By Patricia H. Kushlis
At least the Turkish Government is trying to bring about a negotiated settlement between Israelis and Syrians – or at least prevent another hot war from breaking out to its south on some not-to-distant broiling summer’s day.
Sure, it’s in the Turkish interest to see that neighborhood quarrels are patched up – or the protagonists, at minimum, kept under wraps. The Ottomans, the ancestors of today’s Turks, controlled this region until less than a century ago and understood its fractious peoples and their needs all too well.
In the case of the Israelis and the Syrians, the Turks retain good enough relationships and leverage with both to bring them to the negotiating table – or more accurately to mediate between them indirectly after eight years of a void. And to do so secretly out of the media’s glaring eye. This is all to the good.
Pre-2001, this was a role the US might have played or been a player in – but not under the Bush administration’s policy of refusing to talk to Damascus. Maybe a new administration will change this. In the interim, if Turkish diplomats can help damp down the flames of the Levant this summer – by next year we might even have a president less allergic to talking to leaders of governments that he or she may not like. This includes Assad.
Who knows, the US might even assume an honest broker role itself. It really is in America’s interest to talk to the Syrians about a variety of critical Middle East issues that range from Lebanon, the Golan Heights to Iraq and Iran.
Talking does not mean giving away the store
Talking - Mr. McCain, Mr. Bolton and your other neocon pals - does not mean giving away the store: that’s just cheap erroneous electioneering speak to hoodwink a “know-nothing clientele.” Please. Get real and get it right for a change.
But back to Turkey: The Turks have serious domestic political differences of their own that originated many decades, or even a century, ago, and that are again coming to the fore.
Mark Parris, former US Ambassador to Turkey (1997-2000), outlined one of the most critical in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on May 17: E.g. the crisis that will occur if Turkey’s Supreme Court shuts down the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) and bans its top leadership “from politics for threatening the secular nature of the state.”
Seems to me that this is a bit akin to closing down the Republican Party and banning W, Cheney and crew from U.S. politics for, well, similar reasons. Or from a different perspective, maybe it’s a little more like the questionable US Supreme Court decision in 2000 which threw the presidency to W - even though Gore won the popular vote - thereby depriving the Democrats – like AKP, Turkey’s majority party – of the office it, by rights, had won.
On the one hand, Parris is right to question “Washington’s agonizingly balanced approach to the AKP case thus far,” a case based on the legitimacy of the Turkish Constitution written by the generals 25 years ago when Turkey was in a state of political meltdown and overrun with hyper-inflation, labor strikes as well as food and gas shortages and the military stepped in to restore order and cool the situation down.
On the other hand, maybe today's State Department’s stand-offish reaction is correct: this crisis is a domestic Turkish political problem which, in the end, the Turks themselves will have to resolve. If any outsiders can play a role, it’s the European Union and EU leadership because of the accession talks. I don’t see that the US has either carrots or sticks to use in this Turkish domestic political game – but maybe I’m missing something.
Meanwhile, toppling democratic governments by questionable means does not sit well with the almost law obsessed Europeans who demand a functioning democracy as one of many prerequisites for EU membership. The problem could be, however, that the judges on the Turkish Supreme Court have other fish to fry and backers to please.
Turkey is, of course, in the midst of incredible socio-economic change. Its burgeoning youth population strains the country’s public services. The internal migration from the rural Anatolian plains to coastal, or at least internally industrializing, cities like Kayseri continues. Yet, under AKP, the country’s economic situation and prosperity of many of its people has never been better.
"Latte" Islamists vs neosecularists?
The “latte Islamists” with their Volvos, cell phones, Gucci scarfs, Koran and self defense classes for their daughters that Pinar Tremblay describes in a recent article entitled “Conceptualizing Turkey right: Post Islamism vs. neo-secularism” are a common feature of Turkish city life. But so too are their secularist – or perhaps more accurately neo-secularist friends diving off boats in the briefest of bikinis or strolling in the Sultanamet dressed in skin tight tops and designer jeans. And, yes, the latte Islamists and the neo-secularist youth do talk to each other – at least from what little I have seen.
So what of the clash between secularists and Islamists that is the heart of the Turkish Supreme Court case? Is this great divide in Turkish politics still accurate? Or should the Turkish political landscape be looked at from a different perspective – like, perhaps, the one outlined in Pinar Tremblay’s article that appeared in the Turkish Daily News on May 26? Or are there other ways of even more accurately defining and describing the contemporary Turkish social and political scene?
I don’t know, but I’ll bet that whatever the Supreme Court rules on this landmark case, AKP will – as Parris observes – “based on past precedent . . . likely emerge to dominate parliament under a new name.” And its leader, Recep Erdogan, “will remain a key actor, if necessary from behind the scenes.” And the Turkish political scene will continue to evolve in its own unique way.
Photos credits to Patricia H. Kushlis: 1) Galata Tower and Golden Horn Ferry, Istanbul, Turkey, 10-2006; 2) Modern Blue glass building, Antalya - west side, Turkey 10-2006; 3) Blue Mosque, Interior Tiles, Istanbul, Turkey 10-2006; 4) Turkish family at lunch, Seljuk, Turkey 9-2006; 5) Day Trip Boat and divers, Fetiye, Turkey 9-2006.