvious reasons. The second route is undersea and has to travel through Cyprus’s exclusive economic zone. Given the animosity between Turkey and Cyprus and Turkey’s adamant insistence that is does not and never has occupied any part of Cyprus, reconciliation between these two parties over an issue that has been dubbed a diplomats’ graveyard is not on the horizon. It is true that there are many good reasons for a deal to happen, from the fact that there is a lot of money at stake to the fact that Turkey is completely isolated on the Cyprus issue and is the only country in the world that even recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as an independent state, but that doesn’t mean that movement is imminent. Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected a painstakingly negotiated federal model in 2004, and there is no reason to think that opinion on this has changed. What this means is that a pipeline, which would be the most cost-effective and easiest solution, is out for now.

The other way for Israel to export its gas is to liquify it and ship LNG to Turkey and other destinations. This comes with its own set of challenges as well. The first is that liquifying natural gas is an expensive process that reduces profit margins as compared to shipping it via pipeline. On top of the process itself, it requires building an LNG terminal that takes approximately 3-5 years to build and costs somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion, which cuts into profits even further. An LNG terminal is unlikely to be built in Israel itself due to legal and environmental challenges, which again leaves Cyprus as the natural partner, but absent reconciliation between Turkey and Cyprus, shipping LNG to Turkey from a Cypriot LNG terminal is likely off the table. Without a Turkish market for gas, Israel is not going to expend the time and resources to build a LNG terminal in Cyprus to then have it essentially be bricked. Even assuming that Turkey and Cyprus are able to patch things up and Israel goes the LNG route, the security challenges posed by protecting an Israeli LNG terminal that is in Cyprus rather than in Israel and then protecting Israeli tankers plying the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean are enormous. Israeli ships carrying Israeli natural gas are immediately going to become an attractive target for all manner of jihadi and terrorist groups, and the Israeli Navy does not now have the capacity to protect such a potentially large venture.

So the bottom line is that a boom in natural gas exports is not assured by any means. No matter which way Israel turns, the path to huge profits from natural gas is complicated by geopolitics that have so far proved immune to easy resolution. In the short term, the answer is likely to send natural gas to Jordan, which will be profitable to a limited extent since Jordan is not a very big market. Another cheap alternative with much larger potential is to export to Egypt, but despite Energy Minister Silvan Shalom’s insistence that this avenue is open, the Egyptians claim that they have no interest in buying Israel’s natural gas.

Looking at the bigger picture, Israel’s long term problem may be more serious than simply not having a viable market for its exports. Turkey and Egypt both project very high growth in energy demand with no real energy resources of their own at the moment, and they are sitting next to countries – Israel and Cyprus – that are resource rich and with whom they do not have great relations. In addition, there are claims on Eastern Mediterranean gas fields being made by Lebanon and by the Palestinians in Gaza, not to mention Northern Cyprus’s claims to the fields claimed by the Cypriot government. How these tensions will be resolved is unclear and anyone’s guess, but a very combustible situation is developing, and the idea of major resource conflict at some point is not all that far-fetched. Should the Israel-Turkey-Cyrpus triangle not get resolved to each party’s relative satisfaction, the Eastern Mediterranean may very well become a lot less placid.

Turkey: Spies Like Us

October 17, 2013 § 3 Comments

This post is a co-production with my close friend and colleague Steven Cook, and is cross-posted on his blog From the Potomac to the Euphrates.

Ehud Barak’s political instincts have never been great, but his security instincts are generally top-notch. So when he warned in 2010 that any intelligence information shared with Turkey might be passed on to Iran, his fears may not have been completely unfounded. David Ignatius reported yesterday that in 2012, Turkey deliberately blew the cover of ten Iranians who were working as Israeli agents and exposed their identities to the Iranian government. Ignatius also wrote that in the wake of the incident, which was obviously a large intelligence setback for efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program, the United States did not protest directly to Turkey and instead walled off intelligence issues from broader policymaking.

There are lots of questions that Ignatius’s report raises, and it will take some time to parse them out and figure out the answers. First and foremost is the report completely accurate? This is a very big deal if true, and it casts increasingly cool U.S. behavior toward Turkey over the past year in a more interesting light, yet it also makes it puzzling to figure out how something like this was kept quiet. Likewise, it is tough to see how and why the United States would separate intelligence issues from larger policy issues in the wake of such a huge betrayal of an important U.S. intelligence ally. Especially when such duplicity amounts to a purposeful blow to joint American-Israeli aims to slow down Iran’s nuclear program.

Next, who are the sources for this story, and why leak the story now? If this new information came from the United States, then it indicates that someone has finally had it with Turkey turning a blind eye to (if not actively enabling) a growing al-Qaida presence in Syria, and anger over Turkey’s deal to buy a missile defense system from a Chinese firm already under sanctions rather than from NATO. The flip side to this is that if it is a U.S. government source fed up with Turkish behavior, it also does not cast the United States in a great light given the lack of an official reaction following Turkey’s exposure of Israeli intelligence assets. If the leak came from the Israeli side, then the timing is strange since there would have been little reason to hold this information until now, as Israeli-Turkish relations were at their absolute low point. The only plausible reason for Israel to leak this now would be if it came from someone who is disenchanted with Bibi Netanyahu’s efforts to patch things up with Turkey, as these allegations are deeply embarrassing in light of the Mavi Marmara apology.

Questions aside, and assuming that the veracity of the report– and so far no American or Israeli official has publicly denied it – the bigger picture here is not the future of Israel-Turkey ties, but how the United States views Turkey. It is important to remember that from its earliest days the Obama administration sought to rebuild and strengthen ties with Ankara during a particularly difficult period that coincided with the American occupation of Iraq and the return of PKK terrorism. The Turks got a presidential visit and speech to the Grand National Assembly, Obama punted on his promise to recognize the Armenian genocide, and more broadly brought a new energy and urgency to a partnership that American officials hoped would work to achieve common goals in a swath of the globe from the Balkans to Central Asia.

What started off well-enough quickly ran into trouble. By the spring of 2010, the Turks had negotiated a separate nuclear deal with Iran (and the Brazilians) that the administration claimed it had not authorized and voted against additional UN Security Council sanctions on Tehran.  Then the Mavi Marmara incident happened, further complicating Washington’s relations with both Ankara and Jerusalem.  A “reset” of sorts occurred on the sidelines of the September 2010 G-20 summit in Toronto with a meeting in which President Obama and Prime Minister Erdoğan talked tough with each other and cleared the air, setting the stage for what Turkish officials like to describe as a “golden age” in relations.  Even so, despite the apparent mutual respect—even friendship—between President Obama and Prime Minister Erdoğan, there was a sense that the Turks did not share interests and goals as much as advertised.  For example, there was Erdoğan’s visit to Tehran in June 2010 when he implicitly justified Iran’s nuclear program. There were also difficult negotiations over a NATO early warning radar system on Turkish territory and after Ankara finally agreed, last minute needless wrangling over Israeli access to the data from the system .

More recently, Turkey has spurned its NATO allies in order to build a missile defense system with China.  Ankara has also been enormously unhelpful on Syria, even working at cross-purposes against current U.S. aims.  The Turks have complicated efforts to solve the political crisis in Egypt by insisting that deposed President Mohammed Morsi be returned to office and thus only further destabilizing Egyptian politics.  In addition, these new revelations (along with ongoing efforts to get around sanctions on Iranian oil and gas) make it clear that Turkey has been actively assisting Iran in flouting American attempts to set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The state-owned Halk Bank was, until recently, involved in clearing financial transactions for Iranian counterparts, though Istanbul’s gold traders continue to do a robust business with Iran. And this all comes on top of the general fallout that has ensued as a result of Turkey doing everything in its power to take shots at Israel (which, no matter if some Turkish analysts want to argue that Ankara is more strategically valuable to the U.S. than Jerusalem, is a critical U.S. ally), whether it be absurdly blaming Israel for the coup in Egypt or preventing Israel from participating in NATO forums.

Considering Turkey’s record, how can the Obama administration continue to tout Turkey as a “model partner” or even treat it as an ally? Not a single one of its goals for Turkey—anchoring Turkey in NATO and the West; advancing U.S. national security goals such as non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and promoting democracy; and holding Turkey out a “model” of a secular democracy—have been met. Ignatius’s recent revelation, if true, undermine the first two goals. As for the third, Erdoğan’s continuing harsh crackdown on protesters resulting from last summer’s Gezi Park demonstrations, pressure on journalists, efforts to intimidate civil society organizations, and other efforts to silence critics makes Turkey a negative example for countries struggling to build more just and open societies. We have crossed the line of reasonable disagreement and arrived at a point where Turkey is very clearly and very actively working to subvert American aims in the Middle East on a host of issues. That Erdoğan and/or his intelligence chief Hakan Fidan were willing to undermine a broad Western effort to stop Iran’s nuclear development for no other reason than to stick it to Israel should be a wake-up call as to whether the current Turkish government can be trusted as a partner on anything.

Turkey’s “Democratization” Package

October 10, 2013 § 3 Comments

Ten days ago, Prime Minister Erdoğan and the AKP released the details of their long-promised and long-awaited democratization package, which had been hyped for months as a major initiative aimed at correcting imbalances righting wrongs in the Turkish political system. Since I am late to the game here, I am not going to do a deep dive into everything it entails – a summary can be found here – but most commentary, as typified by this column by Amanda Paul, has focused on the fact that the new proposals are good in some ways and fall short in others. In other words, a decent start but not far enough.

This is definitely one way to view the package. Another way is to think about it through the prism of how the AKP views democracy. In June 2012, Steven Cook and I wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs in which we contended that the AKP was expanding Turkish democracy when you look at measures of participation – meaning the extent to which citizens are able to participate in democracy – but limiting Turkish democracy when you look at measures of contestation – meaning the ability to contest the government’s power. The democratization package appears to break down along this dichotomy, which is unsurprising. Much of the package makes life a little easier for Kurds by allowing Kurdish-language education in public schools; allowing the use of the letters q, w, and x, which are found in Kurdish but not in Turkish; allowing Kurdish and other languages to be used in election campaigns; restoring former Kurdish names of majority-Kurdish villages in southeastern Turkey. These measures allow Kurds to participate in Turkey’s political and civic life to a larger extent. Other measures that affect the general population do the same, such as allowing government employees to wear headscarves ( which is unabashedly a good thing, no matter how many scary columns you read about the “Islamization of Turkey”).

When it comes to contestation though, there is nothing to cheer about. The proposal to lower Turkey’s electoral threshold to enter the Grand National Assembly from 10% to 5% is not actually being proposed as a law, but is being proposed simply as a topic for debate. Furthermore, the proposal to create single-member districts (rather than keep a system of proportional representation) or to keep a system of partial representation and create districts of 5 or so members would almost certainly benefit the AKP and maintain or increase its percentage of parliamentary seats. In addition, hoped-for proposals on reforming the anti-terror law – which is increasingly used as a cudgel against journalists and government critics – were absent. If it wasn’t clear to everyone that the AKP cannot stand to be challenged in any way even after this summer’s events, it should certainly be clear now. When this government talks about expanding democracy, it only means it in a very narrow sense (and even then, it apparently doesn’t mean it if you happen to be Alevi rather than Sunni).

There is still another way to view this democratization package, which is that it actually intends to do the precise opposite of what it claims. There is a proposal to establish a hate crimes law that would impose three year prison sentences on anyone who commits a crime based on someone’s or some group’s language, ethnicity, nationality, skin color, gender, disability condition, political views, philosophical beliefs, religion, or sect. In theory this sounds like an effort to protect minorities, but given the Turkish government’s track record of prosecuting students who protest against Erdoğan or pianists who insult Islam, I would bet nearly anything that the hate crimes law will be used to go after AKP opponents and critics. Nearly any speech can be criminalized and punished at the government’s behest under this legislation, and Erdoğan has unfortunately demonstrated that he has no qualms about cracking down on things he simply doesn’t like or finds offensive. There is a good chance that the most far-reaching and significant part of this “democratization” package will be an element that does not enhance Turkish democracy but instead greatly weakens it. So yes, there are ways in which the government’s efforts to improve Turkish democracy may be a good start, but there are also ways in which “this doesn’t go far enough” is not quite the criticism that should be leveled. It’s not the absence of certain elements in this proposal that worries me so much as the inclusion of others.

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