If We Lose Turkey

Ankara will be kept tied to the West. The US has understood this. But what will Europe do?

In Turkey, local elections scheduled for the end of the month are imminent and the country is waiting impatiently for Barack Obama’s visit. In a place where the elections will delineate the future of internal regional politics of the country, Obama’s visit attests to the importance given to the cooperation of Turkey with the United States on questions that are a priority to American foreign policy.

The bilateral visit in Turkey at the conclusion of Obama’s first trip to Europe to participate in three summits corroborates American opinion that Turkey is a European country and member of the Atlantic Alliance. The visit also confirms the messages given by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her recent stop in Ankara, demonstrating that Washington considers Turkey a strong ally in Iraq, Afghanistan, the peace process in the Middle East and the Caucasus. In particular, Clinton praised the secular and democratic nature of the government, hoping that Turkey consolidates its Western character both in a strategic sense and in terms of political identity and internal ideology.

In more practical terms, the U.S. intends to work with the Turkish government while withdrawing from Iraq. In the past two years, Washington has provided Ankara with appreciable intelligence support to remove the separatists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the north of Iraq, and Turkey has begun to change its own politics toward Kurdistan’s governmental authorities. The Kurdish and Turkish authorities are working closely in attempting to disarm and disband the PKK. In the face of serious danger from the increasingly powerful Iraq army, the Kurds don’t have a better potential ally than their Turkish neighbor. Although the question of the province of Kirkuk, where there is a lot of oil, is still unresolved, the process of rapprochement between the two countries continues seamlessly, a fact appreciated by the Americans.

Turkey has proven to be particularly useful in the training of the Afghan security forces and the construction and the administration of schools and hospitals in Afghanistan. However, Ankara is reluctant to send its fighting troops to Afghanistan while Washington insists on asking for them. In the Middle East, despite the Turkish reaction to the Israeli attack in Gaza Ankara is appreciated for its mediation work.

The Turkish president Abdullah Gul went to Tehran where he met the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomenei and made his opinions on the intentions of the American administration known. Even more important is the fact that the two countries are collaborating to bring about the rapprochement of Turkey and Armenia. From unconfirmed reports we could deduce that they are preparing the ground for an initiative aimed at beginning diplomatic relations between Ankara and Yerevan and the subsequent opening of the borders. This turn depends on whether there is the intention on the part of parliament or the president to officially define what happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide.

It is evident that Ankara finds itself in an optimal position to have a constructive role on the forefront in all the areas that surround it. The only question that many experts are still racking their brains to understand is whether Ankara, governed by a party that has its origins in an Islamist movement, will be more greatly disposed to work as an ally of the West or an ally of a Middle Eastern Islamic country. Hence the trivial question that is circulating in these days: “Are we perhaps letting Turkey escape us?”

Turkey is not turning its back on the West in terms of strategic direction, but in fact is asking for space for a more autonomous role in re-inventing itself as a regional power in the surrounding areas. Turkey should remain a Western country in terms of organization of internal politics, ideological structure, principles and values that it espouses.

The question tied to the eventual “loss of Turkey” therefore concerns more the nature of a country than its strategic propensity. This is why the Western partners of Turkey will have to also make a choice. Will they be happy to collaborate with a country that is not in fact a democracy because it is convenient to do so, or do they prefer that Turkey is full-fledged member of the Atlantic Alliance? And also, will they consider Turkey an important Middle Eastern country that aligns itself with the West to intervene concretely in that region or will they treat it as a member of the Atlantic Alliance that has a strong influence in the Middle East?

For the moment, the Obama administration has expressed its intention to work with a Turkey that has “Atlanticist” credentials and can be helpful in the Middle East. In practice, therefore, the Americans are replacing the sleepy European Union through their management of the Turkish question. We should ask ourselves, in any case, if in the EU someone somewhere is giving the question even the slightest bit of attention.