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ANALYSIS
US and Turkey: Democracy
and double-talk
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Turkey has long occupied a very
special place in the hearts and minds of the 'Attack
Iraq' crowd that remains the dominant voice in the
administration of President George W Bush. First, Turkey
is the only predominantly Muslim member in the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Second, its
generals have cultivated a military alliance with Israel
against hostile Arab states, one that was heavily
promoted by the neo-conservatives who dominate the top
ranks of the political appointees around Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the
administration's leading hardliners.
In fact,
the chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, Richard
Perle, and his undersecretary for policy, Douglas Feith,
have worked as paid lobbyists for Turkey and have also
advised Israel's Likud Party, proposing five years ago
the creation of an Israel-Turkey-Jordan axis that would
permanently alter the balance of power in the Middle
East.
Third, Turkey occupies an especially
valuable piece of real estate for anyone contemplating
an invasion of Iraq. While the main thrust of any US
ground attack will almost certainly be launched from
Kuwait, the advantages of a second front in the north
are deeply compelling to US military planners.
Fourth, and by no means last, the fact that
Turkey holds regular elections and enjoys at least the
formal institutions of a democratic state makes it
particularly attractive at a moment when the United
States is trying to persuade the rest of the world,
particularly the Middle East, that it should be seen as
a liberator, not as an invader, of a benighted Arab
nation.
In this view, Turkey "can be an example
for the Muslim world", as the most hawkish of the
Pentagon neo-conservatives, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, said last March in one of the
administration's first public utterances of its
oft-repeated mantra that invading Iraq could transform
the entire region by bringing democracy to Arab states
long denied it.
During his visit to Ankara last
week, precisely to persuade the new government of Prime
Minister Abdullah Gul to permit tens of thousands of US
troops to use Turkish territory as a launching pad into
Iraq, Wolfowitz was effusive in his praise of Turkish
democracy.
He even invited the powerful chairman
of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, to meet Bush at the White House next
week, despite the fact that Erdogan, a devout Muslim
whose party swept out the traditional secular parties in
elections last month, is barred from holding public
office for violating the country's long-standing
secularist constitution.
As a message to Arab
states and others who doubt Washington's altruistic
intentions, Erdogan's appearance at the White House
should speak very loudly to those who fear that
Washington's confrontation with Iraq and its war on
terrorism is stoking a "clash of civilizations", say US
officials.
"Our receptivity to the outcome of
last month's election in Turkey clearly demonstrates
this point," said Richard Haass, director of the State
Department's Policy Planning staff, in a major address
titled "Democracy in the Muslim World" this week.
Haass quoted approvingly from Gul's remarks on
taking office last month that his party wanted to prove
that a Muslim identity could be democratic, transparent
and compatible with the modern world.
"Americans
are confident that the Turkish people can prove all this
and we want to help them make it so," said Haass, who
stressed that democracy went beyond elections in
requiring adherence to the rule of law, checks and
balances "such that no one voice dominates
unquestioned", and "competition between legislative and
executive branches", among other key attributes.
In this context, some analysts were surprised to
read The Washington Post's account of the Wolfowitz trip
to Ankara, published within hours of Haass' address.
Turkey's 20-year-old constitution requires that
the nation's parliament approve the deployment of
foreign troops on Turkish soil, according to the Post.
"But a Western diplomat noted that most of the US
requests likely will be decided by Turkey's National
Security Council, which includes the military's
politically powerful general staff, along with senior
elected officials."
Moreover, when Turkey's
Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis, citing domestic "public
opinion", suggested that US troops could operate from
Turkish territory only if the United Nations Security
Council authorized military action in a new resolution,
the same "Western diplomat" told the Post that the
foreign minister had gotten it wrong.
"He was
trying to straddle a position and he just went too far,"
the source told the Post's reporters, who travelled with
Wolfowitz from Washington. "He was trying to bridge this
public position that action in Iraq must await a second
UN resolution, and the position of many others in the
government that ... it is in the Turkish national
interest to line up."
Lest there be any doubt
about who these "many others in the government" may be,
the Post gave a hint when it quoted "one senior general"
as dismissing Yakis' statements as "personal opinion".
"Turkish support is assured," said Wolfowitz on
the record, after meetings with top Turkish officials,
including senior generals.
While that may be
true for senior generals, it almost certainly did not
apply to the Turkish general public, according to the
results of major surveys that were released here after
Wolfowitz's visit by the Washington-based Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press.
According
to one poll taken in Turkey just last month, 83 percent
of Turks oppose allowing US forces to use bases in their
country to wage war in Iraq. Moreover, a solid majority
rejected the notion that Washington's motivations in
waging war were for anyone's benefit but its own.
Indeed, less than one in three of more than
1,000 Turkish respondents said they approved of
Washington's war on terror, compared with better than
two-thirds approval in all five NATO member-countries
surveyed. Three in four Turks agreed with the statement
that the United States fails to consider the interests
of other countries in conducting its foreign policy.
The survey found that only 30 percent of Turks
had a favorable image of the United States, a whopping
22 percent drop from the same survey two years ago, and
the fourth lowest of the 44 countries surveyed, after
Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan.
The poll results for
Turkey, observed former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, helped illustrate the gap in "what we're
asking countries to do in terms of (their) leadership
versus what people want us to do".
Speaking to a
group of Turkish reporters last July, Wolfowitz said,
"The essence of what we believe in - we in the United
States - is that people should be free to determine
their own future. Turkey is proof that democracy can
work for Muslims."
(Inter Press
Service)
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