The position Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken on Iran’s nuclear programme underlines the importance of enabling Turkey’s entry into the EU. His response to the pressure by America and its allies to force Iran to drop its nuclear programme indicates that he is loosing patience with the resistance from the French and Germans to Turkey’s entrance to the European community. In doing this he is reflecting growing opposition within Turkey to EU entry. In describing Iran’s leader Ahmadinejad as a ‘friend’ and pointing to the nuclear arsenals that the permanent members of the UN security council already possess as proof of the hypocrisy of their attitude towards Iran he is throwing down the gauntlet to countries pressurising Iran.
As always in Turkish foreign policy attitudes there is much that relates to domestic politics within the country. In taking up this position Erogan clearly believes he is in a secure enough position in relation to the army to follow the ideological position of his party, the AKP, in providing support for a fellow Muslim country. Previously moves such as this would have brought military intervention from an army that sees itself as protector of the secular state.
It will be hard for the Americans now to see the Turks occupying a pivotal role between east and west, especially as Turkey has banned Israeli participation in upcoming NATO exercises. A worrying factor must be Erdogan’s refusal to criticise the irregularities in the Iranian elections and the crack down on dissident voices that followed it. His domestic critics would be right to worry about the light this throws on Erdogan’s views of democracy within Turkey itself.
If Obama is persuaded by his hawks to attack Iran’s nuclear installations the result would be to provide Erdogan with the justification for breaking off the procedures to join the EU and even push Turkey itself towards a theocratic state. Now possessed of an economic growth rate which the so-called developed economies can only dream of, the Turks are no longer in hoc to American economic pressures. Further through the Muslim capitalism that underwrites Erdogan’s AKP and is seen in vast conglomerates like Dogal operating throughout the country, Turkey is now in a position to establish an independent position for itself immune from American economic intervention.
Moves towards healing the sores of the Turkish state such as the position of the Kurds in Turkish society and how to come to terms with its historical inheritance from Armenia appear to be on the way to being settled. The opening up of the border between Turkey and Armenia provides another boost for the Turkish economy.
It is impossible to underestimate the importance of the reconciliation enshrined within the recent protocols for a new relationship between Turkey and Armenia. Around these are consequences for the Caucasus including Azerbaijan and Georgia, reaching even to Russia. Outside of this is the influential Armenia diaspora within Turkey and particularly in America. We see a state whose influence now reaches both into the Middle East and into the turbulent states surrounding Russia.
As always in Turkey the murder of Hrant Dink an Armenian protestor by an extreme Turkish nationalist group highlights the propensity for elements such as these in Turkish politics to derail progress towards human rights. Equally disputes of these kind can be used by government as an excuse for attacks on opposition groups. The blind eye that the Erdogan government turns to the High Court decision to make the writer Pamuk liable to claims from the entire Turkish population for libel is a case in point.
If anything belies Henry Ford’s statement that ‘History is bunk’ it is the state of Turkey. We look at the country through the distorted eyeglass of Christian liberalism, forgetting that the break up of the Turkish Empire imposed incredible suffering on its people. In contrast to some European states like the Belgians the Turks were not invariably brutal tyrants in the countries they controlled. In Greece for instance there was freedom of worship. What happened to the Turkish diaspora in states that achieved independence such as Bulgaria usually involved massacres on a large scale. Is it surprising then when much of western history is written in terms of ‘The wicked Turk’ that there is within the country a high level of sensitivity to criticism? Britain should register its impatience with the French and Germans in allowing populist prejudice reflected in a distorted view of the Turk’s role in history to obstruct the Turks assimilation into Europe.