دسته: 2009

During a recent televized discussion on foreign policy, six former Turkish foreign ministers recently rated Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s performance with eight out of a maximum of 10 points. The six included some harsh Social Democrat critics of the current Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

Even before his promotion from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s special advisor to foreign minister in April, Davutoglu was regarded as the eminence grise behind Turkish foreign policy, and was occasionally even referred to as “Turkey’s Kissinger.” The Turks love to see their personalities, cities, and performances positively compared with the world’s most famous. But Davutoglu doesn’t like this comparison. Still, the 51-year old professor of political sciences is considered the architect of the new active foreign policy that the AKP has been pursuing since coming to power in 2002: “zero problems” with the neighbors while continuing to maintain traditionally good relations with the West.

The West, Russia, and most members of the international community were pleased when Turkey and Armenia on October 10 signed accords, still to be ratified by the two countries’ parliaments, to restore diplomatic ties and open borders after almost a century of enmity. The accords were widely credited to Davutoglu’s personal planning and implementation. In 2008, he mediated similar indirect talks between Israel and Syria in an effort to take first steps towards a Middle East peace. The effort was met with skepticism by the Bush administration and produced no tangible results, for reasons beyond Ankara’s control.

Turkey’s increasingly good relations with Russia and Iran have raised some eyebrows in the West. At the same time, Prime Minister Erdogan’s occasionally outrageous criticism of the Israeli operation against Gaza last winter, as well as the exclusion of Israel from a NATO air drill in Turkish skies two weeks ago, have led conservatives in Washington and Europe to ask if Ankara is rethinking its traditionally good relations with Israel. Discussing a potential Israeli attack on Iran, U.S. analyst Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute recently affirmed boldly that “Turkey is now on Iran’s side.”

Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Ankara has leaned increasingly towards the West while maintaining no more than functioning good relations with its neighbors. Davutoglu describes Turkey’s new foreign policy initiative as a Turkish version of the German Ostpolitik of the 1960s. “Turkey is a natural part of the European continent and culture,” he wrote in his book “Strategic Depth,” published 10 years ago. Echoing U.S. President Barack Obama, Davutoglu recently said that Ankara and Washington enjoy a “model partnership.” With regard to Turkey’s relations with her neighbors and regional policy, on the other hand, he said “zero problem-based relations” must be transformed into “maximum mutual interest-based ones.”

Both Davutoglu and Erdogan have their roots in Turkey’s traditional, conservative, and Islamic thinking. However, improving relations with neighboring states and playing an increasingly leading role in the region seems to be based on real political influence and economic and energy interests, rather than prestige and nostalgia for the old Ottoman Empire, as some suggest. Erdogan and Davutoglu have attracted billions of dollars in Arab investment into Turkey and plan to make the country a main oil and gas corridor between the East and Europe.

While Muslim and non-Muslim neighbors view Ankara’s balancing act with both appreciation and suspicion, many in the West suspect that Turkish efforts to promote “mutual interests” between “rogue states” such as Iran and Syria and the West will ultimately end in Turkey’s betrayal of Western values and commitments. Others, including the Turkish opposition, even suggest that the ruling AKP is tacitly pursuing that goal.

But Davutoglu denies that the axis of Turkey’s foreign policy is shifting. A region that is increasingly peaceful, with countries cooperating with one another, is good for the West and the world, he recently said. “This is an exceptional and unique role Turkey could play.”

( First published on RFE/RL’s website)

President Obama’s recent visit to Turkey gave it a big boost. But a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement was in the works even before Obama was elected U.S. president.  Now, Baku is upset that Ankara and Yerevan are about to make a deal sidelining Azeris’ main concern: restoring sovereignty over Nagorno Karabakh and its surrounding Azeri regions occupied by Armenian forces since early 1990s. Gone with the wind all those days when both Turks and Azeris used to say  they were “one nation with two states”?

Ankara and Yerevan intensified their negotiations in August 2007 when their diplomats started to regularly meet in Geneva to discuss the details of establishing “good, neighborly” relations. Once the “technical preparation” was almost complete, President Abdullah Gul’s visit to Yerevan in September last year to attend a Turkish-Armenian soccer match and, later, the meeting between Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, at the recent Economic Forum in Davos, signaled the political will of the two sides to proceed.

Diplomats have confirmed to the Turkish media that Baku was not only fully informed about the progress and details of those talks, but even “in agreement” with the way Ankara has been approaching the rapprochement issue.

Dozens of rounds of talks between the Turkish and Azerbaijani presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers preceded this climax in the Turkish-Armenian thaw. Cengiz Candar, a Turkish journalist who accompanied President Gul to Tehran on March 11, reports that Gul and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, met in the Iranian capital specifically to discuss the issue.

Turkish leaders seem to be surprised by the outrage with which President Aliyev, other Azerbaijani officials, and the Azerbaijani media have responded to the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. Some Turkish analysts maintain that Baku’s “demonstrative dismay” is meant primarily for internal consumption, while others speculate that the intention is to make clear to Moscow, Yerevan’s main supporter, Baku’s readiness to include it in all political processes in the southern Caucasus.

Whatever the reason for Baku’s anger, the Turkish leadership seems to have concluded that having no diplomatic relations with one of its neighbors and keeping its border closed have not produced, and will not produce, any positive movement on three key issues that have frozen the status quo for nearly 17 years.

The first of those is Yerevan’s insistence that the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 should be recognized as “genocide.”

The second is Ankara’s demand that Yerevan clearly recognize the current Turkish-Armenian border, and refrain in future from referring to eastern Turkey as “western Armenia.”

And the third is concluding an agreement between Baku and Yerevan on Nagorno-Karabakh and other Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenian forces.

Referring to serious disputes on all these three points, Turkey “acknowledged” Armenia’s independence in 1991 but declined to extend formal diplomatic recognition. And following the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenian forces, Ankara closed its borders with Armenia in 1993.

For the past 15 or more years, Yerevan has been demanding the opening of the border and the establishment of diplomatic relations “without any precondition.” Ankara, on the other hand, has made both those demands contingent on the resolution of the three main disputed issues. Endless and exhausting talks have been held between all parties involved: Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the “Minsk Group,” consisting of Russia, the United States, and France, to mediate between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But those talks yielded no concrete results. What an irony of history that now a Turkish government with an Islamic background and an Armenian government led by a former nationalist fighter from Nagorno-Karabakh are close to a breakthrough in what was long enough considered a “frozen conflict.”

With technical details reportedly worked out and political will evident in both Ankara and Yerevan, the next few weeks may bring breaking news about the beginning of a historical rapprochement between Turks and Armenians. There are also reports that the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict may be “very close to a settlement,” although the players in each of these two distinct but intertwined dramas apparently don’t want to wait for the other game to be played out first.

The public, however, still doesn’t know much about what the agreements would produce, either with regard to the “genocide,” or the recognition of the Turkish-Armenian border, or how the Armenian-Azerbaijani territorial dispute will be resolved. “Having good relations with Armenia is very good,” said Tulin Kanik, a student of political sciences from Ankara. “But what will happen with their claims on eastern Turkey or with the districts of Azerbaijan still occupied by Armenian forces?”

That both Ankara and Yerevan look confident indicates that people on both sides of Mount Ararat will probably soon hear something they can not only live, but also be happy with. Both Erdogan and Sarkisian know that they have to present their respective populations with a win-win deal. And they also know that, however enthusiastic and supportive the West may be or Russia may become, their own constituencies must accept that deal if they want to survive as national leaders.

(First published on RFE/RL’s website)

By Abbas Djavadi – On August 13, 1994, a helicopter landed in the Kurdish village of Kirkagac, near the town of Cizre in southeastern Turkey. Men in camouflage fatigues stormed houses and took away six men, leaving behind their wives, children, and parents.

The abducted men were not, however, militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Some of them had refused to become “korucu,” or “village protectors,” the euphemism designating collaborators with the Turkish government in the fight against the PKK. Others had incurred the enmity of the “korucu” in neighboring villages as a result of either personal or interclan disputes.

The six men disappeared without a trace and their families were unable to find out what had happened to them. There was no trial or prison sentence, nor was any information released concerning their whereabouts. Soon everyone concluded that they had been summarily killed.

ادامه خواندن “Ergenekon, AKP, And Turkey’s Local Elections”

By Abbas Djavadi – On February 16, U.S. President Barack Obama called his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to affirm the new U.S. administration’s support for Turkey’s “leading role” in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus. Iraq and Afghanistan will be the two major areas where Turkey could help the Western alliance, as in the past during the Korean crisis in the 1950s and the conflict in former Yugoslavia in 1990s.

As the U.S. prepares to withdraw from Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan, Turkey could play a welcome role in contributing to Iraq’s further stabilization.

After a relatively long period of hesitation, over the past few months Ankara has started to improve relations with the semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, which is headed by Masoud Barzani. Turkey’s biggest concern has been that the emergence of a Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, just across the Turkish border, would encourage the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has found a safe haven in northern Iraq from which to launch terrorist attacks inside Turkey.

ادامه خواندن “Turkey: An Important Regional Player”

By Abbas Djavadi – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fiery exchange with Israeli President Shimon Peres on January 29 at the World Economic Forum in Davos may earn him votes in Turkey’s next municipal elections in March this year or sympathy on Arab streets. But it is hard to expect that it would not harm Turkey’s role as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world, a would-be mediator between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Ankara’s relations with Washington, and its bid for EU membership.

Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, passionately defended his country’s assault on Gaza last month and, raising his voice and pointing finger at Erdogan, asked him what Turkey would do if rockets were fired at Istanbul every night. Israel’s Gaza offensive, directed against the ruling Hamas group, has caused 1,300 Palestinian deaths, two-third of them children and other civilians, and a huge destruction of nonmilitary infrastructure.

The culmination of Erdogan’s emotional response that bordered on a scandal didn’t wait too long: “Mr. Peres” he said, “you are older than me and your voice is very loud. The reason for you raising your voice is probably the psychology of guilt.” That was to the address of the Israeli president personally. But using the Turkish informal word of “sen” (“you”) as opposed to the formal and respectful word of “siz” (“you”), the Turkish prime minister adopted the same way of talking in Turkey’s parliament, especially in addressing the opposition, a language with an undertone of bossiness that is understood in the West as arrogance.

ادامه خواندن “Turkey Doesn’t Deserve This”

Occasionally, I have heated discussions with my Turkish and Kurdish friends. Most of those from Iraq’s Kurdistan region, emboldened by the region’s semi-independence from Baghdad and its current relative stability, warn that it would declare independence if things fall apart in Iraq.

At this juncture, we have serious disagreements over whether the resulting small, landlocked country encircled by hostile neighbors (Arab Iraq, Iran, and Turkey) would be viable.

Even a “Greater Kurdistan,” although seemingly an impossible project that would lead to decades of bloodshed and destruction, would not drastically change the geostrategic environment of that new independent state.

The Turks are certainly very strongly opposed to any manifestations of separatism and, no doubt, Turkey’s strong and popular army would do its utmost to suppress any independent Kurdish state proclaimed on Turkish territory. Its reaction would be much harsher than the current efforts to contain the PKK.

The International Crisis Group recently published a report titled “Turkey and Iraqi Kurds: Conflict or Cooperation?” which I strongly recommend to all those with an interest in this region.

“At a time when Arab-Kurdish tensions still threaten Iraq’s stability,” the report says, “neighboring Turkey’s approach toward Iraqi Kurdistan has been a study in contrasts: Turkish jets periodically bomb suspected hideouts of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, and Ankara expresses alarm at the prospect of Kurdish independence, yet at the same time has significantly deepened its ties to the Iraqi Kurdish region.

“Both Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government would be well served by keeping ultranationalism at bay and continuing to invest in a relationship that, though fragile and buffeted by the many uncertainties surrounding Iraq, has proved remarkably pragmatic and fruitful.”

Heavy Shadow

I am not sure what percent of Turkey’s estimated 10 million to 15 million Kurds would really favor Kurdish independence from Turkey. Probably not many. But I believe most of those who look beyond today’s low-level conflicts and problems ask themselves how wise it would be to sever relations with a modern, Westernizing Turkey and join their ethnic brethren in a united but uncertain, if not dangerous, future.

Iran’s Kurds are in a somewhat different situation.

Most Iranian Kurds are Sunnis, while the Iranians are Shi’a, and the heavy shadow of Shi’a Islam pervades state ideology and practice. But despite their high ethnic awareness and strong feelings of kinship with the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, with whom they want to enjoy close contact and trade relations, they do not seem to have strong aspirations to secede from Iran.

But although Iran’s Kurds identify more closely with the state than do their co-ethnics in Turkey, the two groups share the same wishes and demands: to be able to use their own language in all spheres of public life, including education and courts of law; support for their ethnic and regional culture, which has been not only ignored but also suppressed in both countries; and some degree of local or provincial/regional autonomy.

Iran’s Azeris, who live mainly in the provinces of eastern and western Azerbaijan and Iran’s Ardabil and Zanjan, have been and still are a large and influential ethnic group with a strong commitment to the country’s unity and territorial integrity. They are Shi’a, like most other Iranians. They speak a slightly different dialect of Azeri Turkish (as opposed to Persian, Iran’s official national language) than that of the neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan to the north. The Turkish spoken in Turkey is also quite similar to Azeri Turkish.

Since the establishment of a unified and central education system in the 1920s, Iran has not permitted the official use of the non-Persian languages of other Muslim ethnic groups such as the Azeris, Kurds, Turkomans, Arabs, and Baluchis. This reflects both the drive to build a unitary and modern country, as well as the fear of potential separatism. But the use of the languages of some non-Muslim groups, notably the Armenians, has been tolerated.

Both under the late Shah and in the Islamic republic, Armenians have had their own schools in which subjects such as language, history, and religion are taught in Armenian. The main reasons for this discrepancy have been the perception that the relatively small Armenian community does not pose a separatist threat, and the historical understanding, which also holds good for Turkey, that all Muslims are one nation and that members of each nation need only one official, national language — Persian in Iran and Turkish in Turkey.

Stronger Commitment

Although deprived of the right to use their mother tongue in education and state bodies, Iran’s Azeris have demonstrated a stronger commitment to national Iranian affairs (politics, labor, economic activity, and trade) than to local or ethnic issues such as language and culture. Over the past three decades, the Republic of Azerbaijan has transformed itself into an independent country with a dominant Azeri language and culture, and Turkey has evolved into a modernizing republic with free media, elections, a liberal and Western-style government system, and a prospering economy — a NATO member that aspires to join the European Union.

These developments in the immediate neighborhood and the international isolation of Iran have not given rise to much sense of pan-Turkic or separatist tendencies among Iranian Azeris, who still consider themselves strongly Iranian in the first place, and Azeri only second. Additionally, the national memory of a one-year (1945-46) pro-Soviet autonomous republic in Iranian Azerbaijan that aspired to become part of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan (and ultimately the Soviet Union) has created fears and strong reservations among Iranians (and most Iranian Azeris) that any demands by the latter for ethnic and cultural rights would ultimately be directed against Iran’s territorial integrity.

Still, especially after the fall of the Shah, there have been individual or collective calls for linguistic and cultural rights for Iranian Azeris launched by social movements that have increasingly enjoyed popular understanding or even sympathy among the Iranian Azeri public. The Islamic regime, however, views all such demands as ultimately harmful to the country’s territorial integrity, and has suppressed them harshly. Even the implementation of a constitutional article granting the right to use non-Persian languages has been delayed since the establishment of the Islamic republic.

The Kurdish issue is currently a source of serious tension and danger for Turkey and, to some extent, for Iran, too. If Iraq disintegrates and Iraqi Kurds declare independence, neighboring Turkey and Iran may also be drawn into the resulting chaos and violence.

Although currently not an urgent threat, in the event that Iraq implodes, the Azeri ethnic issue in Iran has the potential to become a major source of regional instability that would affect not just Iran, but also the Republic of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Armenia.

(First published on RFE/RL’s website)