Muslims and Liberals

Chicago Tribune
May 15, 1997

Despite its Islamists-led government, Turkey is again one of America’s favorite allies, and Washington has stepped up efforts to help latch it more closely to Western economic and security systems. Americans are warning European governments not to belie the continent’s secular credentials by barring Turkey from the European Union. The EU has so far refused to act on Turkey’s decade-old membership application.

Strobe Talbott has brought it out into the open. The American deputy secretary of state publicly ridiculed the EU’s argument that having Muslim Turkey as its member would trigger a culture clash. References to Turkish culture, he said at a U.S.-EU conference in Washington, are “euphemisms for religion.” Must the “European-ness” of a village, he asked, be judged by “whether its landmarks are church spires of minarets”?

America’s No. 2 diplomat also dismissed the suggestion that Turkey’s human-rights violations (in combating Kurdish insurgency) disqualify it for the EU membership. He reminded Europeans that “many current EU members have overcome far greater traumas in this century–and that’s putting it mildly.” Talbott probably was alluding to the past Greek and Portuguese dictatorships, anti-Jewish pogroms and the holocaust. One American diplomat grumbled later that West European statesmen opposing Turkey’s admission into the EU are being shamed by Turkish generals who are fighting their own government to preserve the secular character of their state. U.S. officials use the words “crucial” and “critical” to underscore Turkey’s importance to American interests in that region. And the administration has established contacts with Islamists in the Turkish government.

This pro-Turkish stance is the latest among a half-dozen twists that America’s Turkish policy has undergone in eight years. The unraveling of the Soviet Union led U.S. policy-makers to drop Ankara from their strategic equations. Turkey had been NATO’s front-line member against the Soviet power. It regained importance to Americans during Desert Storm as a key partner in the anti-Iraq coalition. Then early in the first Clinton administration, human-rights concerns considerably strained U.S. ties to Turkey. They were all but repaired again by Turkey’s strong support for American efforts to end the Bosnian crisis.

The American peace broker for Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, assured the Turks publicly that the human-rights debate would not harm U.S.-Turkish relations. Perhaps unforeseen by him, the Islamist Refah party soon came to power at the head of a coalition government in Ankara. And despite the State Department’s half-hearted assurance that “secularism” is “not a condition” of good U.S.-Turkish relations, Washington remained leery about Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.

That trepidation has eased now. Erbakan has agreed, though grudgingly, to retain Turkey’s ties to Europe, the United States and Israel, and committed himself to working within the secular Turkish constitution. But American interest in Turkey has actually been heightened by a string of other events affecting U.S. strategic interests.

China’s economic and military resurgence is causing unease in Washington. Beijing appears to aspire for the status of a second superpower.

And the Russian announcement of a new military doctrine stipulating the first use of nuclear weapons in a desperate conflict was a reminder that the honeymoon with the Russians is over. Even though President Boris Yelstin has swallowed the NATO expansion plans, the Russian parliament could hold off on ratifying the second strategic arms reduction treaty requiring Moscow to dismantle thousands of nuclear warheads. And Yeltsin recently joined Chinese President Jiang Zemin in a statement criticizing the U.S. domination of world affairs and calling for a “multipolar world.” A multipolar, bi-polar world may not be around the corner, but the United States needs allies in the periphery of the world’s second- and third-largest military powers that are resentful of its superpower status. Turkey is its only ally in the periphery of both.

Turkish politics, however, remain extremely fluid and Islamic revivalism is far from over. The best way to promote stability and secularism in Turkey, its secular politicians and diplomats have been telling the West, is to integrate it with Western Europe politically and economically.

Talbott’s impassioned plea to the EU indicates that Washington is listening. Recently, a Turkish diplomat in Washington acknowledged that “the United States, happily, is showing a greater appreciation” of his country “during the last two, three months.” He was quick to point out, though, that “the helicopters and frigates issue” remained unresolved.

U.S.-Turkish relations have never been smooth. Under pressures from the Greek lobby, Congress has held up the delivery of 10 Super Cobra helicopters and three guided-missile frigates to Turkey. Besides, influential groups are sounding the alarm bell about the Islamists in the Turkish government. Yet Turkey is likely to remain strategically important to Americans as long as they have stakes in its neighborhood.