US-Turkish Ties Coming Full Circle
Two weeks ago, Syria’s president paid a state visit to Turkey. A week later, Turkey’s foreign minister was in Iran. Yet Turkey’s relations with the United States appear to have improved.
Turkey, a Muslim country that has been a NATO ally for half a century and a democracy for three decades longer, fell out of favor last March after its Parliament effectively blocked the Pentagon’s plans for a northern invasion of Iraq. On the Fourth of July the strain turned to rancor when US soldiers detained Turkish Special Forces troops in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah. The Turkish public was outraged to learn that US paratroops had pulled bags over the heads of Turkish officers accused of ferrying arms for use against ethnic Kurds.
“Yes, hurt feelings on both sides,’’ said Mehmet Dulger, a leading ruling party lawmaker.
Yet Turkey devoted the second half of the year reestablishing its reputation as a reliable military ally of the United States. In October, the same Parliament voted to authorize the dispatch to Iraq of 10, 000Turkish troops at Washington’s signal.
Iraqis protested the proposed deployment, and that US signal did not come. Then, when the Pentagon faced a bottleneck this winter in rotating its entire Iraq occupation force, Turkey opened its air base at Incirlik for the transit of tens of thousands of American troops, despite widespread opposition in the Turkish heartland, where anti-American sentiments still run high.
“Turkey is starting to see the light,’’ said M. Faruk Demir, chairman of the Center for Advanced Strategy in Ankara, a pro-American research group. “Now, they understand what it means to be with the US versus not with the US. It’s a new picture.’’
But it is not yet a complete picture. The rapprochement was led by Turkey’s general staff, which has a long history of military cooperation with Washington. Senior officers have exchanged visits between Ankara and the Pentagon, rebuilding trust damaged by the Sulaymaniyah detentions and the March 1 parliamentary rebuff.
Turkey’s civilian government has been comparatively less attentive. “Somehow they are very sensitive, very tentative,’’ said Demir, an observation also offered by other analysts. Some said the military’s relative eagerness to win favor with Washington suggested a desire to isolate Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, known here as AKP.
In addition to being Turkey’s pre-eminent military institution, the general staff also wields considerable political power. As protectors of Turkey’s secular tradition, the generals are wary of AKP, which grew out of an openly religious party that in the late1990 s tried to steer Turkish foreign policy toward the Islamic world. That history figured in the US warnings last year to give Syria and Iran a wide berth.
Turkish officials acknowledge that while the vote denying US access to its bases elevated Turkey’s standing with other Muslim countries, AKP leaders have pleased US officials by using their enhanced status to advocate democratic reform. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who privately lobbied against the base access, was praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell for issuing a public challenge to embrace democracy at an Islamic convention in Tehran last spring.
And Erdogan recently dismissed the concept of an “Islamic common market’’ at a meeting of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia. “Whatever happens, we will not base relations on ethnic or religious roots or geography,’’ he said. “Polarization will begin if we start to form institutions like that.’’
Those appeals, along with the demonstrated appetite for re-engagement with Washington, took the edge off last month’s meetings with Syria and Iran.
Turkey’s past relations with both neighbors could hardly be called close. Iran’s theocracy stands in stark contrast to the image of Turkey’s secular state. And Turkey threatened war with Syria in the late1990 s over its harboring of a Turkish Kurd separatist leader.
But concerns over Kurdish separatism are drawing Turkey’s neighbors closer. An estimated26 million Kurds live in regions of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey.
