Re: [A-List] Turkey's dilemma

["Anne Williamson" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

 June 9, 2002

Turkey: Where East reluctantly meets West

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

ISTANBUL -- American politicians and media keep asking, "Why can't other
Muslims be more like the Turks?" In the North American view, Turks are "good
Muslims" - democratic, pro-western, co-operative, and don't make trouble.

Turkey is assuming command of the western "protective" force in Kabul,
Afghanistan propping up the U.S.-installed regime of Hamid Karzai. Turkish
intelligence works closely with America's CIA and Israel's Mossad against
Islamic militants. Turkey has become a close ally and major arms customer of
Israel. Islam - particularly its political and social sides - is severely
restricted by Turkey's militantly secular regime.

In return for this "strategic partnership," Washington just rushed to save
Turkey from financial collapse through a $12-billion US loan through the
International Monetary Fund. Turkey's shaky economy shrank nearly 10% last
year; inflation is rampant, with one U.S. dollar now equal to almost 1.5
million Turkish lire. The ongoing illness of Turkish prime minister Bulent
Ecevit has only worsened the financial crisis.

On closer view, Turkey's credentials as a western-style democracy are far
from perfect. When U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney came to Turkey to drum up
support for a war against Iraq, he devoted far more time meeting with the
chief of staff of Turkey's powerful armed forces than with Prime Minister
Ecevit.

Turkey, like Prussia, is an army disguised as a nation. Behind a facade of
squabbling, impotent politicians, real power in Turkey is held by the
generals, who throw out prime ministers whenever they please.

Turkey's generals see themselves as keepers of the sacred flame of Kemalism,
the statist political system created by Kemal Ataturk in the 1930s. Ataturk
was a brilliant general who saved post-World War I Turkey from being carved
up by Britain, France, Italy and Greece. As the father of modern Turkey, he
imposed a dictatorial regime that was influenced by 1930s fascism and
communism.

Ban the fez

Ataturk sought to remake Turkey into a European nation by banning the Arabic
alphabet and the fez, by repressing Islam and even hanging Islamic scholars.
He literally ripped out Turkey's Islamic roots and replaced them with a form
of imitation Europeanism that left Turks with a national identity crisis,
unsure of what they really are: easterners, westerners, or something in
between.

Turkey's armed forces perpetuate Ataturk's philosophy. Enshrined in a regal
mausoleum, Ataturk has become the secular god of Turkey. Anyone daring to
question Kemalism is jailed - or worse. Leaders of Turkey's moderate Islamic
parties have been routinely ousted from office on phony charges and thrown
into prison. This happened to the popular mayor of Istanbul, for daring to
read a classic poem deemed too Islamic by the generals.

Turkey's Kemalist political system is designed to perpetuate the interests
of the nation's U.S.-supported ruling elite, an alliance between the
military and big industrialists. Leftist critics call it the last of the
1930s' totalitarian systems. Westernized urban Turks, mostly nominal
Muslims, generally support the status quo and favour joining Europe. Rural
Turks, larger in number but without any political power, are deeply
religious, do not support westernization and favour a return to Turkey's
Islamic roots.

The nation's largest minority, the Kurds, remain a central problem for
Turkey. Though the long Kurdish struggle for an independent state has been
suppressed, and Kurdish leader Ocalan captured, Kurdish nationalism still
remains sand in the eye of the Turkish nation. A brutal war against equally
brutal Kurdish insurgents was marked by human rights violations that earned
condemnation by Europe.

Turkey's oft-criticized rights record has been the ostensible reason Europe
has continued to deny Turkey admission to the EU. The true reason: Christian
Europe's potent prejudice against admitting Muslim Turkey, with millions of
farmers. Europe is up in arms against its Muslim emigrant population, and
certainly has too many subsidized farmers.

Strategic alliance

Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel - underlined by a recent
$800-million tank deal signed during the Israeli invasion of Palestinian
territory - won Ankara important support in the U.S. Congress and silenced
complaints over its human rights record, but outraged the Muslim world. The
Israel lobby has been running interference for Turkey in Washington and
preventing the Greek and Armenian lobbies from imposing restrictions on
U.S.-Turkish relations. Good relations with Israel assures good press in the
U.S.

President George Bush's crusade against Iraq and militant Islam has put the
Turks in a difficult position. Turkey has lost billions on trade with Iraq
by supporting U.S. sanctions against Baghdad. Now, the U.S. is pressing
Turkey to act as policeman against Islamic groups and deepen its
anti-Islamic co-operation with Israel. A majority of Turks opposes such
policies; many Turks are calling on Ankara to embrace moderate Islam, stop
acting as Washington's gendarme, forget hostile Europe and resume Turkey's
traditional close relations with the Arab Mideast.

Turks have long complained their enormous contribution to NATO - its second
largest army - has been ignored and their nation taken for granted by the
West. A few Turkish intellectuals and writers risk prison by proposing to
ditch Kemalism, get the army out of politics, build a genuine democracy and
allow Turks to be the fierce, self-assured and devoutly Islamic people they
once used to be.


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