The Rise and Rise of Turkey

November 5, 2009
The Rise and Rise of Turkey
By PATRICK SEALE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05iht-edseale.html?_r=2

It is generally accepted that America’s destruction of Iraq overturned the balance of power in the Gulf, opening the way for the Islamic Republic of Iran to emerge as a major regional power, able to challenge the dominance of Sunni Arab states and pose as a rival to both Israel and the United States.

Its influence has spread to Iraq itself — now under Shiite leadership — and beyond to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and even perhaps to Zaidi rebels in northern Yemen fighting the central government in Sana‘a, a development that has aroused understandable anxiety in Saudi Arabia.

However, the Iraq war has had another important consequence that is also attracting serious notice. America’s failure in Iraq — and its equal failure to tame Israel’s excesses — has encouraged Turkey to emerge from its pro-American straitjacket and assert itself as a powerful independent actor at the heart of a vast region that extends from the Middle East to the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The Turks like to say that whereas Iran and Israel are revisionist powers, arousing anxiety and even fear by their expansionism and their challenge to existing power structures, Turkey is a stabilizing power, intent on spreading peace and security far and wide.

Turkey is extending its influence by diplomacy rather than force. It is also forging economic ties with its neighbors, and has offered to mediate in several persistent regional conflicts. It has, however, not hesitated to use force to quell the guerrillas of the PKK, a rebel movement fighting for Kurdish independence.

But even here, Turkey is now using a softer approach. The rebels have been offered an amnesty and Turkey’s influential foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has this past week paid a visit — the first of its kind — to the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. There is even talk of Turkey opening a consulate in Erbil.

In recent years, Turkey’s diplomacy has scored many successes, winning great popularity in the Arab world and strengthening Turkey’s hand in its bid to join the European Union. Some people would go so far as to argue that there is no future for Turkey without the E.U., and no future for the E.U. without Turkey.

Turkey’s dynamic multi-directional foreign policy started to take shape when the Justice and Development party, or AKP, came to power in 2002 under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, now president of the Turkish Republic. These men are rightly considered to be conservative and moderately Islamic — their wives wear headscarves — but they are careful to stress that they have no ambition to create an Islamic state. Turkey’s population may be largely Muslim, but the state itself is secular, democratic, capitalist and close to both the West and the Arab and Muslim world. Indeed, Turkey sees itself as a bridge, vital to both.

Ahmet Davutoglu is credited with providing the theoretical framework for Turkey’s new foreign policy. He was Mr. Erdogan’s principal adviser before being promoted foreign minister.

Two visits in October illustrate Turkey’s activisim. Prime Minister Erdogan, accompanied by nine ministers and an Airbus full of businessmen, visited Baghdad, where he held a session with the Iraq government and signed no fewer than 48 memoranda in the fields of commerce, energy, water, security, the environment and so forth.

At much the same time, Foreign Minister Davutoglu was in Aleppo, where he signed agreements with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Muallim, of which perhaps the most important was the removal of visas, allowing for a free flow of people across their common border.

Turkey also broke new ground in October by signing two protocols with Armenia, providing for the restoration of diplomatic relations and the opening of the border between them. Not surprisingly, Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan has strongly objected to this development, since it is locked in conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated pocket of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces.

Indeed, Turkey’s protocols with Armenia are unlikely to be fully implemented until Armenia withdraws from at least some of the districts surrounding Karabakh — but, at the very least, a historic start has been made toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

From the Arab point of view, the most dramatic development has undoubtedly been the cooling of Turkey’s relations with Israel. The relationship has been damaged by the outrage felt by many Turks at Israel’s cruel oppression of the Palestinians, which reached its peak with the Gaza War.

Even before the assault on Gaza, Prime Minister Erdogan — a strong supporter of the Palestine cause — did not hesitate to describe some of Israel’s brutal actions as “state terrorism.” A total breach between the two countries is unlikely, but relations are unlikely to recover their earlier warmth so long as Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, remain in power.

Underpinning Turkey’s diplomacy is its central role as an energy hub linking oil and gas producers in Russia and Central Asia with energy-hungry markets in Europe.

One way and another, a resurgent Turkey is rewriting the rules of the power game in the Middle East in a positive and non-confrontational manner. This is one of the few bright spots in a turbulent and highly inflammable Middle East.

Patrick Seale is the author of “The Struggle for Syria,” “Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East” and “Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.” Agence Global

Turkey and the Middle East Looking east and south

Oct 29th 2009 | ISTANBUL

From The Economist print edition

Frustrated by European equivocation, Turkey is reversing years of antagonism with its Arab neighbours

 

Illustration by Peter Schrank

IT IS a thousand years since the Turks arrived in the Middle East, migrating from Central Asia to Anatolia. For half of that millennium they ruled much of the region. But when the Ottoman Empire fizzled out and the Turkish Republic was born in 1923, they all but sealed themselves off from their former dominions, turning instead to Europe and tightly embracing America in its cold war with the Soviet Union.

The Turks are now back in the Middle East, in the benign guise of traders and diplomats. The move is natural, considering proximity, the strength of the Turkish economy, the revival of Islamic feeling in Turkey after decades of enforced secularism, and frustration with the sluggishness of talks to join the European Union. Indeed, Turkey’s Middle East offensive has taken on something of the scale and momentum of an invasion, albeit a peaceful one.

In the past seven years the value of Turkey’s exports to the Middle East and north Africa has swollen nearly sevenfold to $31 billion in 2008. From cars to tableware, dried figs to television serials, Turkish products, unknown a decade ago, are now ubiquitous in markets from Algiers to Tehran. Already a vital conduit for sending energy from east to west, Turkey is set to grow in importance as more pipelines come on stream. The most notable is Nabucco, a proposed €7.9 billion ($11.7 billion) scheme to carry gas across Turkey from Azerbaijan and possibly Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Egypt. A single Turkish construction firm, TAV, has just finished an airport terminal for Egypt’s capital, Cairo, and is building others in Libya, Qatar, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Turks have scooped up hundreds of infrastructure contracts in Iraqi Kurdistan, and invested in shopping malls, hotels and even schools.

These achievements are partly due to an energetic pursuit of trading privileges, such as Turkey’s free-trade pacts with Egypt, Israel, Morocco and Tunisia. It is seeking a similar deal with the six-member Gulf Co-operation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month, teams of Turkish ministers travelled to Baghdad and Damascus to sign a package of 48 co-operation deals with Iraq and 40 with Syria. Covering everything from tourism to counter-terrorism and joint military exercises, the deals could end decades of tension between Turkey and its former Ottoman provinces.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been warmly received in the Iranian capital, Tehran, a reflection of the realpolitik that has kept links open despite the Islamic Republic’s international isolation. Turkey requires no visas for Iranians, and Mr Erdogan, who has stressed Iran’s right to nuclear power for civil purposes, pointedly congratulated Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after his disputed election win in June. Turkey only recently made an historic breakthrough in relations with another eastern neighbour, Armenia. If the parliaments of both countries endorse the move, diplomatic ties may be restored after a 16-year freeze.

This dogged diplomatic pragmatism has been ardently pursued by the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an ebullient professor of international relations who had long advised Mr Erdogan before his appointment in May. Mr Davutoglu, who in a book described the Middle East as “Turkey’s strategic depth”, has called for a policy of “zero problems with neighbours”. Reflecting the mild, modernist Islamism of the Justice and Development party, known by its Turkish initials AK, which has ruled Turkey since 2002, the new policy seeks to use the soft power of trade, along with historical links, to project stability beyond Turkey’s frontiers. This marks a distinct shift in worldview. In the past Turkey tended to see itself as an eastern bulwark of the NATO alliance, whereas its Middle Eastern neighbours were viewed as threats to be contained.

Whatever Mr Davutoglu’s persuasive powers, this reorientation could not have happened without dramatic changes in Turkey. Reforms undertaken partly to meet demands for EU membership have shifted power from threat-obsessed generals to civilian institutions, and to a new, more self-consciously Muslim elite rooted in Anatolia rather than Istanbul, Turkey’s Western-looking commercial and intellectual capital. The AK party has also reversed decades of official policy by trying to meet the demands of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority (some 14m in a total population of 72m). The granting of more cultural and political rights, and the admission of past discrimination, have soothed tempers not only among Turkish Kurds, but among their ethnic kin in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Yet a reason for the success of Turkey’s kinder, gentler approach is that it takes place in the context of a regional power vacuum. Such relative Arab heavyweights as Egypt and Iraq no longer wield much clout. American influence has also dipped in the wake of its troubles in Iraq. Indeed, Turkey’s biggest breakthrough in Arab public opinion came in 2003, when its parliament rejected an American request to open Turkish territory as a second front for the invasion of Iraq. Turkey did allow the use of an airbase to supply the war, but escaped the opprobrium heaped on America’s Arab allies who grudgingly lent support to the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Turkey has also been welcomed back because many Arabs see it as both a moderate counterweight to Iran and as a window to the West. Iraqi Shias, for instance, are still wary of Iranian meddling in Iraq, even though Iraq’s main Shia parties have close relations with Iran. Iraq’s Kurds, despite age-old tensions with Turkey, have also warmed their relations as trade has boomed and the looming departure of the Kurds’ American protectors raises the spectre of isolation. The secular government of Syria, an ostensible ally of Iran, in fact shares little cultural affinity with its stridently Islamist rulers, compared with the AK party’s businesslike, tie-wearing officials. Improved relations with Turkey, which now include visa-free travel, bring much-needed relief to Syria, isolated diplomatically and economically backward. In fact, so eager has Syria been to woo Turkey that in 2005 it scrapped a longstanding territorial claim to Hatay, a province granted to Turkey in 1939 by France, Syria’s colonial master at the time.

Turkish officials, however, have been careful to explain that their renewed interest in the Muslim east does not mean a chill towards the West. Instead, they present Turkey as a useful bridge, a regional force for peace, and the model of a democracy that is compatible with Islam. Its Western allies have generally shared that view and have not opposed Turkey’s eastward shift. Yet such benign indifference could change, if Turkey’s prospects for joining the EU die, or if Turkey is seen as undermining attempts to pressure Iran.

Already, Turkey’s gentle realignment has carried some costs, most obviously to its relations with Israel. These flourished into a full-blown strategic partnership in the 1990s, before the AK party’s rise, when peace between Palestinians and Israelis seemed possible. Joint military exercises and Israeli arms sales brought the two countries’ military establishments close, while trade and tourism expanded fast. Israel even offered to shield Turkey from lobbies in the American Congress that sought to punish Turkey for disputing the genocide of Armenians in Ottoman territory during the first world war.

The end of an affair?

But ties have frayed as Turkish public opinion, which now counts for more, has turned increasingly hostile to Israel. Mr Erdogan, a tough, streetwise politician, felt slighted last year when Israel attacked Gaza only days after he had met Israel’s then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who assured him that Turkish-brokered peace talks between Israel and Syria would resume. The bloodshed in Gaza outraged many Turks, who heartily praised Mr Erdogan when he stormed out of a debate with Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, at Davos in Switzerland earlier this year.

The Turks were again angered in September when Israel denied Mr Davutoglu permission to cross into Gaza during a visit to Israel. Earlier this month Turkey, citing Israel’s failure to deliver an order of military drone aircraft, abruptly cancelled joint air exercises. Israel, for its part, lodged a formal protest at the airing, on Turkish state television, of a serial depicting Israeli soldiers as brutal killers. Some Israeli officials say they detect signs of anti-Semitism that disqualify Turkey from mediating any longer between Syria and Israel.

Turkish officials respond that they have no intention of breaking off relations with Israel, and think they can still be a useful interlocutor with the Jewish state. But they remain indignant. “We might have lost leverage with Israel,” says an AK party man. “But I’d rather be on the side of history, of what is right, of justice.” One of Mr Erdogan’s advisers puts Turkey’s case more boldly, in a sign of its growing confidence as a regional leader. “We are conditioning relations with Israel on the progress of the conflict,” he says. “This is what the West should do.”

Turkey and Armenia: Bones to pick

Oct 8th 2009 | DER ZOR, SYRIA
From The Economist print edition


A new deal, but the old quarrels persist

THE bones protrude from the earth. An Armenian priest extracts them, praying quietly. Syrian secret police in a green jeep look on. Residents of Busayrah, a village 35km (22 miles) south-east of Der Zor, claim the bones are of hundreds of thousands of Armenians marched into the Syrian desert and slaughtered by Ottoman forces in 1915. “Donkeys are now defecating on the bones of my forefathers. They were not allowed dignity, not even in death,” says Khatchig Mouradian, a journalist.

Armenians say the mass extermination of their forebears was genocide. Members of the Armenian diaspora believe that justice will not be done until the world, and above all Turkey, accepts this. And that is why many viscerally oppose a landmark deal between Turkey and its landlocked neighbour, Armenia, due to be signed this weekend in Switzerland.

Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s president, has been blasted by nationalist opponents and greeted with howls of “traitor” by thousands of Armenian protesters in France, America and Lebanon where he has (unsuccessfully) lobbied the diaspora’s leaders for support. Websites with names like “stoptheprotocols.com” abound.

The draft agreement calls for diplomatic ties and the reopening of Armenia’s border with Turkey, sealed by the Turks in 1993 in solidarity with their Azeri cousins after Armenia occupied chunks of Azerbaijan following a nasty war over the mainly Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Diaspora Armenians are especially incensed by a plan for a joint commission of historians to investigate the events leading up to 1915. They fume that this calls the genocide into doubt and may make it harder to seek compensation. Most historians agree that there were as many as 1m Armenians living in Turkey before 1915, compared with 60,000 today. Much of their wealth went to Muslim Turks.

William Schabas, a professor of human rights in Galway, Ireland, says the 1915 killings constituted genocide. But he also argues that “there is no solid legal precedent for a right to compensation with respect to events that took place nearly a century ago.” In Turkey, too, there are deep misgivings about peace with Armenia. Opposition parties have accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, of “carrying out America’s orders” and “selling the country”. They will fight the agreement if it is put to a vote in parliament.

Mr Erdogan (whose ruling Justice and Development Party has a clear majority in parliament) has made clear that Armenia needs to cede some of the occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh before the agreement can be approved. That is because Azerbaijan, which sells large quantities of oil and gas to Turkey, threatens to turn to Russia should Turkey abandon its cause. The Turks pin their hopes on a meeting due soon between Mr Sargsyan and his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliev, in Moldova. Mr Aliev claims that a deal is imminent. But Mr Sargsyan has said that he won’t be “signing anything”.

The concern for Turkey may then be that merely signing a deal with Armenia without ratifying it will not be enough to stave off threats by America’s Congress to pass a bill labelling the Armenian tragedy as genocide. The past week’s events show that, even if Turkey and Armenia shake hands, the diaspora will keep to its cause. But the question Turkey should ask itself is how long it can evade the ghosts of its bloody past.

Turkey and Russia

Old rivals, new partners

Aug 13th 2009 | ANKARA
From The Economist print edition

An alliance of convenience that arouses some suspicion in the West

AFP

Friends or foes?

THROUGH the long Ottoman era, Turks and Russians fought many bloody wars. In modern times Turkey guarded NATO’s southern flank against Soviet mischief. “The Russians are treacherous” is a popular Turkish adage. But one would hardly have guessed it as the two countries’ prime ministers, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, splashily signed a raft of agreements in a ceremony in Ankara on August 6th.

“Treacherous” was in fact the word some applied to the deal with Russia’s Gazprom to use Turkish territorial waters in the Black Sea for a gas pipeline to Europe. The planned South Stream pipeline will bypass Ukraine, through which 80% of Russia’s gas exports to Europe now flow. Russia has repeatedly turned off the taps in disputes with Ukraine, leaving millions of Europeans in the cold. To reduce dependence on Russia, the European Union has long promoted a pipeline to the Caspian, Nabucco, which Turkey also signed up for in July. So whose side is it on?

The answer is simple: Turkey’s. Sitting at the crossroads of the energy-rich Middle East and the former Soviet Union, Turkey has unique leverage as a transit hub for gas. And it is unabashedly using the energy card to promote its membership of the EU. This requires co-operation with Russia. In exchange for backing South Stream, Turkey won Russian support for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea port of Samsun to the Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean. It is also said to have cajoled Russia into lowering the price for a nuclear-power station. Nabucco and South Stream are not rivals, they are complementary, insists Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

The same might be said of Turkey and Russia themselves. With the end of the cold war their interests sometimes coincide. Both backed the war in Afghanistan but were viscerally opposed to America’s invasion of Iraq. Turkey’s image as America’s poodle was erased in March 2003 when its parliament refused to let American troops cross Turkish soil to open a second front against Saddam Hussein.

A bigger test of Turkey’s stance came in the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008. Turkey carefully implemented the Montreux Convention, which governs traffic through the Bosporus, so only a handful of American warships could enter the Black Sea. Neither Turkey nor Russia wants the Americans meddling in their back pond.

What do the Americans think? Ian Lesser, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, argues that for now they are not fussed. “The [Obama] administration is far more sensitive to what Turkey does with Iran.” Turkey’s overtures to Russia are seen in the context of a new foreign policy that involves engaging with all its neighbours. Europe can hardly cast stones either, as it remains divided over Russia. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was present in Ankara because ENI, an Italian energy company, is involved in the South Stream deal.

Russia is Turkey’s biggest single trading partner and provides 68% of its gas. Turkish construction firms are active all over Russia. Millions of Russian tourists flock to Turkish resorts every year. Antalya, on the Mediterranean, is home to some 15,000 Russians, many of them women married to Turkish men. They have their own Russian-language newspaper and now want an Orthodox church. “Russian women educated Turkish men in love,” says Ali Ozgenturk, who made “Balalayka”, a film about Russian prostitutes in Turkey.

Mr Putin and Mr Erdogan get on well. Both are macho, sporty and prone to authoritarian instincts. Turkey is also one of the few countries with which today’s Russia feels comfortable, a pole in its preferred multipolar system, in which big countries pursue independent policies. Turkey even appears to have colluded with the Russian patriarch, Kirill, to limit the powers of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul, Bartholomew I, usually seen as first among equals in the Orthodox hierarchy.

Yet mutual suspicions linger. Russia is unhappy with Turkey’s indulgence of Chechens. (Tahir Buyukkorukcu, a Muslim preacher, speaks of the “Russian pig” when talking of Chechnya in his television show on the private Kon channel.) Russia has shut schools run by the Muslim fraternity of a Turkish imam, Fethullah Gulen.

For Turkey, Russia’s refusal to label Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as “terrorists” is a sore point. It is also wary of Russia’s show of wanting to help Armenia and Azerbaijan make peace over Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish officials say Russia wants to repair the damage to its image caused by its battering of Georgia. More likely, it wants to stop Turkey making peace with Armenia. Many believe that Russian scheming emboldened Azerbaijan to press Turkey into ditching plans to re-establish ties and reopen its border with Armenia. This is now patrolled by Russian soldiers, just as in the cold war.

What’s the matter with Turkey?

Fri, 03/06/2009 - 5:20pm

http://experts.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/06/what_s_the_matter_with_turkey

By Joshua W. Walker

The internal politics behind the country's strange recent behavior.

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Ankara on Saturday, foreign-policy wonks are asking, "What's going on with Turkey?" Uncharacteristically, Turkey has been generating its share of headlines lately -- and not in a good way.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dramatic walkout at the World Economic Forum in Davos after an emotionally charged panel on the Gaza crisis, his call for Israel to be removed from the United Nations, and his posturing against an IMF agreement to help Turkey weather the economic crisis have left experts scratching their heads. With Turks heading to the polls for local elections in late March, Erdogan's "bring it on" attitude toward the West may be smart domestic politics, but it could have catastrophic repercussions for both Turkey and its long-time ally, the United States.

After leading the country through six years of unprecedented economic growth and undertaking far-reaching political reforms that have moved Turkey closer to realizing its dream of joining the European Union, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) seem to be going astray. Turkey's European reform program is bogged down, the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire remains the third rail of Turkish politics, there has been little letup in the military's battles with the terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers Party, and strategic relations with Israel have virtually collapsed. The nexus of these problems is producing a nasty strain of Turkish nationalism, of which anti-Semitism -- a phenomenon largely alien to Turkey -- seems to be a central component.

Since Israel's December-January invasion of Gaza, a wave of anti-Semitism seems to have engulfed Turkey's political discourse. Even while emphasizing the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment, the Turks have engaged in a crude form of what can only be called Jew baiting. For example, Erdogan averred that Americans did not see what was really happening in Gaza because "Jews control the media." Reports of threats made to Jewish-owned businesses in Istanbul and Izmir as well as the appearance of billboards plastered with anti-Semitic messages have alarmed Turkey's 27,000-strong Jews, whose ancestors escaped the Inquisition for the safety of the Ottoman Empire. Sylvio Ovadya, the leader of the Jewish community -- which generally keeps a low profile -- recently asked President Abdullah Gül to make anti-Semitism a crime.

The cognitive dissonance over this outbreak of anti-Jewish sentiment is particularly jarring because Erdogan is no anti-Semite. After all, he spoke eloquently and forcefully in defense of Turkey's Jewish community after al-Qa'ida attacked two of Istanbul's synagogues in November 2003, is on record calling anti-Semitism a crime against humanity, and participated in the OSCE's 2004 Conference on Anti-Semitism that committed his government to combat anti-Semitism in all its forms.

But while anti-Semitism is cause for grave concern, the central problem in Turkey is a political system that one party -- arguably one personality, Erdogan -- thoroughly dominates. As polls point toward a resounding AKP victory in upcoming local elections, the party's domestic critics are increasingly concerned about the chilling effects of power left virtually unchecked. Turkey, they believe, has reached a critical juncture in its political development and they do not like the trajectory AKP has chosen.

The consolidation of AKP's political power has eliminated many of the traditional fault-lines in Turkey's perennial Kulturkampf. Few Turkey watchers would have ever believed that the military establishment and an Islamist-rooted political party could make common cause. Yet, the AKP is now riding a wave of popular sentiment that accommodates a previously irreconcilable mix of religious and secular nationalism. Oddly, Turkey has become more European, more democratic, more Islamic, and increasingly more nationalist simultaneously. In this complex political environment, the AKP has resorted to the lowest common denominators of economic and political populism to ensure its appeal among a large swath of the Turkish electorate that is angry at the EU, the United States, and Israel.

The prevailing mood in Turkey has come at the worst possible time for U.S.-Turkish relations. Proponents of a non-binding Congressional resolution recognizing the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide have already begun soliciting support among their colleagues. There is, of course, a moral imperative to address one of the darkest episodes of the last century, yet should the resolution pass, we can expect a sharp Turkish backlash. Ankara would likely close or strictly limit use of Incirlik airbase, which is a main logistics hub for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. With Turks already largely alienated from Europe, the combination of Erdogan's current posturing and the possibility that Congress will pass an Armenian genocide resolution could cause long-term damage to U.S.-Turkish relations, leaving Ankara without an anchor in the West and Washington without a strategic partner in southeastern Europe and the Middle East.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance has undergone periods of great strain during the previous six decades. Shared interest in containing the Soviet threat was always sufficient to carry the bilateral relations during periods of tension. Yet, in the almost 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey's importance has not diminished. In fact, Ankara remains as critical an ally as ever as the Turks sit literally at the center of Washington's most pressing foreign-policy priorities in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucuses, Balkans, and Europe. As a result, the United States cannot afford to discount Turkey's regional role or internal instability.

Secretary Clinton will find the Turkey of today very different from the country she visited in 1999. It is not just "Islamist" political power, or the palpable buzz of Istanbul, which is on the verge of becoming a truly global city, or the sense that Turkey, with its newly minted seat on the U.N. Security Council, is a "player." It is all of these things. For years, Turks struggled with a debilitating sense of insecurity about their place in the world because they were, in the words of Turkey's founder Ataturk, trying to raise Turkey to "the level of civilization" -- i.e. Western civilization. Yet, the Turks have thus far been unable to crack the Western code, which above all else the European Union has come to represent. Europe, for its part, does not seem to want a country of 74 million Turkish Muslims. A whopping 81 percent of Austrians, for example, oppose Turkey's EU membership bid. Faced with the prospects of knocking on the gates of Vienna indefinitely, Turkey may simply look elsewhere.

Now, six years after the AKP came to power, Turkey's identity and survival are not entirely bound up in the West. Without abandoning its EU ambitions, Ankara has engaged its neighbors to the south and east, including Syria and Iran, and garnered the Turks newfound regional prestige after a long period of alienation from the Middle East.

Turkey today is a rising power in its region, a shift the United States should both acknowledge and leverage to its advantage. After all, Washington was initially critical of Ankara's growing ties with Damascus until it was revealed that the Turks were sponsoring indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria. As Secretary Clinton gets down to business with her Turkish counterparts, it will become obvious that U.S. and Turkish interests actually converge across a range of thorny regional problems. Take northern Iraq, where the continued improvement of Kurdish-Turkish relations is critical to PKK terrorist camps. Or Iran, where Turkey has a direct interest in seeing that its neighbor and regional rival does not acquire nuclear weapons. Ankara's growing economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran should be seen as a leading edge for Washington as it seeks ways to influence Iranian behavior for the better.

Yes, the trend in Turkey's domestic politics may be troubling. But despite the problems associated with AKP's accumulation of unrivalled political power, Turkey is still clearly a vital partner for the United States. An Armenian genocide resolution or efforts to punish Turkey based on a simplistic view of Erdo?an and his party as being "Islamist" or instinctively anti-Semitic or anti-Western will likely backfire. Secretary Clinton will have to find a way to make this key alliance work.

Joshua W. Walker was a guest fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations during the summer of 2008 and is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University.

Azerbaijan: The key to the Caucasus

The key to the Caucasus

By Stanley A. Weiss

Monday, December 8, 2008

BAKU, Azerbaijan: 'Welcome to Houston on the Caspian," said Anne Derse, the U.S. ambassador to this booming, oil-rich nation, as our delegation of American business executives arrived on the final leg of a visit to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

After days of discussion with political, military and business leaders across the region - including a talk with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, whose office overlooks the Caspian Sea, home to perhaps a quarter of the world's new oil production - it all seemed obvious. As one U.S. diplomat put it, Azerbaijan "is central to all we're trying to do in this part of the world."

Azerbaijan is the indispensable link to reducing European energy dependence on Moscow, with the only pipelines exporting Caspian oil and gas that bypass Russia altogether, with routes through Georgia and Turkey.

Without Azerbaijan, there will never be what the U.S. energy secretary Samuel Bodman calls "a new generation of export routes" bypassing Russia. Known as the "southern corridor," it includes plans by Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to ship oil and gas by barge across the Caspian to Baku, as well as the EU's long-planned Nabucco gas pipeline from Turkey to Europe.

Aliyev stresses that, unlike President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, he will not taunt the Russian bear, continuing instead to walk a fine line between East and West. This policy includes allowing his military to train with NATO, but not rushing to become a NATO member.

Aliyev insists that "time is up" for the return of the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh - the Armenian-majority region occupied by Armenia, with Russian support, since the war over the area in the early 1990s. Still, he seems determined not to give Moscow a pretext to intervene, as it did with its invasion of Georgia this summer.

Azerbaijan - like Turkey, with which it shares deep ethnic and linguistic ties - is one the world's most secularized Muslim countries, with a strict separation between mosque and state. Moreover, the nearly 20 million ethnic Azeris living in neighboring Iran - about a quarter of Iran's population - are culturally closer to their brethren in Baku than their Persian rulers in Tehran. Azerbaijan also draws the ayatollahs' ire as one of the few Muslim nations with diplomatic ties with Israel.

Yet for all its strategic significance - and its support for the U.S. war on terrorism, including sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq - Azerbaijan remains the neglected stepchild of U.S. Caucasus policy. Despite Saakashvili's miscalculations with Russia, Georgia remains the darling of the West, garnering another $1 billion in post-war aid from the U.S. atop the nearly $2 billion Washington has bestowed over the years. The powerful Armenian-American lobby has not only secured some $2 billion for Armenia to date, it has succeeded in limiting U.S. aid to Azerbaijan because of the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

To be sure, this country is no democracy; the 46-year-old Aliyev learned well from his authoritarian father, who ruled Azerbaijan both as a Soviet Republic and after independence. Indeed, not long before our delegation arrived, Aliyev claimed re-election with 89 percent of the vote.

But if Azerbaijan is "central" to everything Washington is trying to accomplish in the Caucasus, then Azerbaijan should be at the forefront of U.S. Caucasus policy. To help Azerbaijan - and the region - realize its full economic potential, the incoming Obama administration should make a major push to resolve Nagorno-Karabakh, which - as one development official here tells me - "is the main issue that prevents regional integration."

A breakthrough is possible. Every member of the so-called Minsk Group charged with resolving the conflict - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, several European countries and the U.S. - have powerful incentives for compromise.

Aliyev wants Nagorno-Karabakh back, but understands that Moscow won't allow him to take it by force. Landlocked, impoverished Armenia desperately wants Azerbaijan and Turkey to end a 16-year economic blockade of its borders. Turkey wants to improve relations with Armenia. Europe wants to avert another crisis that would complicate plans for its Nabucco pipeline. And with new competing diplomatic initiatives, Turkey and Russia clearly want to play a leadership role in the region.

This "frozen conflict" will not thaw easily. But through a gradual process backed by the major powers, the Caucasus countries could finally focus on economic cooperation rather than military confrontation. And the trade routes of the old Silk Road could become a new energy corridor of the 21st century.

Stanley A. Weiss is founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.

Medvedev brokers Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute

Reuters
Published: November 2, 2008
MOSCOW: President Dmitri Medvedev sought Sunday to underline Russia's influence in the Caucasus by bringing together the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia for talks on the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which has a mostly ethnic Armenian population, broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed. It now runs its own affairs, with support from Armenia.
The Armenian president, Serzh Sargsian, and his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, shook hands before Medvedev opened talks at Meiendorf Castle, the official residence outside Moscow.
After the talks, all three presidents signed a declaration, which was read out by Medvedev and said that Aliyev and Sargsian had agreed to continue work on "a political resolution of the conflict." Aliyev and Sargsian made no comment.
The war between Russia and Georgia in August appears to have lent new impetus to diplomatic efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh situation, with Russia trying to show it can act as a broker for "frozen conflicts" in the former Soviet Union.
Georgia sent troops and tanks in August to retake the pro-Russian rebel region of South Ossetia, which threw off Georgian rule in 1991-92.
Russia responded with a powerful counterstrike that drove the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia and continued into Georgia proper. Moscow then recognized South Ossetia and another of Georgia's rebel regions, Abkhazia, as independent states.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Armenia provides assistance to the breakaway region, though no government, including Armenia's, has recognized it as an independent state.
Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the area ended in 1994 when a cease-fire was signed. The two sides are still technically at war because no peace treaty has been signed.
About 35,000 people on both sides were killed in the fighting. More than a million people were forced to flee their homes, and almost all are still unable to return.
Along with France and the United States, Russia is one of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group, which is mandated to act as an intermediary in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. But it is unusual for a head of state to act directly as mediator.
The presidents, the joint declaration said, "discussed the perspectives for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict via political means, through the continuation of direct dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia with the mediation of Russia, the United States and France as the co-chairmen of the Minsk group."
Armenia is considered Russia's strongest ally in the Caucasus, but it is also being courted by the United States and the European Union in a struggle with Moscow for influence over a transit route for oil and gas from the Caspian Sea area.

All Quiet on the Southern Front

August 27, 2008 Comment by Sergey Markedonov Special to Russia Profile, http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=International&articleid=a1219848872

Despite Having Been Affected by the Russo-Georgian Squabble, Both Armenia and Azerbaijan Cautiously Abstain From Taking Sides The events of the “five-day war” in South Ossetia demonstrated that countries of the Southern Caucasus largely act according to their own national interests, and not on the assurances of “eternal friendships.” Thus, both Armenia and Azerbaijan behave in a careful and calculated manner, realizing that getting involved in the Russian-Georgian conflict bears a lot of “hidden reefs” which could prove to be more dangerous than the status-quo that is so despised by Baku and so cherished by Yerevan. Georgia’s attempts to “restore the constitutional order” in South Ossetia and the harsh Russian response have altered the politico-legal and power configurations in the CIS, and not only in the two “hot spots.” They had a serious impact on the entire ethno-political situation in Eurasia. In this regard, it is crucial to consider the consequences of this “security deficit” in the South Caucasus, especially because in recent weeks, Armenia and Azerbaijan have remained in the shadows. What lessons were Baku and Yerevan able to draw, having been brought to a conflicted state by the events in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the “hot August” of 2008? Let’s consider the horizontal links among the three former Caucasus republics, all of them now independent states in the South Caucasus region. Georgia considered Azerbaijan its natural ally. Baku was ready to reciprocate the sentiment. Let’s recall that the day before the new escalation in South Ossetia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called Azerbaijan no less than the “guarantor of independence” of his country. Typical theatrics of the Georgian leader aside, we should recognize a few important points. First, Georgia and Azerbaijan are members of an organization whose stated goal is to play a peculiar anti-CIS role—GUAM. After Georgia officially left the CIS, GUAM remains the sole structure in which Tbilisi can realize its integration projects (another question is how successfully) within Eurasia. Secondly, Azerbaijan has always supported the territorial integrity of Georgia. Unlike Ukraine, Azerbaijan itself lost some 13 percent of the land that is recognized as its integral part, and hence its support, along with political reasons, has emotional and psychological grounds (which in politics, especially in the Caucasus, is extremely important). Thirdly, there is the economic cooperation. In 2005, during the energy crisis, it was Azerbaijan that provided gas for Georgia. "The Georgian people will never forget this," Saakashvili said in a statement during the groundbreaking opening ceremony for the Turkish section of the "Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars" railway on July 24 (only two weeks remained before the Tskhinvali tragedy). The two Caucasian states were also united by two pipelines (oil and gas). Baku also often served as a profitable and reliable sponsor for Tbilisi. Unlike Azerbaijan, Georgia never considered Armenia as a strategic partner and even less as a “guarantor of security.” There have been a lot of sensitive issues in their bilateral relations. These include the position of Armenians in Georgia (in the Armenian populated Samtskhe-Javakheti and in Tbilisi itself, considered to be an important cultural center for all Armenians), and the role of the Armenian community in the Abkhaz events. During the Georgian-Abkhazian war of 1992-1993, the Bagramyan battalion fought on the side of the "aggressive separatists" (as they call them in Tbilisi). There were far fewer Armenian participants on the Georgian side (largely from the aforementioned Tbilisi). In present-day Abkhazia, the Armenian community is represented both in the government and in business, and is generally loyal to the leadership of the de facto state. The irritating factors are compounded by the military partnership between Armenia and the Russian Federation (particularly the military base in Gyumri, to which, among others, Russian military units from Georgia were moved). Prior to the withdrawal of the Russian military base from Akhalkalaki, there were many local ethnic Armenian residents employed there. Also, Georgia (along with Iran) is Armenia’s window to the world (because of the land blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan). Hence, Yerevan does not want to move past certain milestones in its relations with Tbilisi. Armenia also realizes that its gateway to Russia is through Georgia, and that is why the dependence on the dynamics of Russian-Georgian relations is an extremely sore point for Armenia. In turn, given the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Tbilisi is more cautious in dealing with the “Armenian question.” The Georgian leadership cannot ignore that, unlike the Abkhazians or Ossetians, Armenians have strong support in the United States and the EU (similarly from France). Indeed, the given dispositions have determined the attitude that Georgia’s neighbors have toward the “hot August” events. Despite its commitment to a strategic alliance with Russia, Armenia preferred to abstain from sudden moves and categorical statements. There are many reasons for this. There is a reluctance to either clearly align their actions with the Russians or to spoil their relations with the West. They are already uneasy in connection with the events of March 1 in Yerevan. It is understandable that Serzh Sargsyan is no Alexander Lukashenko, to whom the United States and the EU have long ago given their “blessing” of more freedom in his interpretation of events. Armenia, which has such a vulnerable place as the Karabakh, was also not overly interested in anchoring the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict to Russian-Georgian relations. Besides, even earlier, both Armenia and the NKR leadership distanced themselves from an openly pro-Ossetia and pro-Abkhazia position. This is why representatives of Armenia’s Ministry of Defense hastened to declare on August 10 that raids on the Georgian airbases were not being conducted from the Russian base located in Armenia: "The 102nd military base in the city of Gyumri has no military aircraft capable of committing acts such as these bombings,” they claimed. The position of Armenia in connection with the heated Russian-Turkish relations is another sensitive issue. Mild support by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan for the Russian Federation’s position is creating a feeling in Yerevan (as well as in the Armenian Diaspora in the West) that the two great powers can agree with each other to the detriment of Armenia (in particular, on the Karabakh issue). Recall that on August 13 Erdogan stated: "The situation in South Ossetia gives us cause to review the relationship between our countries, whose solidarity in this region is of great importance." Here is what Karapet Kalenchyan, an expert at the Armenian Center for National and International Studies, wrote on this matter: "Seeing that Russia is once again entering the South Caucasus, Turkey gives it its full support in exchange for certain concessions on the part of Russia. What kind of concessions could these be? Armenians have often worried that such concessions might be made at the expense of our interests.” Prudence (only in the opposite direction) is also what set apart Azerbaijan’s position. Representatives of various political parties of the republic (including the ruling party) were more open in expressing their positions. According to Mubariz Gurbanly (the ruling “Yeni Azerbaijan” party), the "Georgian authorities' actions to restore the country's territorial integrity are fully merited. These actions were undertaken in accordance with the UN Charter." Note that this idea (the legality of actions to punish separatists) had so far been far more popular in Azerbaijan than in Georgia. The chairman of the Supreme Majlis of the "Musavat" (opposition forces) party, Sulhaddin Akper, stated that Georgia "was forced to conduct the operation against the separatists in South Ossetia." However, Baku was officially much more cautious than, for instance, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and the Foreign Ministry of his country (which, unlike Azerbaijan, does not have such serious interests in the region). The statement by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs from August 8 in support of Georgia’s territorial integrity (approved by the Georgian diplomats) contained general statements on the validity of the Georgian operation under "international law," but was not further clarified. Five leaders of states that expressed their solidarity with Georgia were present at a rally in Tbilisi on August 12. There were leaders of the three Baltic countries, Poland, and Ukraine, but Ilham Aliyev, the head of the state which Saakashvili called the "guarantor of independence" less than a month earlier, was not there. Baku preferred caution, given their interest in maintaining stable relations with Russia. Unlike Georgia, Azerbaijan’s foreign policy is not based on a rigid confrontational manner. In Baku, they consider Russia to be a counterweight to the West (which does not have such unambiguous relations with Azerbaijan as it does with Georgia). Azerbaijan is also afraid of being drawn into the “Iran game,” where it is destined to play a role as either a runway or the target of “Tehran’s retaliatory shot.” Hence the desire to appreciate the generally friendly, albeit difficult, relations with Russia. The opposition is trying to take advantage of this situation. Isa Gambar, the leader of the "Musavat" party (who received second place in the last presidential elections) believes that the official Baku reaction to the events in South Ossetia is inadequate. But what level of influence does Isa Gambar, or other opposition figures (Eldar Namazov or Ali Keremli), enjoy today that he can alter the position of the president’s team? That is a rhetorical question. Let's consider a hypothetical situation. Tomorrow either Gambar or Namazov replace Ilham Aliyev. I think that they would also strictly separate rhetoric and realistic politics, guided by the national interests of Azerbaijan. Note that if such a scenario were to be repeated in Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku would receive a much tougher reaction from the West. There would even be talk of the consolidated opinion of the United States, Russia, and leading EU countries. And that is why the Azerbaijani police prohibit protests at the Russian embassy in Baku, and prevents anti-Russian hysteria from sweeping the country. Sergey Markedonov Ph.D., is the head of the Interethnic Relations Department at Moscow’s Institute of Political and Military Analysis.

Waiting and watching

Turkey and the Caucasus

Aug 21st 2008 | ANKARA AND YEREVAN
From The Economist print edition

A large NATO country ponders a bigger role in the Caucasus

AP

Erdogan plays the Georgian flag

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AT THE Hrazdan stadium in Yerevan, workers are furiously preparing for a special visitor: Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul. Armenia’s president, Serzh Sarkisian, has invited Mr Gul to a football World Cup qualifier between Turkey and its traditional foe, Armenia, on September 6th.

If he comes, Mr Gul may pave the way for a new era in the Caucasus. Turkey is the only NATO member in the area, and after the war in Georgia it would like a bigger role. It is the main outlet for westbound Azeri oil and gas and it controls the Bosporus and Dardanelles, through which Russia and other Black Sea countries ship most of their trade. And it has vocal if small minorities from all over the region, including Abkhaz and Ossetians.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been to Moscow and Tbilisi to promote a “Caucasus Stability and Co-operation Platform”, a scheme that calls for new methods of crisis management and conflict resolution. The Russians and Georgians made a show of embracing the idea, as have Armenia and Azerbaijan, but few believe that it will go anywhere. That is chiefly because Turkey does not have formal ties with Armenia. In 1993 Turkey sealed its border (though not its air links) with its tiny neighbour after Armenia occupied a chunk of Azerbaijan in a war over Nagorno-Karabakh. But the war in Georgia raises new questions over the wisdom of maintaining a frozen border.

Landlocked and poor, Armenia looks highly vulnerable. Most of its fuel and much of its grain comes through Georgia’s Black Sea ports, which have been paralysed by the war. Russia blew up a key rail bridge this week, wrecking Georgia’s main rail network that also runs to Armenia and Azerbaijan. This disrupted Azerbaijan’s oil exports, already hit by an explosion earlier this month in the Turkish part of the pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan, in Turkey.

“All of this should point in one direction,” says a Western diplomat in Yerevan: “peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” Reconciliation with Armenia would give Azerbaijan an alternative export route for its oil and Armenia the promise of a new lifeline via Turkey. Some Armenians gloat that Russia’s invasion of Georgia kyboshes the chances of Azerbaijan ever retaking Nagorno-Karabakh by force, though others say the two cases are quite different. Russia is not contiguous with Nagorno-Karabakh, nor does it have “peacekeepers” or nationals there.

Even before the Georgian war, Turkey seemed to understand that isolating Armenia is not making it give up the parts of Azerbaijan that it occupies outside Nagorno-Karabakh. But talking to it might. Indeed, that is what Turkish and Armenian diplomats have secretly done for some months, until news of the talks leaked (probably from an angry Azerbaijan).

Turkey’s ethnic and religious ties with its Azeri cousins have long weighed heavily in its Caucasus policy. But there is a new worry that a resolution calling the mass slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in the 1915 genocide may be passed by America’s Congress after this November’s American elections. This would wreck Turkey’s relations with the United States. If Turkey and Armenia could only become friendlier beforehand, the resolution might then be struck down for good.

In exchange for better relations, Turkey wants Armenia to stop backing a campaign by its diaspora for genocide recognition and allow a commission of historians to establish “the truth”. Mr Sarkisian has hinted that he is open to this idea, triggering howls of treason from the opposition. The biggest obstacle remains Azerbaijan and its allies in the Turkish army. Mr Erdogan was expected to try to square Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, in a visit to Baku this week. Should he fail, Mr Gul may not attend the football match—and a chance for reconciliation may be lost.

L'Arménie et la Turquie affichent leur volonté de résoudre leurs différends

06.09.08 | 20h37  •  Mis à jour le 06.09.08 | 21h01, Le Monde

e président turc Abdullah Gühl et son homologue arménien Serge Sarkissian ont affiché samedi leur "volonté politique" d'apaiser les relations après des années d'acrimonie entre les deux pays, à l'occasion de la première visite d'un chef d'Etat turc en Arménie depuis 1991. Hué à son arrivée à Erevan, le président turc a encore une fois été sifflé quand il est venu assister au match de football entre la Turquie et l'Arménie comptant pour la qualification à la Coupe du monde et qui avait donné aux deux pays l'occasion de ce rapprochement.

"Nous avons la volonté politique de résoudre les différends entre la Turquie et l'Arménie. J'espère que cette visite pourra créer la possibilité d'améliorer nos relations", a affirmé M. Gül, lors de la première visite d'un chef d'Etat turc en Arménie depuis l'indépendance en 1991 de cette ex-république soviétique.  "Nous avons la volonté politique de résoudre les différends entre nos deux pays pour ne pas les laisser aux générations à venir", a également déclaré M. Sarkissian lors d'une conférence de presse commune. Le président arménien a annoncé que M. Gül l'avait invité en Turquie à l'occasion de Turquie-Arménie, le match de football retour entre les équipes des deux pays.

 

avec AFP