The fine line Turkey walks

Now, suddenly, that Turkish democracy has become a big problem. Saturday, when the AK government asked parliament to welcome U.S. troops to Turkey for an assault on northern Iraq, legislators refused.
AK took 362 of the 550 seats in parliament last November, yet was able to muster just 264 votes Saturday. With 17 members absent, the government needed 267 votes to give it a majority of those present. But 250 voted against and 19 abstained, so it fell three votes short. Fully one-quarter of the government’s own MPs voted no.
That was a heavy blow for the AK government, which has never before held power and is led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who does not yet have a seat in parliament. Mr. Erdogan hopes to win a by-election this Sunday and earn the right to serve as prime minister.
He must now decide whether to go back to parliament on the Iraq issue or admit defeat and leave things as they are.
Either way, he faces dangers. If he returns to parliament and goes down to defeat again, his struggling new government will lose credibility. If he pushes the measure through parliament, his opponents will accuse him of knuckling under to U.S. pressure and defying the will of the Turkish people, nine out of 10 of whom oppose war with Iraq.
The dangers for the country itself are just as great. Turning Washington down at its time of need would hurt relations with an old ally, strategic partner and the country’s main financial backer. The United States has been a good friend to Turkey and just recently pushed hard for the country’s early admission to the European Union.
Turkey would lose the potential for close to $30-billion (U.S.) in grants and loans and jeopardize Washington’s support in its critical negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over the country’s debts.
Monday’s plunge in the stock market and the Turkish lira (12 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively) show how damaging that would be for a country that is already weathering its worst recession in half a century.
Ankara also stands to lose influence over the future of Iraq. Under the proposed deal with Washington, Turkey would have been allowed to set up a buffer zone inside northern Iraq to stop Kurdish refugees from flooding across the border.
By putting as many as 40,000 troops into Iraq, Turkey hoped to help prevent the Iraqi Kurds from fanning separatist passions among Turkey’s own Kurdish minority. Washington had agreed to help by keeping the Iraqi Kurds in line, dissuading them from seeking an independent Kurdish nation state and disarming them if necessary. All that will go out the window unless parliament changes its mind.
So Mr. Erdogan is in a tight spot. Like the leaders of other countries with antiwar public sentiment and ties to Washington, he must choose between doing what the people want and doing what he thinks is right for his country. The two do not always go together, which is what makes representative democracy so interesting.
The United States is in a quandary, too. It badly wants Turkey as a staging ground, but its heavy-handed lobbying of Mr. Erdogan’s government has already caused resentment and may have contributed to Saturday’s parliamentary decision. If Washington bucks at accepting that decision, Turks will say it is frustrating their democratic will. That will not look good on a country whose President was promising just last week to back a democratic evolution in the Islamic world.