A Golden Age At All Costs
April 2, 2012 § 1 Comment
Hugh Pope has a long and excellent roundup in the Cairo Review of Erdoğan’s first decade at Turkey’s helm, and it is a useful summary of the important trends that have taken place, particular in the foreign policy realm. Something that jumped out at me is Pope’s analysis of the U.S.-Turkey relationship, to which he does not devote an entire section but which pops up in a few places. He describes Erdoğan’s rushing to placate the U.S. following his embarrassment at the parliamentary vote denying help with the Iraq War, and that Turkish granting of overflight rights and supply routes and the subsequent deal for U.S. intelligence on the PKK helped usher in what Ankara has described at a golden age in relations with Washington. Pope also points to the return of a Cold War dynamic in which the U.S. looks the other way in ignoring Turkish authoritarian behavior at home in return for a reliable ally that secures American interests.
Certainly, Turkish government officials like to play up the relationship with Washington and what they see as a vital partnership, and they like to point out similarities in the two countries’ political development. I heard Davutoğlu speak at Georgetown in 2010 in a talk titled “Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish-U.S. Partnership in the 21st Century” in which he embraced Obama’s term of a”model partnership” and then talked about Turkey’s four “political restorations” (the Tanzimat reforms, establishment of the republic, multiparty democracy, and what is going on now with AKP constitutional reforms) and cleverly made a comparison to the U.S. by asserting that it too went through four political restorations. Especially as Turkey has drifted farther away from Europe, first as European countries openly snubbed its EU membership bid and then as Turkey determined that it did not need Europe as much as it had originally thought, it has moved even closer to the U.S. Even though this should not be a point that ever bears repeating, casual observers tend to forget that Turkey is a member of NATO and that it is a valuable strategic ally in numerous ways.
The upshot of this is that in thinking about Erdoğan’s comments over the past week regarding Iran’s nuclear program, and how no state has the right to threaten Iran over what he deems to be an entirely peaceful pursuit of nuclear power, and how the NATO X-Band radar is not directed at thwarting or containing Iran, ultimately it’s not going to make a lick of difference. The growing chasm between Turkey and Europe along with its loss of Syria as its primary Arab ally mean that the relationship with the U.S. is even more inviolate than ever. Erdoğan did everything he could to repair ties with Washington following the Iraq War, and despite the perception of a Turkish turn to the east, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu are too savvy to go back to the dark days of spring 2003 when it comes to the U.S., even if it eventually means tossing Iran overboard and not looking back. The announcement on Friday that Turkey would be cutting back its imports of Iranian oil is the most recent datapoint in this regard, and no doubt if the U.S. decides to go even further and eventually take military action, Turkey will quietly follow along. I still stand by my musings from last week about Erdoğan’s perplexing move of jetting straight to Tehran from Seoul, and it makes sense in this context since Turkey has perhaps the most to lose from a U.S.-Iranian confrontation and will do anything it can to prevent it from happening. Turkey benefits from its relationship with Iran and does not want to lose it, but now that it has lost Syria and Europe, it simply cannot lose the U.S. as well.
The implications for U.S. pressure on Turkey to maintain its liberalizing reforms and not roll back any progress that was made between 2002 and 2009 are that no such pressure will be forthcoming any time soon. The U.S.-Turkey relationship has moved firmly into the realm of realpolitik, and anyone expecting Washington to speak out on press intimidation or harassing of political opponents will be waiting a long time. The U.S. needs Turkey more than ever in the wake of the Arab Spring and Turkey equally needs the U.S., and so the golden age/model partnership is going to be maintained no matter the hardships on either side. If it means Ankara sacrificing its relationship with Iran or the U.S. appearing to cynically give an ally a free pass, so be it.
Another Banner Weekend for Israeli-Turkish Ties
April 1, 2012 § Leave a comment
The Israeli and Greek navies along with the U.S. Sixth Fleet are busy conducting large scale exercises in the Mediterranean in what the Greek media is describing as a message to Turkey. While drills meant to simulate protecting offshore gas platforms does not at first glance seem like it should be particularly relevant to Turkey, the exercise is effectively a carbon copy of the annual naval drills that the U.S. and Israel used to conduct with the Turkish navy until canceling them in 2009. Inviting Greece to join in Turkey’s place is a poke in the eye for Ankara, which views Greece as a natural and historic rival, and it surely is making the Turks even more furious that the enemies in the joint exercise deliberately resemble the Turkish air force.
On the Turkish side of things, Erdoğan spent the day loudly drawing a public contrast between the Israeli nuclear arsenal and what he says is the peaceful Iranian nuclear program. He expressed his view that nobody focuses on Israel’s 250-300 warheads, while Iran is being threatened with military action despite their desire to go no further than producing some enriched uranium rods, and that the West’s shielding of Israel is a hypocritical double standard. While in Iran on Friday, he and Davutoğlu also reiterated that the NATO X-Band radar deployed in Turkey is not aimed at containing Iran, and that Turkey would pull out of the agreement to host it within six months if the data collected by the radar system is shared with Israel. Naturally, none of this is going to reassure Israel, or move it any closer to trying to resolve its differences with Turkey, nor will any of this – including the Israeli-Greek naval exercises – provide the impetus for resumed Israeli-Turkish military cooperation, which is seen as the hook that will eventually move the two countries closer together.
FT on Erdoğan
March 29, 2012 § Leave a comment
This is a sloppy sort of reporting/editorializing about trends taking place in Turkey during Erdoğan’s third term so far. It captures the general essence of the fact that there are some disturbing actions the government is taking, particularly in the use of the court system to go after potential political foes and critics, but there are some things in here that made me roll my eyes on both sides of the spectrum. First the line, “Along with a gathering air of authoritarianism, many detect the first whiff of hubris.” Really, FT? The “first whiff of hubris” from Uncle Tayyip is just now being detected? Erdoğan has been wildly successful on many fronts, and when all is said and done it’s tough to argue that he has up until now been anything but a net positive for Turkey, but I think the first whiff of hubris has been in the rearview mirror for a decade.
The real problem in this piece though is the impression given that Turkey was a problem-free democracy before the AKP came to power. The authors use the term “managed democracy” to describe decades of Kemalist-military rule, but this is rather generous. Turkey had some characteristics of a democracy and some characteristics of an autocracy, but the main difference between then and now is that the government’s priorities are different. The old establishment was most concerned with maintaing enforced secularism, whereas the new establishment has other things in mind. Turkey was certainly not a perfect constitutional democracy before 2002 – in fact, many of the thornier issues that Turkey is dealing with today are a direct result of the 1982 constitution. The article notes that Erdoğan’s moves to assert control over the military have “removed a check on executive power, however undemocratic,” but that last clause should not be glossed over as an afterthought. There is a tendency among Western observers to equate secularism with democracy, but the presence of the first does not guarantee the presence of the second. It’s difficult to take an argument seriously that asserts Erdoğan is destroying a heretofore democratic Turkey and that there has been a slide toward authoritarianism when you have a sense of where Turkey was before. I agree that Erdoğan and the AKP are in the midst of taking a series of worrying moves, and that Turkey in many ways is indeed becoming less democratic, but let’s not be blind to the fact that in other ways, the AKP has improved the quality of Turkish democracy. Turkey may yet end up more authoritarian than it was five years ago, but that will only return it to the status quo ante that existed before the AKP was even formed.
When Zero Problems With Neighbors Becomes Over The Top
March 28, 2012 § 5 Comments
This is a good example of where trying to make everybody happy is going to leave nobody happy. Erdoğan is in Iran today for meetings with Ahmadinejad and other Iranian government officials on the Iranian nuclear program and what to do about Syria. To begin with, the optics of this are just silly given that any knowledgeable Iran observer insists that the nuclear program and any real decisions pertaining to it are controlled by Khamenei and not by Ahmadinejad, so these meetings are likely a waste of Erdoğan’s time. More importantly, Erdoğan arrived in Tehran straight from South Korea, where he attended President Obama’s conference on nuclear security. It is possible that he is conveying a message from Obama to the Iranians, but if not it can’t be terribly reassuring to the U.S. that Erdoğan is running straight to Iran to brief them on whatever went on behind closed doors in Seoul. On the Syria issue, it also appears to be bad timing with the Friends of Syria conference beginning on Sunday in Istanbul in light of Iran’s support and bankrolling of Assad. I don’t think that anyone is under any illusions as to whether Iran is going to dump Assad over the side of the boat, and I guarantee you that Erdoğan and Ahmadinejad are not discussing the best way to set up a buffer zone, so why have these meetings now? I am all for diplomacy and think it will have a big place in resolving the Iran nuclear issue, but the timing of this feels very off to me. Why not wait until after the Friends of Syria conference, which might provide some more impetus to exert pressure on Iran? I understand that Turkey feels a vital need to maintain good relations with almost every state in the region, and it is part of what makes Turkey a valuable U.S. ally, but this is one time where trying to get everyone to like you is not going to yield any tangible benefits.
Erdoğan and Meshaal
March 16, 2012 § Leave a comment
Khaled Meshaal is in Turkey today for meetings with Prime Minister Erdoğan in what is no doubt the latest effort on Turkey’s part to broker a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. Last month Mahmoud Abbas was in Ankara for talks with Erdoğan, Davutoğlu, and Gül, and Turkey has for years now tried to be the middleman in getting the two sides to make up. It is not a role that it wishes to cede to Egypt, and with Cairo in the news for brokering a ceasefire between Israel and various Palestinian factions following the fighting in Gaza earlier this week, Erdoğan would love to make some news of his own on the Palestinian front.
There was speculation about where the Hamas leadership was going to go once it decamped from Damascus with Istanbul seen as a leading contender, but so far some Hamas officials have gone to Cairo and others – including Meshaal – have gone to Doha. I wonder if Erdoğan is going to make an increased push with Meshaal today to host them in Turkey. The Turks have taken up the Palestinian cause with gusto in an effort to increase their popularity and expand their soft power in the Arab world, and that is likely to figure into their strategy even more now that they have given up on Assad and are still feuding with the Israelis. Hosting the Hamas leadership gives Turkey a lot of street cred, and has the added benefit of demonstrating Turkey’s distance from the Assad regime by accepting a group that has publicly turned on its former Syrian patron. The risks of course are that too much cozying up to Hamas upsets the U.S. and the E.U., but Erdoğan and Davutoğlu generally tend to side with risking some unpleasantness in Washington and European capitals if they stand to benefit elsewhere.
The other benefit to hosting Meshaal right now is that Erdoğan gets to stick it to Israel a few days after the Israelis issued a travel warning for its citizens in Turkey. Lots of public displays of friendship between Erdoğan and Davutoğlu and Meshaal will rile the Israelis up as it always does, and any talk of improved ties and resumed military coordination will again end with no tangible gains.
Will Israel and Turkey Make Up, Cont.
March 15, 2012 § Leave a comment
Will Israel and Turkey Make Up?
March 14, 2012 § Leave a comment
Last month I wrote about the systemic pressures that might cause Israel and Turkey to reconcile and resume their history of military and diplomatic cooperation. Nimrod Goren has an op-ed today in Haaretz assessing Israel-Turkey ties and arguing – similarly to me – that the two countries have a bevy of shared interests that should theoretically provide a good opportunity for them to get over their feud. I am obviously sympathetic to this argument and hopeful that it will indeed occur, but this is a good place to assess some different theories about what makes states cooperate and what it means for Turkey and Israel.
Political scientists tend to focus on the larger structural forces that shape states’ foreign policies. In the case of Israel and Turkey, the two have a shared interest in balancing against Iran. A nuclear Iran immediately upsets the balance of power in the region and while it evidently presents Israel with the larger threat, Turkey and Iran are in many ways natural rivals. Despite Turkey’s seemingly lackadaisical approach to preventing a nuclear Iran, my hunch is that their softer public stance is a result of Davutoğlu’s “zero problems with neighbors” policy and that behind the scenes they are not eager to see Iran become a nuclear power. On Syria as well, Israel and Turkey both have an interest in making sure that the country does not explode across their borders, and Turkey in particular does not want to see Syria’s Kurds attempt to break away and join up with Kurdish populations in Turkey and Iraq. Goren quotes Tarık Oğuzlu as believing that realpolitik will bring Turkey and Israel closer together, and as anyone who read my guest post on Steven Cook’s blog knows, I agree with this analysis of the geopolitical environment.
There is another strain within international relations, however, and this one is the type of analysis that one almost always sees in the press, which is to focus on individuals rather than the larger system. Read nearly any news analysis in a prominent newspaper or current events magazine and there is almost always an outsized focus on the personalities involved, whether it is a breakdown of Obama and Netanyahu’s relationship and how this drives the U.S.-Israeli relationship or how U Thein Sein’s helicopter tour of his flooded boyhood village turned him into a reformer. Looking at it from this perspective, Israel and Turkey are nowhere close to mending their differences. Both countries are led by nationalist leaders who despise each other and make their feelings perfectly clear, and waste no chance to demonize each other’s respective states. Erdoğan’s latest gem is to accuse Israel of attempted genocide during its recent air strikes in Gaza, while Netanyahu and members of his cabinet like Avigdor Lieberman go entirely overboard and describe Turkey’s government as radical Islamic extremist supporters of terror. Viewed in this light, Israel and Turkey will never make up, and as each side goes tit-for-tat in the war of words, the possibility of reconciliation becomes more remote.
I am a big fan of structural explanations for how the world works. But in this case I worry that structural forces are not enough. Even taking into consideration Israel’s mistrust of any foreign government sympathetic to Hamas and Turkey’s bid to increase its soft power in the Middle East, Israel and Turkey’s spat cannot be explained by structure alone. I think it is crucial for them to get over their differences for a host of reasons, but I am currently bearish on it actually happening.
