Turkey: a new player in Middle Eastern politics

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Turkey: A New Player in Middle Eastern Politics

Meltem Muftuler

Turkey is perplexing to many scholars.

It

is not an Arab or Middle Eastern country but cannot be defined truly as a European state, either. The prob-lem of where to place it has become profound in the post-Cold War era.

In many ways, the political and economic history of modern Turkey, par-ticularly of its foreign policy, reflects the country's attempts to catch up with, or adapt to, developments in Europe.1 _{During the Cold War, Turkey's foreign} policy evolved in three interacting spheres: first, Turkey's place in the bipo-lar balance between the United States and the USSR; second, Turkey's posi-tion in the Middle Eastern subsystem of states; and third, Turkey's bilateral relations with Greece.2 _{Changes and developments in one sphere could not}

help but affect Turkey's relations in the others.

In

addition, the Turkish posi-tions in all these spheres were guided by an ultimate goal: acquiring the sta-tus of a European state. The demise of the Cold War changed the external environment within which Turkey operated, and there emerged a need to reformulate Turkey's foreign policy.

This paper attempts to analyze the impact of the end of the Cold War on Turkey's position in the European and the Middle Eastern subsystems of states. The most important changes that directly affected Turkey were the collapse of the bipolar distribution of power in global politics; the disman-tling of the Soviet Union; the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe; and the emergence of the European Union (EU) as a regional bloc. During

1. Meltem Muftuler, "Turkish Economic Liberalization and European Integration;' Middle Eastern Studies 31, no. 1 (1995): 85.

2. Ali Karaosmanoglu, "Turkey's Security and the Middle East;' Foreign Affairs 62, no. 1 (1983): 157.

Meltem Muftuler is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, Bilker! University, Ankara.

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Muftuler: Turkey: A New Player 111

the Cold War, Turkey enjoyed a relatively secure position within NATO as a buffer state to the Soviet Union, and it was integrated into the European order as an associate member of the European Community. The end of the Cold War, however, sparked an ongoing debate about the role of NATO, and by extension Turkey's place in it. As for relations with the EU, Turkey is aware that the newly democratic states of Eastern Europe have taken the front place in the queue to become members. In an attempt to secure its position in the emerging Europe, Turkey has sought to discover new areas of foreign policy that would validate its existence as a security partner of the West, and increasingly these are to be found to the east.

In the post-Cold War period, Turkey has modified its traditional foreign policy toward its Middle Eastern neighbors. Economic difficulties, the grow-ing share of the Middle East market in Turkey's foreign trade, the Kurdish problem, and the alteration in the global distribution of power were the determinants of that change. Turkey has become a more active player in the Middle East while maintaining its primary allegiance to the West.

Turkey's Foreign Policy Premises

Turkey is said to be a land bridge connecting Europe and Asia, or more generally between East and West, and a melting pot where two cultures meet and merge. Turkey is also, much to the chagrin of some, a bridge that links NATO to the Middle East and to Southwest Asia.3

Cold War structures had provided Turkey with a historic opportunity to fulfill its goal of becoming a European state, even though it lacked some of the elements necessary to reach that goal. The bipolar world order had served Turkey's purpose of having its European credentials accepted by the West, albeit reluctantly. When Turkey applied to all the right clubs in Europe, the dominant factors in the decision to accept it were the deterrence and containment of the Soviets.

In the post-1945 international order, the West saw Turkey's inclusion in

3. Ihsan Gurkan, "Soviet Preferences for Regional Wars and the Southern Rimlands;' in Middle East, Turkey and the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Ali Karaosmanoglu and Seyfi Tashan (Ankara: Foreign Policy Institute, 1987), 34.

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112 Mediterranean Quarterly: Fall 1995

the European system of states as of utmost importance for European secu-rity. Thus, Turkey became a member of the Organization for Economic Coop-eration and Development (OECD) in 1948, the Council of Europe in 1949,

and NATO in 1952. When Turkey signed the Ankara Treaty for associate membership in the European Economic Community in 1963, the quest for Turkey's Europeanness was deemed over. However, the dismantling of the Soviet Union has caused Westerners to question the importance of Turkey as a security partner. The Red Menace is gone, and with it the raison d'etre for Turkey's inclusion into Europe.

Samuel Huntington has defined Turkey as a torn country, because its state elite has tried to gain Western status but its traditions and culture are essentially non-Western.4 As for its future, he says, "The end of the Soviet Union gives Turkey the opportunity to become a leader of a revived Turkic civilization involving seven countries from the borders of Greece to those of China. Encouraged by the West, Turkey is making strenuous effort to carve this new identity for itself."5 _{The search for this new identity, however,}

pro-ceeds along a very rocky road.

In the post-Cold War period, Turkey is playing its Eastern connections to secure its place in Europe. In the words of Graham Fuller,

Turkey now inhabits a new world. Within a few years of Gorbachev's coming to power, Turkey's geopolitical environment began to change in three directions. To the northwest, truly independent Balkan states have emerged, which are now in the process of creating a new Balkan state system. Directly to the north, Turkey has an opportunity for direct rela-tions by sea with a newly independent Ukraine and a distinct new Russ-ian entity. To the northeast, three independent states have appeared on the scene in the Caucasus with whom Turkey has already established direct relations: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Further to the east, five independent Muslim states have emerged in the former Soviet Asia.6

4. Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations;' Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 42. 5. Ibid.

6. Graham Fuller, "Turkey's New Eastern Orientation," in Turkey's New Geopolitics, ed. Graham Fuller, Ian Lesser, and Paul Henze (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), 37.

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These changes, in turn, require a multifaceted, diversified Turkish foreign policy. In the new security environment, Turks proudly sense a new interna-tional prominence for themselves as a major regional power in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. 7 _{Turkey's policy toward the Middle East} is also a part of this scheme of being a regional power.

Turkey: Friend or Foe in the Middle East?

Bernard Lewis quoted Field Marshal Slim as saying, "Turkey is the only European country in the Middle East."8 The reason for such classification is that Turkey is perceived to be the only secular Muslim state that is ruled by norms of democratic conduct and a free market economy.

The factors that affect Turkey's relations with the Middle East can be summarized as (1) the historical legacy, (2) the Kurdish problem, (3) security of access to oil, (4) water politics, (5) the Palestinian problem, and (6) Islam.

In

the same sense that Turkey's international relations dur-ing the Cold War existed among three interactdur-ing spheres, these six ele-ments determined Turkey's place in the Middle East at the end of the Cold War.

From the sixteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ottomans ruled the Arab peninsula. During World War I, the Arab sub-jects of the Ottoman Empire revolted against the Porte. The Great Arab Revolt of 1916, led by the Sherif of Mecca, is still seen today by Turks as a "monumental act of betrayal."9 In addition to this imperial past, Turkish-Middle East relations are complicated by the parties' different approaches to Islam. Turks had adopted Islam in the tenth century due to Arab influ-ence and to a certain extent to force. The Turkish republic that replaced the Ottoman Empire in 1923 was intended to be a secular nation-state. Modernity was perceived to be possible only within a process of secular-ization. Thus, one of the tenets of the Republican People's Party was laicism. The concept of the religious state was replaced by the

nation-7. Morton Abramowitz, "Dateline Ankara: Turkey after Ozal," Foreign Policy 91 (summer 1993): 164. 8. As quoted by Seyfi Tashan in "Current Turkish Policy in the Middle East," in The Middle East in Turkish-American Relations, ed. George Harris (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1984), 37. 9. Philip Robins, Turkey and the Middle East (London: Pinter, 1991), 19.

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state, and the road toward modernity began with a move away from the Middle East.IO This repositioning was not appreciated by the Middle East-ern states. For example, in radio broadcasts Saudi Arabia has continu-ously denounced the secular Turkish republic and labeled its founder Ataturk "an enemy of Islam."11

Following dissolution of the empire, the relationship between Turkey and the states of the Middle East became complex, formal, and differen-tiated.12 The post-1923 period was characterized by a Turkish foreign policy that favored noninvolvement in Middle Eastern affairs. This period of almost nonexistent relations, with the exception of the short-lived attempt of the Baghdad Pact of the mid-fifties, lasted until 1964. During the sixties, Turkish policymakers became aware of their growing isolation vis-a-vis the Middle Eastern states, especially during the 1963-64 Cyprus crisis. After 1964, Turkish foreign policy began to diversify, rela-tions with the Soviet Union were reestablished, and there was a search for ways to ameliorate ties with the Middle East. The importance of the Mid-dle East in global politics reached a peak after the 1973 oil crisis, which made the Turkish government even more aware of its isolation. The United States embargo that followed the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974 strengthened these new policy tendencies. "The Turkish leaders became convinced that they needed to distinguish their country's inter-ests in the Middle East independently from those of the U.S. in order to mend their country's relations with the Arab states," according to one scholar.13

The change toward the Middle East accelerated during the military rule after 1980 because Turkey needed capital flow from the Middle East and because its generals became involved in Islamic organizations. As to the lat-ter, one writer has noted that "it may seem paradoxical that only after the takeover by the military junta, which claimed to be staunchly Kemalist, did

10. For further information on the process of secularization in Turkey, see Niyazi Berkes, Turkiye'de Cagdaslasma-Modernization in Turkey (Istanbul: Bilgi Yayinevi, 1973).

11. Biro! A. Yesilada, "Turkish Foreign Policy toward the Middle East;' in The Political and Socio-Economic Transformation of Turkey, ed. Biro! Yesilada, Attilla Eralp, and Muherin Tunay (Westport, Colo.: Praeger, 1993), 176.

12. Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, 17. 13. Yesilada, 170.

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Muftuler: Turkey: A New Player llS

cooperation with its Muslim neighbors become a stable component in Turkey's overall approach to foreign policy."14

Kenan Evren-the general who staged the coup in 1980 and who later became president-was elected chairman of the Islamic Standing Commit-tee for Economic: and Commercial Cooperation. Evren also chaired the Orga-nization of the Islamic Conference meeting in 1984, the first time a Turkish head of state had attended, let alone chaired, the meeting.

There were, therefore, certain modificatio~s in Turkish foreign policy toward its Middle Eastern neighbors already in evidence from the 1960s, hut a breakthrough in that policy occurred only with the end of the Cold War.

Post-Cold War Turkish-Middle Eastern Relations

The gradual change in Turkey's foreign policy toward the Middle East gained momentum in the post-Cold War era for a number ofreasons: (1) the peace process between the Arabs and the Israelis, (2) the importance of stability in the region in order to secure access to oil, (3) the Kurdish problem, and ( 4) the scarcity of water. These four issues are the intersecting vectors of current Turkish policy toward the Middle East.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been one of the dominant themes of Middle Eastern politics since the creation of Israel. Turkey's policy may he viewed as a metaphor for the uncertainties, ambivalence, and contradictions of its policy toward the Middle East since World War

II.

15 When the United Nations voted on the partition of Palestine in November 194 7, Turkey voted against the resolution. But Turkey voted with the West in December 1948 to establish a reconciliation commission on Palestine, and on 28 March 1949, it became the first Muslim state to recognize Israel.16 As a result of Turkey's official recognition of Israel, its already sour ties with the Arab countries deteriorated even more. For example, Egyptian president Nasser stated that

14. Udo Steinbach, "The European Community, the United States, the Middle East and Turkey;' in Politics in the Third World, ed. Metin Harper and Ahmet Evin (Boulder, Colo: Westview, 1994), llO. 15. Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, 74.

16. Mahmut Bali Aykan, "The Palestinian Question in Turkish Foreign Policy from the 1950s to the 1990s," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25 (winter 1993): 92.

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"Turkey, because of its Israeli policy, is disliked in the Arab World." 17 Only after 1964 did Turkey try to follow an evenhanded policy toward the Israelis and the Palestinians. In 1974, Turkey voted for all of the United Nations General Assembly resolutions supporting the Palestinians, and in 1976

Turkey recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the rights of the Palestinian people.

The Madrid conference of October 1991, which began the current process between the Israelis and the Arabs, also opened a new frontier for Turkey. According to John Murray Brown "If an Arab-Israeli peace treaty is signed, Turkey will be more effective in the Middle East region." 18 Turgut Ozal, the

Turkish prime minister from 1983 to 1989 and president from 1989 until his death in April 1993, regarded relations with Israel "as a window on future events." He claimed that for Turkey to play a role in solving the problems of the Middle East, that window must remain open.19

Turkey's role in the peace process is crucial in the multilateral track, especially in the fora on water, economic cooperation, and regional security. The newly emerging and warming bilateral relationship between Turkey and Israel is evident in reciprocal visits by high-ranking officials, the most

recent of which was Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciller's trip to Israel, the Palestinian self-rule area, and Egypt in November 1994. She was the first foreign prime minister to visit Gaza. The visit by itself demonstrated the importance the Turkish government attaches to the peace process and is also a reminder of the evenhanded policy of the Turkish government toward the Israelis and the Palestinians.20

The second parameter in the new stance toward the Middle East is Turkey's role in Middle Eastern security, for which the Persian Gulf crisis and subsequent events offer the best example. The crisis became an impor-tant turning point in Turkey's relations with the West and the Middle East.

It quickly became an issue involving both the Middle East and the Western

17. Ismail Soysal, "Turkish-Arab Diplomatic Relations after the Second World War," in Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations (Istanbul: Foundation for Studies on Turkish-Arab Relations, 1986), 253. 18. John Murray Brown, Financial Times, 28 July 1993.

19. Joint Publications Research Service, Near East, 3 October 1986, 116.

20. Meltem Muftuler, "Turkey and Palestine: New Beginnings;' (paper presented at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation conference on Turkey's Contribution to the Construction of Palestine, Ankara, 1-3 December 1994), 15.

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relationships of Turkey, and the policies developed in Ankara in one sphere could not help but have a major impact on those in the other.21 The crisis was important to Western security, because it revealed how European coun-tries can be harmed by turmoil in the Middle East and the extent to which Europe is tied to stability in this region.22

The Gulf crisis of 1990/91 was a timely reminder of the importance of Turkey with respect to the Middle East. It underlined the critical geostrategic location of Turkey, and the crisis itself underlined the simi-larity of perception towards the Middle East which Turkey shares with the states of the EC [European Community].23

The positive impact of the crisis for Turkey was the demonstration that, even though the Red Menace is gone, Turkey is still important for European security. Turkey is now surrounded by areas ridden with instability, of which the Middle East is of strategic importance due to European dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Thus, it is no small coincidence that there were sugges-tions that after the Gulf War the United States might seek to develop Egypt and Turkey as the regional pillars of a new Persian Gulf security system, as part of the new world order of President Bush.24 On the other hand, the Gulf

crisis of 1990-91 attracted international public opinion to the suppression of Kurds in Iraq and, by causing a political vacuum in the area, aggravated Turkey's own Kurdish problem.

The Persian Gulf crisis made the Kurdish problem one of the most impor-tant parameters of Middle Eastern politics and demonstrated that "the per-sistence of a violent domestic conflict will undermine Turkey's role as a sta-bilizing influence in the regions in which its interests and those of its Western allies coincide."25

The Kurdish problem is increasingly becoming the greatest headache for

21. Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, 68.

22. See Meltem Muftuler, Turkey's Relations with a Changing Europe (Manchester, England: Man-chester University Press, forthcoming).

23. Philip Robins, "Turkey and the Eastern Arab World," in Europe and the Middle East, ed. Gerd Nonneman (London: Federal Trust for Education and Research, 1993), 189.

24. William Hale, "Turkey, the Middle East and the Gulf Crisis," International Affairs 68, no. 4 (1992): 691.

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the Turkish government. An additional factor that complicates the issue is that the Kurdish problem is not confined to the borders of Turkey. Kurds are dispersed throughout the area, with large populations in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and to a certain extent Russia. In October

1984,

Turkey and Iraq had signed a security accord for the "hot pursuit" of Kurdish terrorists, who are orga-nized under the Kurdish Workers' Party (Partiya Karkera Kurdistan, or

PKK). The Turkish government undertook a number of interventions in

northern Iraq with the consent of the Iraqi government between

1984

and

1990.

After the Gulf War, Turkey became even more involved with the fate of northern Iraq because the area was a political vacuum. In the aftermath of the Persian Gulf crisis, a security zone was created in Iraq north of the thirty-sixth parallel, under the control of Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Demo-cratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which compete with each other to gain full control of the region. These two groups are suspected of providing support to the outlawed PKK. In

1992,

the Turk-ish government engaged in an "open alliance with the KDP to ensure that the PKK would not operate so freely in the future."26 The lack of border con:.. trols, the political vacuum in the area, and the rivalry between the two Iraqi Kurdish groups provide a fertile ground for the PKK to flourish in the area. The most recent event was the Turkish intervention into northern Iraq called Operation Steel, which began on

20

March

1995

and ended officially on 5 May. The intervention sought to clear out the PKK camps and eliminate PKK infiltration from Iraq into the Turkish southeast and to demonstrate Turkey's ability to project power in the area. Operation Steel involved thirty-five thousand Turkish troops and was said to be the largest operation of the Turkish armed forces in the area.

Iraq, Iran, and Syria were disturbed by such a demonstration of force by the Turkish armed forces, and the operation damaged Turkey's relations with the European states. On

6

March

1995

Turkey signed a customs union agreement with the European Union, which was scheduled to be ratified in September

1995

by the European Parliament. The Turkish intervention in northern Iraq jeopardized this ratification. In addition, one of Turkey's best

26. Philip Robins, "The Overlord State: Turkish Policy and the Kurdish Issue;' International Affairs 69, no. 4 (1993): 668.

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friends in Europe, Germany, decided not to sell arms to Turkey in reaction to the intervention. Holland and Norway followed suit. On 26 April 1995, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared that Turkey had two months to withdraw from northern Iraq and to pass reforms on the Kur-dish problem, or its membership would be suspended.

Finally, there is the issue of water. Its scarcity in the Middle East is simi-lar in certain aspects to the scarcity of oil in other areas of the world.

In

1987, Turkey and Syria signed an agreement according to which Turkey undertook to release a minimum of five hundred cubic meters of water to Syrian territory daily. This means that the water released from Syria toward Iraq will be reduced, since Syria controls the water flow into Iraqi territory. The concern and suspicions that had been brewing for ten years over utiliza-tion of the Euphrates water came to a head on 13 January 1990, when Turk-ish authorities began to fill the Ataturk Dam reservoir, which will be the fifth largest rock-filled dam in the world.27 _{The Southeast Anatolian Project} (GAP is its Turkish acronym) is a massive development project that includes fifteen dams, nineteen irrigation projects, and fourteen hydroelectric power stations. The GAP project and the Ataturk Dam reservoir give Turkey even more leverage over its neighbors with respect to control over water resources since two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, constitute the backbone of the project.

Another aspect of the politics of water is the peace pipeline project whose architect was the late President Turgut Ozal. The project aims to transport water from the relatively water-abundant region of eastern Turkey to the countries in the Persian Gulf and Levant by two water pipelines. The west-ern pipeline would go through Syria and Jordan to end up in Mecca; the gulf pipeline would go to Kuwait and Oman.28 This project undertakes to use the resources from two other Turkish rivers, the Ceyhan and the Seyhan, that rise in central Anatolia. These two rivers carry 39 million cubic meters of water a day. Turkey will use 23 million cubic meters of that flow and export around 6 million cubic meters a day to the Middle Eastern states. This

pro-27. Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, 89-90.

28. Ero! Manisali, ed., Turkey's Place in the Middle East (Istanbul: Middle East Business and Bank-ing Publications, 1989), 70.

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ject is called the "peace pipeline" because it has become fashionable to say that the next war in the Middle East could be fought over water.29 _{Turkey, by} providing cheap water on a reliable basis, will decrease tension around the allocation of this scarce resource. An important advantage of this project for Turkey is that the project would increase Middle Eastern countries' depen-dence on Turkey for water, which, in turn, would promote Turkey as a regional power in the area.

Conclusion

Turkey's post-Cold War international politics is increasingly assessed with respect to Turkey's position in the Middle Eastern subsystem of states. Turkey's inclusion in the European camp is now justified with respect to Turkey's role in the Middle East, just as the raison d'etre of Turkey's accep-tance into the post-World War II European organizations was based on Turkey's role as buffer state to the Soviet Union. The irony is that the Middle Eastern subsystem of states is the constellation that Turkey traditionally tried to escape from. This change in Turkey's role, however, does not help Turkish aspirations to gain approval of its credentials as a European state.

The primary focus of Turkish foreign policy is still the West, specifically the European system of states. Turkey's roles in the Middle East and its involvement with the newly independent Central Asian republics are per-ceived by the West to be reinforcing mechanisms to secure Turkey's place in the Europe of the future.

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Reviews

Susan L. Woodward: Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold

War. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995. 536 pages. ISBN 0-8157-9514-9. $42.95. Reviewed by Walter R. Roberts.

On 25 June 1991, Yugoslavia as we knew it fell apart when two of its constituent republics unilaterally seceded and declared their independence. What preceded and followed this momentous day is extensively described in Susan Woodward's Balkan Tragedy. Meticulously researched, it is a most objective study of the events leading up

to 25 June and of the irrational developments since: a Balkan tragedy indeed.

The common assumption, particularly in the United States, is that Yugoslavia was held together artificially by an authoritarian communist dictatorship under Josip Broz Tito and that when he died in 1980 the country soon disintegrated. The main reason for the disintegration, so prevalent opinion holds, is that the Serbian element of Yugoslavia was determined to upset the careful balance of different nationalities decreed by Tito, in order to achieve Serbian supremacy over all of Yugoslavia. This view was held to be particularly true after Slobodan Milosevic assumed the leadership in 1987.

Susan Woodward, however, ascribes the disintegration to other factors: "In fact ... the Yugoslav conflict is inseparable from international change and interdependence, and it is not confined to the Balkans but is part of a more widespread phenomenon of political disintegration. The conflict grew and infected Western alliances because those making policy and shaping public opinion toward Yugoslavia misunderstood the nature and the origins of the conflict from the beginning." Yugoslavia broke apart not as "a result of historical animosities" but "of the politics of transforming a socialist society to a market economy and democracy."

This book makes it clear that the drive toward disintegration was spearheaded by the communist leadership of Slovenia (with many observers in the West conveniently Walter R. Roberts, diplomat in residence at the George Washington University, is the author of Tito, Mihailovic and the Allies, 1941-1945.