October 25, 2007
Turkey-U.S. relations face fundamental challenges, says Turkish scholar
Relations between Turkey and the West are “in serious trouble” for more reasons than the war in Iraq, said Bulent Aliriza, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Turkey Project director during an SIS Europe Forum last week. Though Turkey’s current struggle with the Kurds in northern Iraq makes the headlines, he said, the challenges to U.S. and EU relations with the country are tied to its history.
According to Aliriza, the roots of the trouble reach back to Turkey’s 1923 formation out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Situated between Europe and the Middle East, the country has always occupied a difficult position between cultures. “Turkey begins where Europe ends,” he explained. “It lies on the fault lines between civilizations and religions.”
Historically then Turkey’s challenge has been how to move toward democracy while the population embraces Middle Eastern culture and religion, Aliriza explained. The result, he said, has been a constant tension. In 1951, for instance, after the country held its first elections to help win membership in NATO, the popularly elected president repealed several of the secular reforms enacted to endear Turkey to the United States and Europe.
“You had the elite . . . that wanted to transform, but the majority remained very conservative, very devout,” Aliriza explained. “To this day this dichotomy still exists.”
Today, as Turkey seeks entry to the European Union (EU), this tension has only gotten stronger. “So the challenge now is, can a secular system adjust to the emergence of growing religious observance,” Aliriza said. “So far the system has not broken down, but nonetheless it is being strained.”
The second challenge Turkey faces is the fundamental difference between its military and those of Europe and the United States. “In the case of the U.S., Congress came first, then the army,” he said. “In the case of Turkey, the military revolted and then it created the government. That difference is important.” The result, he noted, is that Turkey’s military has played a stronger role in public policy than is healthy for most democracies.
The balance between the civilian government and the military has improved, Aliriza said, thanks mainly to Turkey’s desire to join the EU. However, should that process break down, it’s likely those reforms as well as other human rights reforms will be reversed. “If the EU process stops, the reforms stop,” he said.
As if these challenges weren’t enough, said Aliriza, U.S. relations with Turkey have also lost the fundamental purpose once provided by a common enemy. Because of its proximity to the Soviet Union, Turkey was a key U.S. ally during the Cold War, but since the fall of the Soviet Union the two countries have been allies in name only.
“From 1952 to 1991 each side knew exactly what they wanted from the other,” Aliriza explained. “After the fall of Russia, now what we see is a kind of unhappy Catholic marriage, where both sides want a divorce but can’t ask for one.”
All of this, Aliriza argued, has contributed to the current problems between Turkey and the United States over the Kurds in northern Iraq. As Turkey resists the Kurdish separatists who launch attacks from northern Iraq, the threat of Turkey crossing the border into Iraq continues to escalate despite U.S. opposition.
Based on these problems, he argued that the United States and Europe need to be realistic in their expectations of the country. Though the prospect of Turkey joining the EU has many hopeful that it can help build understanding between Europe and the Middle East, Aliriza was more skeptical.
“People like to talk about how Turkey can be a bridge between the East and the West, but there are limits to the role Turkey can play in the East, and there are limits to the role it can play in the West,” he said. “If you belong to both sides, you don’t really belong to either.”
