The U.S.’ Test with Turkey’s “AKP”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman’s statement that “we need to stop coddling the Ahk* party government. We have created a huge position of political moral hazard for ourselves by allowing the Ahk* party government to believe that it is more important to the United States than the United States to it, and that is errant nonsense,” took me on a journey back to the 1970s, and even to years before that. Those old enough to remember the days back then will recall that Turkey’s transition to democracy in 1950, the rise to power of the Democrat Party (DP) and the “golden age” between 1950 and 1957 were attributed to the United States. An overt exaggeration that might be, but it is true that the United States had asked Turkey to be a more democratic country after World War II. When Inonu had realized that Germany would lose the war, he had taken an immediate initiative and sought ways to reconcile with the U.S. Inonu’s decision might have been due to his fear that the U.S. would have held him responsible for his support for Germany during the war. After all, Turkey was a country in great need. It is also true that it must have been hard for a politician like Inonu, who had embraced the course of modernization and reformation since the Ottomans, to accept having a country under an iron fist.

It has also been suggested that the DP, which had come to power in those circumstances and claimed that it would “turn Turkey into little America,” was overthrown by the United States. The reason was, according to the adherents of this claim, that Menderes was trying to industrialize Turkey and would turn Turkey into a self-sufficient country. Turkey had aspired to become a regional power under the DP, but the U.S. had wanted Turkey to remain a country with an agricultural economy. This, it has been claimed, had brought the DP’s end. If you go to archives, you will see New York Times Editor Sulzberger’s column, “Menderes [the DP leader] is playing with fire,”** that he had penned in Turkey.

The scenario was put into play for Suleyman Demirel’s Adalet Partisi [Justice Party, or JP]. This time the U.S. had wanted “Morrison Suleyman [because he worked as an engineer at Morrison Knudsen company]” in Turkey, but when Demirel had implemented growth and developmental policies between 1965 and 1971, he had to face the American barrier once again. The United States was indeed appointing governments all around the world through military coup d’états at the time. One can recall what happened in Chile or Pakistan. In the end Demirel was ousted from power, and he would later say that “the U.S. was behind the March 12 military intervention [which toppled him].” The then-Foreign Minister Caglayangil had confirmed the same account. And before the JP was ousted from power, another Sulzberger had come to Turkey, and he had also uttered a similar warning against the JP by writing in a newspaper that “Demirel was playing with fire.”

The left in Turkey had viewed the world through theories of imperialism back then and therefore watched these issues with great interest. The left had, of course, not submitted to Demirel, but they had also objected ardently to his overthrow. Ironically, Demirel had been defended, not by his close associates, but by the very leftists he and the Nationalist Front governments had sought to decimate and he had had executed.

The same scenario is now once more on stage. Edelman is not totally unaware of what has been happening in Turkey, but he apparently does not know enough about them. Yet, he repeats the classical American scenario. Was the AKP’s rise to the government not seen as an American play from the beginning? Did we not hear the Graham Fuller theses everywhere? It is now thought that time for the AKP to go has arrived and somebody sends the “preliminary signals.”

This really is the case. It really is an American scenario. This is the way world empires play the game. They tend to forget governments with which they had previously enjoyed good relations in case these governments would someday get stronger and start posing “troubles” for the empire. This is more a “security element” policy and a security policy. American friendship has always those thorns attached to it. But it is also wrong to “burn out the whole duvet because of a few fleas.” Turkey has to better express itself to the United States. Obviously Turkish–American relations have been sour since the “one minute” event at Davos. But the Obama administration does not have deep-rooted problems with Turkey. The problem arises more because of other American flanks that work against and seek to eliminate Obama and then, of course, drown the world in blood.

Everybody is subject to the test of history. Let’s see who is going to write what against Edelman’s “thoughts.” I wonder most what the left has to say. I mean the “left” that did not shy away from casting the same vote with Kenan Evren [former Chief of Staff that committed the 1980 coup d’état] at the ballot box. ...

*Editor’s Note: The correct abbreviation of the Justice and Development Party is AKP.
**Editor’s Note: This quote, though accurately translated, could not be verified.