The Turkish Dilemma: This is no time to burn bridges with the only modern — semi-modern — Islamic country

National Review, April 21, 2003 by John O'Sullivan

As Anglo-American troops march relentlessly toward military victory in Iraq, American diplomats nervously contemplate the growing wave of hatred and suspicion toward the U.S. in the Islamic world. Some of this hatred is inspired by a false picture of the war in the Arab media and, as in Afghanistan, may be dissipated by postwar evidence that Iraqis are grateful to be rid of Saddam Hussein. But much of it is deeply rooted in the resentments of a decaying culture that blames the West for its own political and economic failures. And that is a much more intractable problem. Indeed, if the West is to overcome this hatred, Islamic culture will first have to overcome its own resentful inability to cope with modernity.

If that is to happen, we in turn will have to rely on Turkey -- the only Islamic country that has yet successfully, if imperfectly, modernized itself -- to lead the way. In the last month, however, the U.S. and Turkey have twice been at serious odds. And Washington is in danger of drawing wrong -- and self-defeating -- conclusions from these disputes.

The first U.S.-Turkish clash was over the failure of the Turkish parliament to pass a government-backed resolution allowing U.S. troops passage through Turkey into northern Iraq to open a second front against Saddam Hussein. William Safire in the New York Times blamed this defeat squarely on the new Turkish government of the Justice and Development party under its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had "transformed [a] formerly staunch U.S. ally into Saddam's best friend."

Even making allowance for journalistic hyperbole, this charge is wide of the mark. Erdogan's party of Islamic conservatives was certainly split on helping the U.S. invade Iraq -- not surprisingly, given that Turkish public opinion is 90 percent against the war. Some of the party's hard-line Islamist members rebelled and voted against the government. But while it would be psychologically comforting to blame them, and their party, for killing U.S.-Turkish cooperation from sinister Islamist motives, that is not what happened: The resolution lost because the parliamentary opposition, a secular party devoted to preserving the "modernizing" legacy of Kemal Ataturk, voted in lockstep against it. And its fate was sealed when the Turkish general staff refused to publicly endorse the government's brave decision before the vote. Yet both the opposition and the generals are strongly in favor of the measure -- privately.

So why did they renege? There is no lack of explanations. Commentator Michael Ledeen quotes a source he thinks both reliable and knowledgeable to the effect that France and Germany leaned heavily on the opposition to vote against the measure. The opposition and the army are also deeply hostile to the ruling party, viewing it as an Islamist threat to secularism; and they knew that helping the U.S. to invade Iraq was very unpopular with the voters. They balked -- and U.S.- Turkish relations began to falter.

The second crisis followed almost automatically. The U.S. began pressing for a second resolution to reverse the defeat of the first. But the realities of Turkish politics got in the way. The new government had been elected on a platform of rescuing Turkish democracy from a corrupt political elite. It could hardly reverse a parliamentary vote overnight without looking both undemocratic and corrupt. The Turkish parliament eventually passed a second motion -- but one that fell short of U.S. expectations. It proposed to allow the U.S. not a land passage into Iraq but military over-flights -- and also to authorize the Turkish army to enter northern Iraq.

That immediately rang alarm bells. Safire described it as "Erdogan's cover story for an oil grab," and fear spread through Washington that the Turks would invade northern Iraq to repress the Kurds and seize the oil fields. What was overlooked in this burst of anxiety was that the Turks have legitimate interests in northern Iraq: Turkey was effectively cheated of the old Ottoman vilayet of Mosul in the 1920s -- as J. B. Kelly outlined in National Review a decade ago. There is a large Turcoman population in the region that looks to Ankara for protection. And the Turkish army is worried that an independent Kurdistan would destabilize Turkey's own Kurdish areas and even provide a safe haven for a revived Kurdish terrorism. So their desire to influence any final settlement is not unreasonable.

At the same time, Turkey has been wary of involving itself in the Middle East since Ataturk imposed a European identity on his countrymen. And although U.S.-Turkish negotiations continue -- Colin Powell left for Ankara in early April -- it is likely that Turkey will forego any direct intervention in Iraq in return for a say in the peace settlement and a share in the oil royalties that it sold for pound sterling500,000 in 1926. If so, the Erdogan government will have passed an important test.

But the Turkish refusal to help the U.S. start a second front rankles in Washington. Two influential congressmen -- Henry Hyde and Tom Lantos -- have proposed a reduction in the $1 billion aid package for Turkey now in the works. And the Bush administration is famous for holding grudges. It would be a serious mistake, however, to penalize Turkey for what happened. To begin with, U.S. diplomacy is not guiltless. Washington first took the Turks for granted, then tried to buy them off, and finally resorted to simple bullying: none of which was calculated to appeal to a proud people like the Turks. Second, Turkey's prosperity, stability, and friendship are vital American assets -- the U.S. would sneeze if Turkey caught a cold.