Let’s Not Talk Turkey

This being Brussels, seat of the fantasy empire of geostrategic make-believe, no one will be so impolite as to point out the absurdity of the occasion. But the truth is Turkey has as much chance of joining the European Union as John Kerry has of winning a recount in Ohio. It isn’t going to happen.

Only eight months after European leaders decided to begin negotiations on membership with Ankara, events have conspired to ensure that what was already a long shot has become a no-hoper. The rejection of the E.U. constitutional treaty by France and the Netherlands spoke to a deepening European hostility to the very idea of enlargement. A Eurobarometer poll by the European Commission in July found that among the 15 countries that have been members the longest, support for Turkish accession was at 32 percent.

Fear of the economic consequences of admitting millions of relatively low-paid workers into the European labor market, together with rising concern over the dilution of European identity by an alien Middle Eastern culture makes the idea of Turkish membership highly unpopular. If the French didn’t like the idea of the (Catholic) Polish plumber putting good Frenchmen out of work, they are not going to warm to the (Muslim) Turkish bricklayer.

Even in Britain, a country historically disposed to admitting Turkey, the events of the summer are likely to play out to Ankara’s disadvantage. The terrorist attacks in London led to a fundamental reappraisal of Britain’s embrace of multiculturalism. The prospect of 70 million Turks having the right of free movement to Britain’s shores is not likely to go well with British voters.

Next month these sizable popular obstacles to Turkish membership will be buttressed by a very large political one. If, as still seems probable, the Christian Democratic-Christian Social coalition wins the German elections on September 18, on their own or in coalition with the Free Democratic party, Turkey’s dimming hopes will recede further. Under the leadership of Angela Merkel, the largest country in Europe will be headed by a government that is resolutely opposed to an enlargement to Turkey. Within eighteen months France too could have a new government likely to be more reflective of the popular will against Turkish membership than the current one. Adding sacred insult to all this secular injury, even the Holy Spirit seems to be against the Turks. The new pope, Benedict XVI, elected in April to succeed John Paul II, has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Turkey joining the European Union.

The European Union won’t formally say No to Turkey, of course. The negotiations will begin in October as planned. But like Ulysses’ journey round the Aegean, Turkey’s voyage into the European Union is likely to be long, arduous, and ultimately tragic.

Britain and the new E.U. members will still press for Turkey’s accession, but other governments will stall, finding thousands of reasons why Turkey is not doing enough to warrant a firm date for entry. In the end some kind of relationship along the lines of Merkel’s idea of a “privileged partnership” is likely; something that stops well short of Turkish aspirations and well short of genuine inclusion in the European economic and political space.

This now inevitable rebuff to Ankara’s ambition will be an event of enormous global political significance. Realization by Turkey that its European vocation–the defining point of its foreign policy and national orientation for the last 20 years–is over will lead to a radical reappraisal of the country’s external direction and, quite possibly, its internal politics. Rejection will also have large implications for the United States, for its aims in Europe, its relations with Russia and the former Soviet bloc and with the broader Middle East.

Turkey is likely to respond angrily to the growing inevitability that the European Union will never get to Yes. This will fit with a Turkish-told narrative that is potent for radical shifts in domestic politics and foreign policy. According to this narrative, Turkey has been patronized and insulted by Europe despite strenuous efforts by Ankara to please the Europeans.

On a recent trip to Turkey, a senior government official pointed out to me that the country originally applied for E.U. membership in 1987; all the other countries that have applied subsequently–from the Baltics to Malta–have either been admitted or been given firm dates for admittance. Yet Turkey, this official noted, was a reliable ally in the Cold War, a vital bulwark against the Communist threat. When countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia were members of the Warsaw Pact, Turkey was a frontline NATO state, an inviting target for Soviet missiles. The former Communists now enjoy the full fruits of E.U. membership: The reliable ally Turkey suffers outside.

Recently, as it has geared up for membership, Turkey has made significant changes to its domestic politics and culture to align itself with European norms–reducing the role of the military and introducing human rights reforms. Over Cyprus, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan went further than any of its predecessors to persuade–successfully–the Turkish population to accept a United Nations peace settlement. (Turkey, of course, refuses to recognize Cyprus, a current E.U. member, while occupying about one-third of its land.) The Greeks rejected it.

From the Turkish viewpoint, if all these efforts achieve nothing from the Europeans, perhaps the country should look elsewhere for its strategic ambitions. Though the United States officially sympathizes with Turkey’s frustration over the E.U.’s foot-dragging, the Turks resent Washington even more than Europe these days.

America’s bungled attempt to get the Ankara parliament’s approval for Turkish support for the war in March 2003 left Americans irritated and even pro-Americans in Turkey frustrated. And that was the high point of recent relations. Since the war began, Turkish sentiment has turned steadily more negative.

Many Turks, including some at the highest levels of government, are convinced that the United States is at best conniving, at worst actively plotting, the creation of a Kurdish state, with claims on the Kurdish parts of Turkey’s soil. They watch with alarm at the political situation in Kirkuk, a city Kurds would like to see become the de facto capital of Kurdistan, where the Turkmen population is being steadily marginalized and isolated.

From Kurdish Iraq, the PKK, the terrorist group, operates with near impunity against Turkish targets. Even U.S. officials acknowledge that specific assurances given to Turkey in advance of the war about clamping down on the PKK have not been kept. Inside Turkey, media coverage of Iraq dwells heavily on allegations of U.S. “atrocities.” The news is full of reports of fellow Muslims murdered by American troops; the terrorists who are killing many more innocent Iraqis are treated as the “resistance.”

With Iraq a long way from political stability, Ankara blames the United States for unleashing turmoil on its own borders. As Turkey sees it, the country has been shut out of the European Union and abused by the United States. Why shouldn’t it look elsewhere in the world for friends and allies?

But while Turkish resentment at some of the events of the last few years is understandable, American and European neglect are not entirely to blame for the changes underway. International events have played into the hands of those in Turkish domestic politics who have long favored a reorientation of the country’s global approach–away from its traditional alliances with Europe and the United States and towards closer relationships with our current and former enemies. Such a shift would significantly change the strategic balance in the region.

But the claim that Turkey has been unloved and unrewarded by the West is not valid. Though E.U. membership has now receded again, Turkey has been on the receiving end of substantial assistance from the West. In 2003, even after the country failed to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it still got $1 billion in American aid to help with costs associated with the war.

More important, in 2001, despite deep skepticism among the Bush administration’s economic advisers, Turkey got approval for one of the largest packages of assistance ever from the International Monetary Fund. It was clear that the support owed more to U.S. eagerness to prop up a weak ally than to dispassionate economic assessment.

And for all of Turkey’s claims that it has made leaps forward at the insistence of the European Union and the United States to become a dynamic and open economic system, the country’s record leaves much to be desired. Turkey remains, in effect, closed to investors. Direct foreign investment stands at around 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, pitifully low by Western standards.

Large, inefficient, government-run businesses have not been privatized, and where there has been international involvement, it has not been on the basis of open, free, competition. These are not the actions of a government intent on aligning itself with the world’s major free capitalist economies. And if economic policy has served to keep Turkey on a separate path, domestic policies have too.

The AKP (Justice and Development party) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an avowedly Islamic party that challenges the constraints of Turkey’s rigid 80-year-old Ataturk-founded secularism. At home this has meant steady pressure on the borders that keep separate the distinct worlds of faith and state. The AKP’s supporters chafe at strict rules that forbid public displays of religion or the teaching of religion in pre-high school education.

There has also been a troubling rise in anti-Semitic sentiment and propaganda in the country in the last few years. At any bookstore in Istanbul or Ankara you will find prominently displayed Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a popular seller these days. The government’s Religious Affairs Directorate has spoken out against the activities of Christian missionaries, claiming they represent a threat to the nation’s religious identity and the freedom of Muslims.

The country is probably not on a slippery slope towards becoming an Islamist state, as some critics contend. The AKP, thanks to a bizarre electoral system, managed to win a majority of seats in parliament with only a little over 30 percent of the vote. Support for Ataturk’s constitutional legacy does not appear to be atrophying. The military, always looming ominously in Turkish politics, remains unlikely to tolerate a further slide towards Islamism.

But the intentions of the AKP’s leaders seem clear–to move the country in a more Islamic direction and in a way that further complicates Turkey’s relations with Europe and the United States. Turkish foreign policy seems to be moving in the same direction. Erdogan’s chief adviser is Ahmet Davutoglu, a shrewd and articulate academic who is the driving force behind the country’s foreign policy changes.

Davutoglu has urged Erdogan to take a more balanced approach to Turkish global strategy. In his book Strategic Depth, Davutoglu talks about the need for Turkey to pursue alliances beyond its traditional ties to the West. He insists that he continues to favor strong relations through NATO and E.U. membership with the United States and Europe, but he also argues that Turkey has a historic opportunity to be a leader in the Muslim world, and its geographic position means it should improve historically poor relations with Russia and China.

But Davutoglu has spent time in Malaysia and speaks highly of that country’s supposedly dynamic and rather unique combination of Islam, capitalism, and democracy. It is no surprise, then, that in recent months Erdogan has reached out to some unsavory characters in Turkey’s neighborhood, visiting President Bashar Assad in Syria earlier this year and traveling to Tehran to meet the Iranian mullahs.

Officials insist these trips were part of the necessary diplomacy for a country facing instability on its borders, and Erdogan was careful to criticize both countries for their failure to promote democracy and for their role in destabilizing the Middle East. But Turkey also has a common interest with both Syria and Iran in blocking any movement towards the emergence of an independent Kurdistan–an issue that may be assuming a higher priority for Ankara than good relations with the United States and the European Union.

DAVUTOGLU’S INFLUENCE IS EVIDENT ELSEWHERE. Earlier this year, Turkey overcame decades of enmity with Russia to sign a trade pact. Relations with China have been improving. Turkey’s historically cordial relationship with Israel has chilled markedly in the last two years.

Events overseas and political currents at home, then, are combining to push Turkey away from the embrace of the West that has driven its foreign policy for 60 years. How concerned should the United States be and what might it do to counter these trends?

“Losing” Turkey would be a devastating setback for U.S. strategic interests. For all the changes underway there, Turkey remains a moderate Muslim country that serves as a beacon for the sort of democratic reform the United States is trying to promote in the Muslim world. Turkey’s support will be necessary to achieve stability in Iraq and change in Syria and Iran; a hostile Turkey in any of these matters will complicate U.S. goals immeasurably.

Continuing to insist on Turkish membership in the European Union may look like a good rhetorical option for U.S. diplomacy–it is an easy way for Washington to look good in Turkish eyes–but as the unreality of that objective becomes clearer, this will be an empty policy. In the meantime the United States should look for alternatives.

It should pressure the Turks to open up their economic system to genuine reform. It should insist on greater transparency by the Turkish government and ease of access by foreign companies–not as some carrot for eventual E.U. membership, but because an open economy is in Turkey’s best interest and likely to bring it into the family of free nations.

The United States should do more to ease Turkish concerns about the PKK in Iraq. A war on terrorism that does not extend to the aggressive pursuit of this especially nasty brand of thugs is less than worthy of the name. The Bush administration should seek to relieve Turkish fears about Kirkuk and Kurdistan, since there is little real strategic interest for the United States in seeing movement towards an independent Kurdistan outside Iraq.

The United States should work hard at its public diplomacy in Turkey. In a BBC poll earlier this year Turkey actually had the highest proportion, 82 percent, of respondents who believed Bush’s reelection boded ill for world peace and security.

Much will depend on how successful the United States is in Iraq. Creating a stable, unified, democratic Iraq will go a long way towards changing political intentions and public perceptions in Turkey. In the end, though, it will be up to the Turks themselves to stop the deterioration in relations with the West. The signs there are not good.

Nothing captures the mounting mood of anti-American insecurity in Turkey better than the stunning success this year of a work of fiction. Metal Storm, cowritten by Burak Turna and Orkun Ucar, chronicles a future war with the United States, whose forces open fire on Turks who have been helping keep the peace in Iraq. Before long a full scale war is unleashed by American forces on Turkish cities. The United States’ motives are, of course, strategic and pecuniary. Washington wants to subjugate Turkey and get its hands on the country’s rich mineral resources.

The authors may have captured the nation’s current hysteria about American intentions, but they haven’t quite got current international politics right. In their version, the Turks turn desperately to outsiders for help and get it, from Russia and, more improbably, the European Union. The pattern of recent events in Europe suggests that last part, at least, is pure fantasy.

Gerard Baker is an assistant editor of the Times of London and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.