Why the West cannot lose Turkey

If it triumphs, the Turkish model, which aims to harmonise Islamic, secular and democratic principles with good governance, could become a potent antidote to the virulence of jihadi extremism.

June 30, 2010 11:32 pm | Updated 11:33 pm IST

If Israel and its powerful lobbyists in Washington and New York are to be believed, Turkey in recent months committed two unpardonable crimes. First, it dared to support the people of Gaza, who, in the eyes of the Israeli establishment, deserve collective punishment for supporting Hamas “terrorists,” who are running the affairs of the impoverished coastal strip.

Tel Aviv's problems with Ankara came to a head on May 31 when Israeli commandos attacked a Gaza-bound aid flotilla led by the Turkish charity, IHH. Despite the international outcry against the raid, Israel has been persistent in calling Turkey's Gaza mission a fig leaf to cover its larger political goal of bolstering the Hamas, already an ally of Iran. Israel, in other words, has been making a bizarre assertion that by leading the flotilla, Turkey has joined the ranks of international terror groups.

In the propaganda war that the raid unleashed, Israel has ignored the more widely accepted counterview, echoed across the globe, that by leading the aid flotilla, Ankara jolted the world into recognising the urgency of tackling Israel's illegal siege of Gaza and the miserable human conditions that prevail there. Israel fell far short of countering the accusation that came thick and fast from various parts of the globe that it had committed a glaring act of piracy by storming Mavi Marmara , Turkish lead ship of the flotilla, in international waters.

Turkey committed the second blunder, in Israel's perception, when it along with Brazil reached out to Israel's visceral enemy, Iran, to help it peacefully resolve its nuclear standoff with the West. In the eyes of Israel's right-wing establishment, Turkey does not deserve forgiveness. By supporting the Hamas and dealing with Iran's theocrats, Turkey, in its view, has ended up supporting two main forces which have one common hateful objective — the destruction of Israel. Consequently, Tel Aviv concluded that Turkey rightly deserves severe punishment. Many Israeli mainstream supporters have since been insisting that the West, especially the United States, now ensure that Turkey is expelled from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, lynchpin of Ankara's status as a key western ally.

Unsurprisingly, the call for retribution is making a dent in the corridors of power in Israel and the U.S. Ironically, in view of the West's core long-term interests, nothing could be more short-sighted and counterproductive than the political attack Israel and its supporters in the U.S. are mounting against the Turkish government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. By allowing the campaign to gather steam, the West is jeopardising the success of the Turkish model, which seeks to blend Islamic personal values with the core western ideals of democracy, human rights and market economy.

The emergence of Mr. Erdogan on the political stage is a reflection of an intense century-old tussle, between the forces of political Islam and laicism, represented by “Kemalists” or followers of the legacy of Mustapha Kemal Attaturk, founder of modern Turkey. After assuming power in 1923 —following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire — Attaturk embarked on a “cultural revolution,” based on western principles that sought to modernise his country pervasively. Consequently, he subordinated religion to the state. This was complemented by abolition of the caliphate and closure of all religious schools, orders and institutions. Swiss-based civil law replaced Islamic law, and the Italian criminal law and the German trade and commercial law were adopted. Latin replaced the Arabic script, education became compulsory and religious symbols in public institutions were banned.

However, these measures imposed from above found their antithesis, resulting in the 1930 Sufi rebellion, which the army forcefully suppressed. Twenty years later, the Democratic Party of Adnan Menderes won the elections on the promise of bringing Islamic principles back into public life, including legalisation of the Arabic script and lifting the ban on a call to prayer. However, a decade later, the army staged a coup, arrested Menderes and proclaimed itself the upholder of Kemalist secularism. The contradiction between Turkish laicism and political Islam surfaced again in 1997, when the army ousted the government of Necmettin Erbakan because of his Islamic leanings. Mr. Erbakan's Welfare Party (RP) was banned the following year. Elected in 2002 under the banner of the Justice and Democratic Party (AKP), Mr. Erdogan in a way represents the evolution of his country's Islamist legacy. Yet he is far removed from the stereotyped image of an Islamist engaged in the mindless pursuit of a medieval agenda.

Over the years, Mr. Erdogan has emerged a reformer and pragmatist, fixated in his belief that modern Turkey's future lies in the European Union. His highly regarded Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, summed up in an interview on Al Jazeera television the place the leadership has assigned to religion, as Turkey doggedly pursues its path towards progress. “We are proud of our religion and identity but, at the same time, we are part of European culture and European history and we are proud of that identity as well,” he said. For the Turkish dispensation, there is no contradiction among secularism and democracy — which, in any case, remain the cardinal principles of the republic — and a strong personal Islamic identity.

In a May 20 article in the Foreign Policy magazine, Mr. Davutoglu shared his vision of Turkey for the next decade and a half. He pointed out that Turkey hoped to fulfil all EU membership conditions and become an influential member-state of the grouping by 2023. Turkish leaders are optimistic that this commitment to EU membership should allay the fear that their country is pursuing a hidden Islamic agenda under the AK party's watch. They argue that the induction into the EU's ranks would be possible only if Turkey remained firmly committed to democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, and a functioning market economy.

Mr. Davutoglu has openly declared Turkey's aspiration to emerge as a regional heavyweight. Besides, Turkey has an ambitious economic agenda as it hopes to break into the league of the world's 10 most developed economies. Its aspiration to become a member of the United Nations Security Council is also obvious as Mr. Davutoglu has declared that Ankara wishes to play a “determining role” as a participant in international organisations.

The West has a major stake in Turkey's success. If it triumphs, the Turkish model, which aims to successfully harmonise Islamic, secular and democratic principles with good governance, would become a potent antidote to the virulence of jihadi extremism. Mr. Erdogan's Turkey, which has already caught the imagination of the region's youth, can play an effective part in denting the appeal of nihilistic Islam by providing a viable, functional and inclusive alternative that does not rely on suicide bombers to achieve its objectives.

Given Turkey's promising message of hope and success to the Islamic world, the West will commit a serious blunder if it does not stem the hate campaign that the Israeli lobby, in league with the Bush-era neoconservatives, has launched with full virulence in the U.S. Writing in TheWall Street Journal , military historian and long-time Bush supporter Victor Davis Hanson described the Turkish charity IHH as “a terrorist organisation with ties to the al-Qaeda.”

Daniel Pipes, director of the Likudist Middle East Forum, has exhorted Washington to support the Turkish opposition parties directly. On its part, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) has called for Turkey's suspension from NATO. “If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey's arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organisation,” it said.

While the neoconservatives bay for Turkey's blood, it is vital that saner voices in the West step in and continue their harmonious engagement with Ankara. Notwithstanding the jaundiced perceptions of terrorism, it is evident that Turkey has a lot to offer to remove political turbulence from West Asia. Unlike Iran under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Palestinian Hamas, Turkey has not in any way challenged Israel's existential rights or questioned its aspirations to scale new technological heights. In fact, before Israel's winter invasion of Gaza in 2009, Turkey was actively mediating between Israel and Syria to resolve their row over the Golan Heights. Turkey's military relationship with Israel has also been thriving, and is worth billions of dollars in military hardware trade.

Turkey's problem with Israel is, therefore, not fundamental but confined to the terrible human rights situation in Gaza. If this is resolved through sustained international activism, Turkey's ability to mediate among Israel, Palestine and its Arab neighbours, to achieve a two-state solution, would remain uniquely intact. In the long-run, the West may be the biggest loser if right-wing hostility abroad and internal resistance within succeed in defeating Turkey's courageous political experiment with democracy and Islam.

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