Article
Turkey, the US, and Iraq
Turkey is on a roller coaster ride. It must adjust to the dramatic changes of power in the Middle East, and it must at the same time implement the disorienting reforms demanded of it to qualify for membership in the EU. In response, the new government in Ankara is biting the bullet of civilian strategic decision. And it is carrying out extensive domestic reforms.
With its offer to send Turkish peacekeeping troops to Iraq, the moderate Islamic government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) bit the bullet that no civilian Turkish government before it ever dared bite. And it began to improve relations with the United States after the quarrel last March as the new parliament refused to let American troops invade Iraq from Turkish soil and the GIs had to be redeployed at the last minute.
In the end Ankara’s offer was turned down by the Iraqis; Iraqi Kurds in particular feared that the Turks could use a presence in the country to curtail the autonomy the Kurds have enjoyed for a decade in the north of Iraq. And Turkey must still come to terms with the drop in its strategic importance to Washington after the American ouster of Saddam Hussein and US control of oil-rich Iraq.
Nonetheless, the Turkish offer did represent an unprecedented adjustment to the new realities by a civilian government in Ankara. Previously, security policy was always the preserve of the powerful Turkish military. Indeed, one element in the Turkish parliament’s rebuff of the US in March was the refusal of the Turkish military to help the new government by taking a position on the issue.
Ankara thus faces difficult dilemmas as it simultaneously adapts to the new power configuration in the Middle East and enacts the painful reforms needed to qualify for entry into the European Union. As a result of these political reforms, Turkey should soon have structures that are more democratic and civilian. The EU demanded a curtailing of the army’s influence in the National Security Council and other decision-making bodies; these reforms are being implemented. But they place on the present government more of the burden of security responsibility that civilian politicians have always eschewed. For their part, the generals have not always confined themselves to articulating security policy, but have intervened vigorously in other areas of politics as well.
Democratization is already breaking up this pattern. Erdogan is being forced to assume more responsibility for foreign policy, including even security issues. To succeed, the government will have to complete the transformation of the National Security Council into a civilian institution.
It may thus be said that the 50-year odyssey of democracy in Turkey entered a new phase when the country finally became an official candidate for accession to the European Union in 1999. For Turkish democracy, which was interrupted several times by military dictatorships in the last half century, confirmation of the country’s candidate status marked the beginning of a deep transformation process. Turkey’s modernization and alignment with the West have since taken a purposeful course, in both form and content. By legislating and implementing the political reforms required by the EU, Turkey has taken important structural steps toward becoming a Western-style democracy.
Foreign Policy Adjustments
The external problems that Turkey has faced during its process of democratization and change, especially the Iraq crisis, have thus prompted the country to seek a re-orientation of its foreign policy. The AKP had to deal with the Iraq crisis a short few months after it came to power in November 2002, while it was still coping with challenges over the party’s legitimacy and constitutionality. It was therefore eager to cooperate closely with the US to gain international backing. The government vacillated, however, as it did not want to appear to be aiding the invasion of a fellow Muslim country.
Last March, when the Turkish parliament narrowly defeated the bill that would have authorized use of Turkish territory by the US military for the invasion of Iraq, all sides gave the impression of having been jolted out of a deep sleep. The Americans were particularly shocked; they had not anticipated such a rebuff from a NATO partner that for fifty years had been docile.
In Europe, commentators who did not dare oppose the American plans openly praised the Turkish parliament’s decision as a victory for demo cracy. Hardliners in the United States, by contrast, thought that this was a case of too much democracy; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz soon found a scapegoat in the Turkish military. Subsequently, American troops raided a Turkish command post in Sülemaniye, Iraq and subjected both officers and soldiers to the kind of treatment usually reserved for al Qaeda prisoners captured in Afgha nistan. The episode lingers in people’s memories as a psychological attack on Turkish forces and therefore on the country as a whole.
All along, the Iraq crisis and the new US goal in the Middle East of securing control of the region’s oil reserves has presented fresh dangers for Turkey’s own security. Any Kurdish state that might be founded in northern Iraq in the near future would threaten the territorial integrity not only of Turkey, but also of Iran and Syria, given the Kurdish minorities in all three states. Yet the United States repeatedly scolds the latter two countries and frowns on Turkey’s cooperation with them. Characteristically, the influential Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said a Turkish failure to provide the support the US is demanding for its policy toward Syria and Iran would have disastrous consequences for US-Turkish relations. To forestall American disfavor, Ankara has had to cool its relations with Damascus and Tehran.
Nonetheless, the continuing attacks on American forces in Iraq—and especially the unexpected hostility of Shi’ites—are leading Washington to desire improvement in its relations with Turkey. While the US is making progress in reconstruction, it is apparently rethinking some details of its original plan for postwar Iraq.
Since the Shi’ites constitute a majority in Iraq both in population and religious affiliation, it is likely that any future democratic regime would be largely Shi’ite Muslim in character. Yet even if the United States succeeds in bringing both the Kurds and the secular Shi’ites into a democratic regime, this would not preclude some internal uprising or even an eventual split of Iraq into two or more entities. Nor has the US ruled out regime change in Damascus and Tehran, should it see dangers in cooperation between an Iraqi government and Iran and Syria.
Of particular interest to Turkey will be the eventual US attitude on the Kurdish issue and the overall viability of a federal Iraqi state. The provisional Iraqi cabinet’s allocation of six seats to represent three million Kurds and another six seats to represent the 15 million Iraqi Arabs could soon produce an explosion and perhaps even make civil war in Iraq inevitable Under these circumstances Washington might change its policy and break up Iraq rather than trying to stabilize it as a unified country.
What, then, are Ankara’s options? Until the Iraqi rejection of Turkish forces, Turkey was under American pressure to send troops to Iraq—and Turkish forces were earmarked for deployment in central Iraq and northern Baghdad, precisely the region that has been resisting the US-led occupation most violently. What could Turkish soldiers have achieved in the sector in which the US has suffered its highest number of casualties? Could the Turks have managed to suppress the resistance the Americans have failed to suppress? In sending soldiers to Iraq, Turkey would have been plunging into an adventure with an uncertain outcome. Yet a refusal to support the US-led occupation would have irreparably damaged bilateral relations with the US.
The US preference not to have a Turkish military presence in northern Iraq suggested that American plans for that region run counter to Turkish interests. The redrawing of borders in the Middle East could throw into doubt the Turkish borders that were concluded and guaranteed by the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty. And a longer-term American military presence in northern Iraq would represent as much of a threat to Turkey as would a possible neighboring Kurdish state or an unstable Iraqi regime.
Developments like the exclusion of ethnic Turkmen from the provisional Iraqi leadership and the crystallizing impression that the Kurds are on their way to dominating the Iraqi regime are plainly not in Turkey’s interest. It is equally clear that any American invasion of Iran, Turkey’s eastern neighbor, could produce a new zone of instability.
It might even be said that outside interventions, while they can lead to short-term stability, tend to make the region more unstable over the longer term.
Download as PDF (110.600 Bytes)
