Op-Ed Pieces

Turkey’s New Middle East Policy and Greece

2010-10-04T05:30:00.000+01:00

George Papandreou’s recent visit to the Middle East was a long-awaited and welcome move. After many years and despite current economic hardships, Greece has manifested its interest in reclaiming a role in a crucial region where it used to enjoy strong political and economic ties. But is this the beginning of a new foreign policy, or simply an act of opportunism as Turkey’s Middle East policy shifts against Israel?
Turkey’s strong involvement in Middle Eastern affairs dates to the rise of the AKP government in 2002 and is linked with the name of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. According to Davutoglu’s strategic vision, Turkey due to its history and geography possesses “strategic depth,” has multiple regional identities and belongs to the group of “central powers”; in other words, it has been poised to undertake a special role in world history and politics. In a nutshell, Davutoglu suggests that Turkey needs to cease to play the role of the bridge of the client state of the West and develop a strategic vision of its own.
Despite all the hype about Davutoglu’s “strategic doctrine,” it is true that much of what he proposed is not really new. Visions about Turkey’s multi-faceted, multi-polar foreign policy were coined by Prime Minister Turgut Ozal in the late 1980s and Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in the late 1990s. What Davutoglu did was to add two significant conditions for Turkey to realise its full potential in the region. Turkey needed to resolve its two most pressing domestic problems, the Kurdish issue and the debate over the role of Islam in the public sphere. Turkey also needed to overcome all pending bilateral disputes through a “zero problem policy” with its neighbours.
Syria, Turkey’s arch-enemy in the Middle East, had maintained territorial claims on the province of Alexandretta. It objected to Turkey’s construction of dams that limited the flow of the river Euphrates into Syria. Thus, Syria was until the late 1990s one of the main sponsors of the PKK activity in southeast Turkey and even sheltered its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. A decade later, Turkish-Syrian economic relations are booming, and relations at the political level are better than ever. A free trade agreement has been in operation since 2007, and minister-level Council of Strategic Cooperation to promote cooperation.
Iraq was another difficult area. Turkey’s unease with the prospect of Kurdish autonomy in the north was no secret. Turkey opposed the second Gulf War precisely because it feared a breakup of Iraq. Turkish Parliament famously refused the use of Turkish territory to US troops on the eve of the Iraq invasion, and consequently Turkish troops did not play a major role in post-war Iraqi security.. Yet the AKP government was quick to develop a working relationship with the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraqi Kurdish political parties. It developed strong relations with both major Iraqi Kurdish political actors, the President of Iraq Jalal Talabani and the President of the KRG Massoud Barzani. Economic relations were boosted.
Relations with Israel stood in stark contrast to these improvements. Ever since the AKP invited Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Ankara for talks in February 2006, Turkish-Israeli relations have been undergoing a slow but steady deterioration. Rare outbursts against Israel took place, sometimes in the limelight of international events. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly upbraided Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos in January 2009. Turkish Ambassador to Israel Oguz Celikkol was publicly humiliated a year later by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. The low point came on May 31, when a humanitarian aid flotilla attempted to break an Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. Israeli troops intercepted it, killing nine Turkish activists.
The severe worsening of Turkish-Israeli relations has cast doubt on Turkey’s ability to promote peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. By taking such a clear pro-Palestinian –or rather pro-Hamas– stance, Turkey was wasting its ability to act as a neutral mediator, as far as Israel was concerned. Moreover, Davutoglu’s statement that the Gaza attack was psychologically like 9/11 for Turkey and his statement to a group of seventeen Arab Foreign Ministers that “Jerusalem will soon be the capital of Palestine and we will go and pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque all together,” surprised many of those observers who considered him to be a cool-headed and shrewd strategist.
Turkey might face additional consequences due to its new Middle East policy on a different front. The Israeli lobby has traditionally lent a hand of support to Turkey whenever a key decision or vote were to made in Washington DC on issues considered key to Turkish interests. This support may well evaporate now given the new circumstances, and Turkey may encounter some nasty surprises in forthcoming votes in the US Congress.
Some argue that Turkey does not need the United States as it did in the past. While this statement might indeed be true, this would not mean that Turkey has been emancipated from Western and US strategies and policies in the Middle East. While Turkey has grown stronger by improving relations with most of its neighbours, it is not a global actor yet. It still needs to address the domestic and foreign policy issues Davutoglu has identified –at the minimum. While Turkey’s role in the Middle East will be a function of its own ability to balance its Western vocation with its Middle East agenda, it remains to be seen whether Greece develops its own active strategy, so its relations with key Middle Eastern states do not simply fill Turkey’s absences.

(Published in the October 2010 issue of Odyssey)

Turkey and Iran’s Nuclear Conundrum: Much Ado about Nothing?

2010-09-22T05:03:00.003+01:00

Ushering in a new era in Turkish-Iranian relations has been a facet of an overall reorientation of Turkish foreign policy. Under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AKP) the Middle East has gained more weight and become a key region for Turkish diplomacy. This was in line with the new strategic doctrine introduced by Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief foreign policy advisor of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who in May 2009 rose to the post of Foreign Minister.
According to Davutoglu’s vision, Turkey is a “central power” and possesses “strategic depth.” This means that Turkey should no more shape its regional strategies and policies in accordance with the strategic priorities of its Western allies, most importantly the United States. On the contrary, it had to establish its own strategic agenda and priorities, which would not necessarily coincide with these of the United States or Europe. In Davutoglu’s view, Turkey had to dissociate itself from its established militaristic and firmly pro-Western image and foster a new image in which Turkey’s soft power, translated into economic, cultural and political clout would prevail. According to that view, Turkey should claim a leading intermediary role in all regional conflicts in the Middle East, resolve all pending bilateral disputes and build strategic cooperation with its neighbors. This allowed for a reconfiguration of Turkey’s relations with Iran, which should not be a function –or even hostage– of US- or European-Iranian relations. In a recent article, Davutoglu stated that

....our allies should take into consideration Turkey’s unique position. As a growing economy and surrounded by energy resources, Turkey needs Iranian energy as a natural extension of its national interests. Therefore, Turkey’s energy agreements with Iran cannot be dependent upon its relationships with other countries.

Turkey’s new Iran policy has comprised a clear attempt to achieve its emancipation from US Middle Eastern policy. Ever since the rise of AKP into power in 2002, Turkey has increasingly taken distance from US strategies and policies in Iraq, Israel and other Middle Eastern states. It is also indicative that Davutoglu in his writings includes Iran to his privileged group of states which due to their history and geography have a “central power” status and enjoy “strategic depth.” Hence he prioritizes the development of strong Turkish-Iranian strategic relations. Iran and its energy resources are more important for Turkey than its Western allies might consider.
Energy has been an area where Turkish-Iranian cooperation has flourished. The cooperation, which had begun in the mid 1990s through the construction of a pipeline for the export of Iranian natural gas to Turkey has been consolidated and included Turkish investment in the Iranian natural gas upstream sector. According to a 2008 Memorandum of Understanding Turkey’s TPAO would participate in the development of South Pars, Iran’s largest offshore natural gas field. Bilateral trade reached 10 billion dollars in 2008, with the aim to reach 20 billion by 2013. Yet there was much more than mutual economic gains in Turkish-Iranian relations. A series of official visits highlighted the level of mutual understanding at the top level, and public opinion of both countries seemed to agree. During his official visit to Turkey in August 2007, Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was cheered by Turkish citizens when he went to pray in the historic Sultanahmet mosque in Istanbul. This was all the more important given Iran’s increasing alienation at the international level. The Iranian nuclear program has caused fear and concern about the true intentions of the Iranian regime. Iran’s potential interest in developing nuclear weapons has worried not only the United States, Israel and Europe, but also Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
Many suspect religion to be one of the main reasons for the affinity between Ankara and Tehran. The AKP, Turkey’s government party since 2002 comes from the ranks of Turkish political Islam, and this was perceived to be sufficient reason for a close relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Religious affinity was indeed the reason why Turkey’s first Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan aimed to improve bilateral relations and signed the first natural gas deal with Iran in 1996. Nevertheless, it was rather pragmatism and not religion behind the determination of the AKP government to upgrade relations with Iran and claim a key role in its nuclear controversy. The Iranian nuclear crisis provided a golden opportunity –as well as a litmus test– for Foreign Minister Davutoglu to implement his vision about Turkey’s proactive foreign policy and autonomous strategic role. Distancing itself from the United States and the European Union, Turkey claimed a leading mediating role in the Iranian nuclear dispute. It has refused to side with Western pressure aiming to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program, objected to the imposition of any sanctions against Tehran and defended Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In accordance to this vision, Turkey has aimed to spearhead international mediation for a compromise solution. In his visit to Tehran in February 2010, Davutoglu attempted to broker a deal for the enrichment of uranium necessary for Iranian nuclear power plants under conditions which would preclude the possibility of developing nuclear weapon capabilities. Turkey’s interventions aimed further than minimizing the risk of developing nuclear fuel for Iranian power plants. In a speech in Washington DC in December 2009, Prime Minister Erdogan defended a nuclear-free Middle East and accused the Western states of double standards when dealing with issues of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. This was a skilful implication of Israel, a country which is not a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but is believed to possess nuclear weapons, in Iran’s nuclear controversy. Turkey attempted to reshape the agenda of nuclear non-proliferation in the Middle East in a way that did not only include Iran but also Israel.
This was not the first time Turkey attempted to antagonize Israel on a regional security issue. In his famous Davos duel with Israeli President Shimon Peres in January 2009, Prime Minister Erdogan chastised Israel’s policies in Gaza, winning strong applause throughout the Islamic world. Turkish-Israeli relations reached a lowmark on 31 May 2010, when nine Turkish activists were killed during clashes between a flotilla aiming to break the Israeli blockade and bring humanitarian aid to Gaza and Israeli security forces. This escalation seriously undermined an alliance which used to be one of the cornerstones of Turkey’s security policy and affected Turkey’s relations with the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. On the other hand, it allowed Turkey to claim a leadership role among the Islamic world. Erdogan voiced popular arguments throughout the Middle East regarding the Palestinian question and Iran’s nuclear program, namely that it would be unfair to demand from Iran to freeze its nuclear program, while Israel has faced no criticism for its violation of nuclear proliferation treaties and development of nuclear weapons. The popularity of Prime Minister Erdogan reached high peaks in the Islamic world. Nowadays, he may indeed be more popular in several Arab capitals than in Ankara.
While the Iranian nuclear crisis allows for the articulation of Turkey’s regional leadership and autonomous strategic planning ambitions, one begs the question whether it has had any real impact on the crisis itself. The jury is still out on this. Several experts point at the widening of diplomatic maneuvering space which Turkey’s diplomatic activism has secured. It would be hard to deny the significance of building dialogue and communication channels between the Iranian regime and the West, especially as far as the prevention of sanctions and further escalation are concerned. On the other hand, the deal which Turkey and Brazil clinched with Iran on 17 May 2010 bore little fruit, as far as the crux of the crisis is concerned. Failing to win Iran’s abolition of its domestic uranium enrichment program meant that the international community would not consider the agreement satisfactory. The 10 June 2010 decision of the UN Security Council to impose additional sanctions on Iran due to its nuclear program was a consequence of this and was made despite the dissenting votes of Turkey and Brazil. This had two lessons for Turkish diplomacy. First, to be an efficient mediator, Turkey needed to maintain close working relations with the West. Second, Iran did not perceive Turkey to be its sole intermediary with the West. In other words, Turkey’s role in the resolution of the Iranian nuclear question was not considered indispensable by Iran.
One also needs to add that Turkey’s Iran strategy entails considerable risk, as far as the regional implications from the potential rise of Iran as a nuclear power are concerned. In fact, Turkey would be one of the countries whose security could be worst impaired if Iran reneged on its commitments and developed its own nuclear weapons. Turkey might even have to join a nuclear arms race with other Middle Eastern states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt with the aim to counter Iran’s regional leadership claims. By trusting the good intentions of Iran’s leadership and overestimating its leverage over it, Turkey may be taking a big risk.
To sum up, Turkey’s attempt to claim a mediating role between Iran and the West on Iran’s nuclear program has so far produced few tangible results. The problem persists, and no final solution has been achieved on the question of safely enriching Iran’s uranium for peaceful purposes. It has, however, underlined the emancipation of Turkey’s strategic planning and foreign policy, as well as its ambition for a leading role in the Middle East. Turkey’s regional interests have become too important to be compromised by US, European or Israeli concerns regarding Iran and its nuclear ambitions. The endgame of the Iranian nuclear conundrum will provide evidence on whether this reconfiguration was rational or a case of strategic overstretch.

Bibliography

Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye'nin Uluslararası Konumu (İstanbul: Küre, 2005)
———, "Turkey's Foreign Policy Vision: An Assessment of 2007", Insight Turkey, Vol. 10, no. 1 (2008), pp. 77-96
International Crisis Group (ICG), Turkey and the Middle East: Ambitions and Constraints [Europe Report No 203] (Brussels, 2010)
Heinz Kramer, AKP's 'New' Foreign Policy between Vision and Pragmatism [Working Paper FG 2] (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2010)

(Published in Arabic in the magazine "Afaq-al-Mustaqbal" in September 2010)

Levantine Christianity and Greece: Ending an Era of Indifference

2010-08-16T15:55:00.007+01:00

St. Thecla Church, Maalula, Syria

When one talks about the Middle East, Islam comes to mind. The identification of the region with one only of the monotheistic religions which were born in its territory is understandable given that the overwhelming majority of its population is Muslim and that since the launch of the “Clash of Civilizations” debate the Middle East has come to be understood as the quintessential Islamic part of the world. Yet this identification is inaccurate. The Middle East still hosts significant populations of Christians in several countries. And their role is nowhere more influential than in the Levant.
It is impossible to visit Syria for example and not come across its strong Christian heritage. Christians in Syria may be as much as 10 percent of the country’s population in a country of roughly 22 million. They are fragmented into numerous churches, which were the product of numerous political and dogmatic divisions, as well as the Crusades. The eastern part of the walled old city of Damascus is still dominated by its Christian communities. Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian Gregorian, Armenian Catholic, Assyrian and Chaldean churches mark the skyline of the most touristic part of Damascus. The boroughs of Bab Tuma (Thomas Gate) and Bab Sharki (Eastern Gate) are completely different from the rest of the old city. Full of bars and cafes, they are frequented by the hundreds of Western students who visit Damascus to learn Arabic.
What makes Syrian –and other Levantine– Christians even more interesting from a Greek point of view, is that they maintain the name which used to characterise all the Orthodox of the Ottoman Empire. They are still officially called Rum, “Romioi” in other words, although their mother tongue is Arabic. While the term “Rum” was marginalised in the Balkans by terms such as “Greek”, “Bulgarian”, “Serbian” and “Romanian” as a result of the Enlightenment and the rise of several nationalistic movements, it was not effaced in the Middle East. The Levant is the only part of the post-Ottoman world where the word “Rum” retains its relevance as well as its complex religious-political significance. It is no accident that the political system of Lebanon remains based on the confessional divisions of the Lebanese people. This can also be seen in the old cities of Syria which maintain the confessional division of their neighbourhoods. What used to be the case throughout the Ottoman Empire, religious diversity and division of cities on religious and confessional grounds, survives today only in the Levant.
It is also interesting to compare the historic paths of two similar communities. The Turkish-speaking Rum of Anatolia (Karamanli) and the Arabic-speaking Rum of the Levant maintained their religious identity, despite belonging to non-Greek linguistic groups. The former were early admitted as an indispensable part of the Greek “imagined community.” Throughout the nineteenth century major efforts were made with the aim to spread the Greek language and consolidate the Greek national identity of the Karamanlis. No such effort was made towards the direction of the Levant Rum. The involvement of European Great Powers in Levantine affairs and the focus of the Greek “Megali Idea” on the Balkans and the Ionian Coast of the Aegean meant that Greece would never invite the Arab-speaking Levant Rum to join the Greek national identity. On the one hand, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the clash of competing Greek and Turkish nationalisms and the population exchange agreement of 1923 gave the final answer to the question of the Karamanli identity. Karamanlis were en masse deported to Greece, because they were understood by the parties not only as Rum, but also as Greek.
On the other hand, Levantine Christian communities spearheaded another ideological movement which would shake the Middle East: pan-Arabism. Due to their close economic and cultural links with the West, they would also introduce nationalism and enlightenment ideas in the Levant. Two of the most influential leaders of the pan-Arabist movement, Michel Aflaq, the founder of the pan-Arabist Baath party and an emblematic figure of pan-Arabism, was a Rum from Syria and George Antonius, the author of the first nationalistic history of the Arabs was a Rum from Lebanon. Their Christian identity did not prevent them from wishing to instrumentalize Islam to form together with the Arabic language the cement of a united, strong Arab nation. While pan-Arabist dreams found their nemesis in the Arab-Israeli wars, and in particular in the 1967 “War of Six Days”, Levantine Christians maintain their disproportionate to their size influence in the intellectual life of their respective countries. Syria’s secular regime, Lebanon’s multi-confessional constitution and Jordan’s sensitive relationship with the West also guarantee that Levantine Christians are unlikely to face a drastic deterioration of their status in the near term. Yet the persistent Middle Eastern conflicts and demographic trends may indeed tilt the balance against Christians in the longer term. Thousands of Levantine Christians have emigrated from the region as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the wars in Lebanon.
So where is Greece in all this? Following the exclusion of all Levantine Christians from the Greek nation, Greece has failed to pursue a strategy of engagement with these communities. Limited contacts through the Damascus-based Patriarchate of Antioch have failed to deliver much. In some cases the involvement of religious NGOs such as the infamous “Solidarity” of the Church of Greece led to acrimony and disputes instead of promoting relations. This indifference is not unrelated to the overall marginalisation of the Middle East, as far as Greek strategic priorities were concerned. Greece was envisioned as a European and hence Balkan country and was willing to dispose of its Eastern Mediterranean identity which would make it an integral part of the Levant. While discussing these in times of financial crisis might be a bit of luxury, it is imperative that Greece reconsiders its strategy to include the Middle East as one of its key action areas. The Levantine Christians could help Greece reconnect with one of the most important regions in the world.

(Published in the August 2010 issue of Odyssey)

Could the Greek Crisis Turn into an Opportunity?

2010-02-13T11:02:00.000Z

Greece has attracted in recent weeks a great deal of rather unwanted and unsavoury attention due to its ailing state finances. The EU Council Meeting of 11 February fell short of announcing a bailout package; it stressed, however, European support for the Greek governments’ fiscal austerity programme and underlined that European authorities would support Greece’s refinancing of sovereign debt, if necessary. European authorities have very good reasons to be concerned about the state of Greek finances. While Greek economy accounts for only a small fraction of the Eurozone economy, the ramifications of a Greek debt crisis would be dire for Europe’s single most important achievement, the Euro. On the other hand, moral hazard considerations are clearly legitimate. European authorities need to find a way to prevent the outbreak of a debt crisis which could spread to other European economies and even affect European banking, without being seen as rewarding fiscal irresponsibility and recklessness.

The resolution of Greece’s fiscal crisis would have been much easier, had the crisis been limited to the economy. Yet the crisis has systemic dimensions, touching upon the political and bureaucratic elites and the people itself. A clear example: Greek governments have admitted twice in the last six years that their statistical authorities provided Eurostat with false data which –temporarily– camouflaged the shortcomings of Greek economy. To make things worse, in both cases, this misinformation was not presented as negligence but rather as a deliberate act. To this, one needs to add the chronic inefficiency of Greece’s enormous public sector. When the current Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou pledges a drastic increase of tax revenues, one can only wonder how he can achieve this target with the existing tax-collecting bureaucracy. In fact, the recent rise in the spread of the Greek bonds reflects distrust against Greek politicians and bureaucrats. Financial markets in other words are not convinced that even a government with the best intentions will be able to deliver the long-needed changes, if it faces strong opposition from the bureaucracy and the people itself.

The crisis has not left Greek society aloof, either. A society which has been used to living beyond its means for decades due to generous EU subsidies and heavy borrowing at Eurozone low interest rates needs now to face the consequences of decades of irresponsible economic policies. Greeks will have to undergo unpleasant, but long due economic reform to help boost state finances and restore the competitiveness of their economy. Undermining the wellbeing of future generations through reckless borrowing and spending can no more be a policy option. Moreover, it is imperative that the rule of law is restored in a society where anomy is often tolerated. It is hard for the government’s reform agenda to win credibility among creditors and EU partners, when a handful of farmers can ridicule the rule of law throughout the country. Adjusting to the new reality can be a painful process for many. Yet there is no other solution. The era of indulgence is over.

Paraphrasing a commonly quoted adage, Greece and the European Union cannot afford letting the current crisis go to waste. European Union needs to heal the structural imbalances and policy loopholes which became evident during the Greek crisis. In particular, the fragility of the single currency in the absence of an integrated fiscal policy has become evident and needs to be dealt with urgently. On the other hand, to cease being Europe’s “weak link,” Greece needs to put its house into order. This crisis brings exigency to the implementation of reforms which have been postponed for decades. This is a truly Herculean task for the Greek government. Cleaning the Augean stables was one of Hercules’ twelve labours. Prime Minister George Papandreou needs not only to clean, but also to rebuild his own.

(Published on ELIAMEP Blogs on 12 February 2010)

Interview

2009-11-24T20:30:00.006Z

Turkish Political Culture Liberalizing, Greek Scholar says

By Reeta Paakinen

Turkey’s accession process to the European Union has made the country’s political culture in recent years more liberal than ever before, according to a Greek academic of Turkish politics.

Ioannis N. Grigoriadis is currently assistant professor of political science at Ankara’s Bilkent University although his résumé also includes positions at Athens University and Istanbul’s Işık and Sabancı universities. His book “Trials of Europeanization: Turkish Political Culture and the European Union” was released in Istanbul on Wednesday. The book is based on Grigoriadis’ Ph.D. work at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS, where he conducted research under Professor William Hale.

“Trials of Europeanization” assesses the impact of improving EU-Turkey relations on Turkish political culture and tries to identify progress in domains of national identity, secularism, civil society and state-society relations. It focuses on the past 10 years, starting from the so-called Helsinki Decision in December 1999, when Turkey was declared a candidate for EU membership.

“There is an increasing liberalization of Turkish political culture, an opening of discourse on issues that were taboos in the past. Several issues are being openly discussed, including national identity and secularism; this is very important,” Grigoriadis told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview.

Since 1999, Turkish civil society has become more active with citizens participating in politics in a much more open manner than in the past, he said.

“There are still some challenges to be dealt with, but progress has taken place. I am not saying things are good in many respects, but things are better. I can identify some changes [in Turkish political culture], which I would consider irreversible [for the most part],” Grigoriadis said.

One of the changes is the evolving discourse on secularism, Grigoriadis said. The book presents two versions of secularism: an assertive one and a passive one. “The polarization of Turkish political culture [in recent years] has led to a debate about liberalizing Turkish secularism as well. This is something new,” he said.

He believes finding a consensus on the headscarf debate is possible. “A consensus can be reached whereby no secular women may be forced to wear a headscarf, while no pious women may be forced to take it off either. This is the key point,” he said.

More work on minority rights needed

In his book, Grigoriadis identifies these positive developments, but also highlights shortcomings such as minority rights. “This is an area in which little progress has been achieved and much remains to be done,” he said.

“A big part of this agenda is linked to the Kurdish initiative although we do not know exactly how far it will go and how openly it will address issues that relate to the Kurds in this country,” Grigoriadis said. “However, Alevi issues are still on the table and non-Muslim rights are also very prominent.”

“In fact, as Istanbul will become the European Capital of Culture next year it will be very important to give evidence of the respect for the multicultural and multi-religious heritage of the city by resolving these issues sooner rather than later.”

Privileged partnership talk erodes credibility

The scholar criticized France and Germany for its “privileged partnership’” rhetoric, something he said erodes the EU’s credibility in regions neighboring Turkey. “Turkey needs to do its homework but the EU should give clear signals that Turkey has a fair chance of becoming a member if it complies with the Copenhagen criteria,” Grigoriadis said. “The statements of France and Germany, to a lesser extent, do a lot of harm to the Turkish democratization process.”

Cyprus a key priority

Despite his focus on Turkish political culture, Grigoriadis’ also said the Cyprus issue should be one of the key priorities of EU foreign policy because of the veto power of Greek Cyprus. Another reason why the issue should be resolved is that some EU member states may use Cyprus as an excuse in opposing Turkey’s EU accession for completely different reasons.

“It will always create problems for Turkey’s accession process. Not least because other countries might be willing to play with this problem in order not to expose themselves for other opinions they may hold about Turkish EU accession. I would point to the Cyprus issue as the number one priority in the foreign policy agenda in the EU,” Grigoriadis said.

In his view, the failure of the Kofi Annan Peace Plan in 2004 was particularly unfortunate. “When the decision was made about the membership of Cyprus in the EU, the Greek Cypriot side argued that if they were kept outside the union because of the lack of solution for which the Turkish Cypriots were responsible, Greek Cypriots would become hostages,” he said.

“At that time, this argument appeared to be convincing as the Greek Cypriot President Glafkos Clerides was the motivator for a solution while [Turkish Cypriot President] Rauf Denktaş was the intransigent one,” Grigoriadis said.

Soon, matters took a different turn, Grigoriadis said. “There was a 180 degree turn because a moderate Turkish Cypriot leader and a more intransigent Greek Cypriot leader [came into the picture]. Most European countries were not happy with the end result of the Cyprus accession without the solution. It did give signals on the Greek Cypriot side whether they can go on with an unresolved problem for indefinite amount of time,” he said.

On the other hand, there were some “legitimate concerns” about some aspects of the Annan Peace Plan, Grigoriadis said. “These were, for instance the guarantor questions or the presence of the military on both sides. They could have been resolved without a major loss for the Turkish Cypriot side.”

Upcoming publications

Grigoriadis’ upcoming work will include a comparative piece on U.S-Turkey relations and anti-Americanism in Turkey, which will appear in the Middle East Journal in January 2010. In September, Grigoriadis’ article on the role of the Church of Greece in Greek-Turkish relations was published in “Religion and Politics in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa” (Routledge 2009).

He is currently doing research on center-left parties in Greece and Turkey together with Ziya Öniş, professor of international relations at Koç University. “I am trying to compare how the center-left parties in Greece and Turkey have evolved since the 1970s. While the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, or PASOK, were quite similar in the 1970s, they have since taken a completely different path,” he said.

Evolving neighborly relations

The earthquakes in the fall of 1999 in Turkey and Greece marked the start of a new era in contacts at the grassroots level between the two nations.

Greek scholar Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, however, says the right crew of diplomats was already in place for reconciliation to occur.

“In a sense, the earthquakes of 1999 were a tipping point [in Greek-Turkish relations]. The right people – George Papandreou and Ismail Cem – were in the foreign ministries of both countries already,” Grigoriadis said. “However, they still needed an event that could mobilize popular opinion, which was very negative on both sides. The opening the earthquake created was exploited by some forward-looking, visionary politicians on both sides to [get us to] where we are right now.”

Ten years on, there is growing interest in Greece toward Turkey.

“There is a major trend that is also supported by improving economic conditions. People want to learn the language, come here and spend time living in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey, trying to obtain as objective a view of the country as possible,” Grigoriadis said.

The scholar believes there is increasing interest in Greece in the Turkish language too. “People think learning Turkish is a good asset for their career as well,” he said.

Although grassroots contacts between the citizens of Greece and Turkey are stronger than before, there is still a need for high-level political moves, Grigoriadis said.

“Economic relations have become stronger and trade between the two countries has skyrocketed in recent years. Relations at the civil-society level are stronger and there is a lot of interaction and travel between the two countries. The youth in particular are getting to know each other,” he said. “But on the high politics side, things haven’t improved much.”

The strengthening of bilateral relations started slowing down a few years ago. “There was a big opportunity that was lost in 2004 for the resolution of the Cyprus issue,” Grigoriadis said. “Ever since then, issues on the bilateral level, such as the Aegean dispute, have not been resolved.”

“There is a need for a strong political will on both sides,” he said. “But because of populist pressures and changing public opinion, it is important for the political will to be simultaneous in Greece and Turkey.”

(Published on Hürriyet Daily News on 20 November 2009)

Touching upon Turkey’s Taboos: Minorities in Past and Present

2009-06-25T15:50:00.002+01:00

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is known for his spontaneous and unpredictable character. In several occasions, he has behaved in ways which have surprised even his closest advisors. The recent “Davos crisis” with Israel is the prime example of this. On 23 May, Erdogan relapsed. He succeeded in stirring domestic and international attention with an unexpected statement touching upon one of Turkey’s most sensitive and taboo issues: its record of minority treatment.

All started when the government announced its plans to clear large minefields on Turkey’s borders in accordance with the country’s international obligations. Unlike what one would expect, it wouldn’t be the Turkish military but foreign private companies which would undertake this task. In fact, the tender for the clearing of the vast minefield along the Turkish-Syrian border would be awarded to an Israeli company. Few doubted that the Israeli company would be best suited to deliver the task at the most competitive price. However, the discussion focused immediately on Turkey’s national security. How could foreign companies gain access to sensitive information like the location of minefields? How could this compromise Turkish sovereignty? How could an Israeli company be positioned on the border with Israel’s archenemy Syria?

Erdogan responded to that criticism In a Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi- AKP) party meeting in Duzce, a small town slightly east of the Istanbul-Ankara highway in the following words:

Some said that “Turkey is lost to foreigners” because some of the foreign entrepreneurs who invest here belong to a different religion. Is it so easy? They did such things in this country for years. Those who had different ethnic identities were chased from this country. Have we won from this? We need to think about this. However, this has never been thought about. In fact, this was the result of a fascist-leaning approach. Occasionally we also made the same mistakes.

This statement caused shock and further reaction in the ranks of Turkish opposition. Erdogan was accused of vilifying Turkey and vindicating long-standing Greek, Armenian and Jewish claims about the discriminatory policies of the Turkish Republic. They also pointed at the positive response of Greek, Armenian and Jewish media to the unexpected statement. The leader of the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetci Hareket Partisi-MHP) Devlet Bahceli was the most virulent of all. He argued that Erdogan’s statement was evidence of psychological imbalance and added that it was a great and indelible shame for Turkey that the Prime Minister “took sides together with the Greeks and the Armenians.”

What were the events which Erdogan referred to as evidence of a “fascist-leaning approach?” One could indicatively list here in chronological order the anti-Jewish events and the Settlement Law (Iskan Kanunu) of 1934, the 1942 Property Tax (Varlik Vergisi) which severely hit Istanbul’s Greeks, Armenians and Jews, the 1955 6-7 September events which again hit the Greek minority and the 1964 deportations of Istanbul Greeks who had dual or Greek nationality. The common thread behind all these events was a perception of Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities as “non-assimilable.” Unlike the Kurds, the Arabs, the Laz, the Circassians and the other Muslim ethnic groups who were given a chance to enjoy full citizenship rights by voluntarily assimilating to the republican Turkish national identity, Turkey’s non-Muslims were viewed as essentially different and therefore unsuitable for assimilation. Given that the presence of any minority was seen as a severe compromise of national sovereignty and a potential threat for territorial integrity, a panoply of discriminatory and oppressive measures was employed with the aim to increase pressure and eventually lead to their marginalisation and numerical decimation through emigration.

The reaction to Erdogan’s statement shows that this mentality is still quite strong. Yet it is no more “the only game in town.” Increasing interest in Turkey’s multiethnic, multi-religious past has been manifested in Turkey’s recent literary and cinematographic production. Movies like Yesim Ustaoglu’s “Bulutlari Beklerken,” which dealt with the deportations of Pontic Greeks, Tomris Giritlioglu’s “Salkım Hanım'ın Taneleri” which focused on the 1942 Property Tax and Giritlioglu’s most recent “Guz Sancisi” dealing with the September 1955 events, highlighted the emergence of a new, critical look upon some of the most traumatic pages of recent Turkish history. The very issue which Erdogan raised, the loss which anti-minority policies entailed for Turkey’s economy, society and identity, is one of the main features of these works.

On the other hand, it should be noted that discriminatory policies are still largely in place. The legal obstacles which non-Muslim pious foundations still find in their operation, the lack of any serious progress regarding their restitution to their confiscated properties over the decades, the serious problems which the Ecumenical Patriarchate still faces in its operation, not least of which is the closure of the Halki Seminary provide evidence that this mentality still appears to be a defining principle of Turkish national interest for the Turkish state.

One could reasonably react here: How could Turkey’s Prime Minister take distance and severely criticise the policies of a state he has been leading for almost seven years? This paradox can only be understood in the context of Turkish political history. Erdogan represents a party with roots in the periphery of Turkish politics and society which was until 2002 excluded from any access to political and bureaucratic power. This remained the privilege of Turkey’s republican elite, which undertook the task to consolidate the reform of Kemal Ataturk and complete the process of Turkish nation-building through assimilation and discrimination. Despite the fact that the AKP has been in power since 2002, this elite has maintained considerable power, as the closure case against the AKP manifested last year. The fact that Erdogan touched such a taboo issue by using so harsh words showed that he did not hold his party or his voters accountable for the past wrong-doings of the bureaucratic elite. On the contrary, his business pragmatism allowed him to see the mutual benefits of economic cooperation with foreign companies and question the wisdom of policies which deprived Istanbul of its most vibrant economic elite. Would this statement mean that a real change in discriminatory policies against Turkey’s minorities may be imminent? One cannot tell for sure. Erdogan’s past statements have not always guaranteed future actions. Unpredictability can work both ways....

(Published on ELIAMEP Blogs on 25 June 2009)

Greece and the Natural Gas Scramble in Southeastern Europe

2009-05-23T21:37:00.002+01:00

ATHENS– The fallout in Russian-Ukrainian relations earlier this year discontinued natural gas supplies in several European Union member states. In effect, it underscored the urgency of a new European energy security strategy.

Within this context, the importance of Southeastern Europe as one of the key energy transit regions for the European market, was once again highlighted. The long-debated construction of natural gas pipelines capable of supplying the European market with sufficient quantities of natural gas, while reducing EU dependency on Russian natural gas, came to the fore once more. An EU summit was held in Prague in May to address the realization of the "Southern Corridor," a pipeline network supplying Europe with natural gas via Southeastern Europe.

Greece, the oldest EU member state in the region and a major economic player strategically positioned between East and West, is naturally involved in this energy scramble. In fact, one of the most significant fruits of the Greek-Turkish rapprochement has been cooperation in the field of energy. The Turkey-Greece-Italy (TGI) Interconnector pipeline aims to enable European access to non-Russian natural gas supply. The completion of the Turkey-Greece leg of the project has already made a difference in regional energy security. When the Russian gas supply of the region was interrupted by the January crisis in Russian-Ukrainian relations, Azeri natural gas continued to flow towards Greece via Turkey. Although still heavily reliant on Russia for its natural gas imports, Greece fared better in the crisis than other neighboring countries. And this because Greece had recourse to the TGI natural gas, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG). What's more, Greece was even able to export natural gas to Bulgaria, which was among the countries hardest hit by the interruption of natural gas supply. The recent announcement of the construction of an additional Greek-Bulgarian pipeline from Komotini, in northeast Greece, to Haskovo, in southeast Bulgaria, highlighted the significance and the success of the project. This pipeline project aims to facilitate the import of TGI natural gas to Bulgaria.

Greece is also involved in the construction of the South Stream pipeline, a Russian project aiming to circumvent Ukraine and enable the access of Russian natural gas to the European market via Southeastern Europe. Greece's interest in attracting the construction of a second trans-regional, natural gas pipeline through its territory has been sometimes viewed with suspicion and understood as willingness to compromise European strategic interests in favor of a special strategic relationship with Russia. However, this point misses the fact that alongside the limitation of European dependency on Russian natural gas imports, the increase of natural gas supply to the European market is a parallel European strategic task. To realize this, European authorities need to collaborate with all major natural gas exporters, including Russia. While meeting Europe's increasing natural gas needs from Russia is not desirable –in terms of diversifying energy supply– or might not even be possible –in terms of Russia's own production capacity– Russia will remain a major exporter in the European natural gas market. Projects like the South Stream will enable the import of additional natural gas quantities from Russia, in addition to natural gas originating from the Caspian Sea or the Middle East, if these quantities become available to the European market. This means that projects such as Nabucco, which aims to bring non-Russian natural gas from Turkey to Austria, and South Stream are not necessarily mutually exclusive. To be a good European, Greece does not need to ditch its relationship with Russia. In fact, the opposite might be true.

(Published on Kathimerini-International Herald Tribune on 23 May 2009)

Turkey’s Kurdish Question: Glimmers of Hope?

2009-05-21T07:41:00.005+01:00

While never really off the agenda of Turkish politics, the Kurdish question has been attracting increasing attention in recent weeks. The municipal elections of 31 March signalled a triumphant comeback for the party of the Kurdish minority, the Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi-DTP). In the 2007 parliamentary elections Turkey's government party the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AKP) was able to make big inroads among the Kurdish voters of southeastern Turkey and challenge the regional electoral hegemony of the DTP. Following these results, some speculated that the AKP would be even able to claim from the DTP even the municipality of Diyarbakir, the biggest city in southeastern Turkey and stronghold of the Kurdish nationalist movement. They proved very wrong. The DTP candidate and incumbent mayor of Diyarbakir was re-elected with a stunning 65.6 percent of the vote, while the AKP lost the biggest part of the votes it won in the region in the 2007 elections. Turkey's Kurds showed their disillusionment with the AKP policy on the Kurdish question. Many columnists argued that this was a serious warning signal towards the Turkish government. Failure to deliver on long-standing issues related to the Kurdish minority would lead its radicalisation to the detriment of Turkey's social and political stability.

While the need for a new Kurdish policy was discussed, a major intervention came from the mountains of Northern Iraq. Hasan Cemal, one of Turkey's most distinguished journalists, visited the headquarters of the Kurdish Workers' Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan-PKK) in Kandil Mountain to interview Murat Karayilan, the PKK's military leader. In his long interview, published in several sequels in the Milliyet daily, Karayilan attempted to convey a conciliatory message. He argued that the Kurdish issue had again reached a critical point like in 1993 and that Turkey could never militarily defeat the PKK. Karayilan added that the PKK had changed and pursued the promotion of Kurdish rights in Turkey without disrupting the unitary structure of the Turkish state and declared his readiness for armistice and dialogue with Turkey. Turkey's interlocutor could be PKK's imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan or the current leadership of the PKK, or the DTP or even "a committee of wise people" trusted by both sides. Karayilan came to the point of expressing his sorrow for a recent series of PKK mine attacks in southeastern Turkey which cost the lives of Turkish soldiers in violation of a self-declared armistice. He argued that these attacks were not decided by him but were initiatives of local warlords. Karayilan even intervened in Turkey's secularist debate, arguing that the PKK acted as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism in southeastern Turkey. PKK's demise would mean the domination of militant Islam in the region. He also warned against the activities of Islamic brotherhoods (tarikats), mentioning in particular the Fethullah Gulen movement. Regarding the Kurdish question, Karayilan stressed that the solution he envisioned did not necessarily entail a federation, but more local autonomy in accordance with a reform of the local authorities' law. He even argued that many Turkish generals have moderated their views on the Kurdish issue. It was rather some politicians who failed to lead the process for a resolution of the conflict. Karayilan explicitly referred to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose landmark statements in 2005 regarding the resolution of the Kurdish question through Turkey's democratisation remained an empty letter.

Equally interesting was the reaction of Turkey's former Chief of General Staff. Yasar Buyukanit, in his first interview following his retirement last year, was asked to comment on Karayilan's interview. Buyukanit responded that the PKK should be judged on the basis of its deeds, not words. He added that the PKK would not disarm unless three conditions were met: a general amnesty, constitutional protection of Kurdish identity and education rights. He admitted that even if the whole Turkish army was sent to occupy the Kandil Mountain camp, this would not mean the end of the PKK. These statements created a second shock, maybe bigger than. The spokesman of the Turkish Armed Forces was quick in stating that these statements were personal and did not reflect the official views of the Turkish army.

Both interviews reasonably attracted the careful attention of policy makers, columnists and the public opinion. For the first time in many years, a PKK leader appeared ready to negotiate an armistice or even a withdrawal of PKK forces from Turkish territory without the fulfilment of PKK conditions. At the same time, a general who used to lead Turkish armed forces until a year ago admitted that there could be no military solution to the PKK question and appeared condescending towards a negotiation with the PKK leadership. Meanwhile, similar messages were coming from the Turkish government. Reversing administrative decisions which had changed Kurdish toponyms with Turkish ones in eastern and southeastern Turkey, easing restrictions to the public use of Kurdish and the broadcast of Kurdish language media and promoting Kurdish language education were discussed as possible measures in that direction. Turkey's President Abdullah Gul who stated that "the Kurdish question is Turkey's biggest problem" was expected to take a lead role in this initiative.

The coincidence of all these interviews and statements reinforced the speculation that a serious diplomatic initiative led by the United States and the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq had born some fruit. The US need to stabilise Iraq before the departure of its forces necessitated improving relations between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey. The PKK appeared for the first time willing to give up its armed struggle without the transformation of Turkey into a federation. What remains to be seen is whether the AKP government would be willing to deliver its old promises: Full protection of Kurdish minority rights, which were hit by the deceleration of the overall reform process in Turkey since 2004 and even –maybe– a general amnesty. One can also only hope that the Turkish Constitutional Court will not ban the DTP in its upcoming verdict. Bridging the gap between the state and Turkey's Kurds will be a long and tedious process. While such measures would definitely meet with the ire of Turkish nationalists and opposition parties, it is hard to imagine alternative ways to resolve the conflict. If even generals admit the impossibility of a military solution, civilians should listen.

(Published on Athens News on 22 May 2009)

Where Bush and Obama Agree: The United States and Turkey’s EU Membership

2009-04-19T22:16:00.001+01:00

In his first visit of Europe and the Middle East, US President Barack Obama attempted in several occasions to clearly distinguish himself from the policies of his predecessor George W Bush. His attempts to transcend the “Old Europe-New Europe” jargon and give a new meaning to the transatlantic partnership were evident. Yet there was a one issue where Obama’s position was identical to his predecessor’s: Turkey’s membership of the European Union. Addressing EU leaders in Prague, Obama said that “the United States and Europe must approach Muslims as our friends, neighbours and partners in fighting injustice, intolerance and violence, forging a relationship based on mutual respect and mutual interests….Moving forward towards Turkish membership in the EU would be an important signal of your (EU) commitment to this agenda and ensure that we continue to anchor Turkey firmly in Europe.”
Obama’s may still enjoy unprecedented popularity ratings in Europe, yet his full support for Turkey’s EU membership met with immediate reaction. Some European political leaders saw his statement as an unnecessary intervention in a bilateral affair. The strongest opponent of Turkey’s EU membership, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, responded that the decision of Turkey’s entry to the European Union belonged to EU member states and reiterated his clear opposition to full membership. He added: “I have always been opposed to this entry. I still am and I think I can say that the immense majority of member states shares the position of France….Turkey is a very great country, an ally of Europe, an ally of the United States. It will stay a privileged partner. My position hasn’t changed and it won’t change.” Sarkozy’s opposition to the was soon matched by that of his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner whose personal opinion used to be in favour of Turkey’s EU bid. Kouchner stated that Turkey’s initial opposition to the candidacy of Danish Prime Minster Anders Fogh Rasmussen for the NATO General Secretary post turned him against its EU membership.
The wisdom of persistent US interventions in EU-Turkey relations has long been debated. A recent Economist article called Obama’s support for Turkey as a “tactical mistake.” This was even more the case when his predecessor, one of the least popular US Presidents abroad, was lobbying for the improvement of EU-Turkey relations. Many commentators argued then that Bush’ support was not helping Turkey; in fact, it even backfired, raising suspicion among some Europeans about the true motives of US support for Turkey’s EU membership. Some of them explained strong US support as an attempt to establish a US “Trojan Horse” within the European Union. They have feared that the main reason for this was the US plan to forestall the transformation of the European Union into a strong global actor, able to compete with competitor. In that view, Turkey’s EU membership would derail any attempts for forging a strong European identity, as well as a common foreign and security policy. The validity of this argument was questioned following the rapid deterioration of US-Turkey relations. The refusal of the Turkish Parliament to allow the use of Turkish territory by US military forces during the 2003 Iraq war showed that US and Turkey regional strategic interests would not necessarily always coincide. Bilateral relations cooled off, and elements of anti-Americanism became for the first time visible in Turkish public opinion. This meant that Turkey would no more simply follow US strategic and policy choices, as during the Cold War. On the European side, a series of political crises and the failure to ratify treaties aiming to bring about long-needed institutional reform showed that Turkey’s potential membership would not comprise the main reason for Europe’s political or diplomatic weakness. Turkey’s candidacy did not cause European discord and institutional inertia. It simply brought existing issues to the fore.
Leaving the wisdom of persistent US interventions aside, one needs to also consider the sagacity of European vacillations. Sarkozy’s statements about the right of the European Union to decide on Turkey’s EU membership conveniently ignore the fact that the issue of Turkey’s European vocation is not new. The European Union has already discussed this question and answered it on the affirmative, at least in two major occasions. The first was the Helsinki European Council in December 1999, when Turkey following years of diplomatic turmoil was awarded the status of candidate state for EU membership. The second occasion was the Brussels European Council of December 2004, which decided to endorse the start of accession negotiations between the European Union and Turkey. This means that the question to be answered at this point is not “if” but “when” and “under what conditions” Turkey will become a member of the European Union. Accession negotiations have been proceeding slowly, and there are several reasons for this. The lack of any progress in the Cyprus issue, as well as the firm opposition of the Sarkozy government to Turkey’s full membership, has shed a long shadow on the negotiations. Several chapters have been blocked by the governments of Cyprus and France. In addition, the slowdown of the reform process in Turkey since 2005 has also crucially hampered the process.
EU leaders and the European Commission should demand from Turkey the acceleration of pending reforms, which can entail a new, civil, liberal constitution, full protection of political freedoms, religious and minority rights. Yet one cannot open again the question of whether Turkey is a European country or whether full membership should be the aim of negotiations without undermining the credibility of the European Union among prospective members, neighbours and at a global level. Just as in the case of Central and East European countries, Turkey has to be given a fair membership chance, conditional upon full compliance with the Copenhagen Criteria and adoption of the acquis communautaire. Any deviation from this position would severely harm Europe’s global ambitions, exactly at the time Turkey’s image in the Muslim world has enjoyed a sharp rise. Turkey’s EU membership may after all be good for Europe and the world, even though GW Bush has supported it.

(Published on Athens News on 17 April 2009)

Obama visits Turkey: Reasons and Lessons

2009-03-22T21:20:00.002Z

The visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Ankara last week hid a pleasant surprise for Turkish diplomacy. It was announced that the US President Barack Obama would visit Turkey in the framework of his first visit to Europe next month. After visiting London to attend the G-20 Summit and Prague to participate in the NATO Summit, Obama would visit Ankara. Following a protracted period of deterioration in US-Turkey relations, it seemed that a new opportunity emerged. The agenda of the meetings will be anything but light and easy. Hard bargaining is to be expected. The situation in Iraq, the Iran crisis, the Palestinian question, is only some of the very hard topics both delegations will be called upon to tackle.

Iraq will definitely score high in the agenda. US policies in Iraq have been the key reason for the cooling of bilateral relations. Following Obama’s pledge to withdraw US troops from Iraq, it is imperative to seek a consensus with Iraq’s neighbours about the post-US occupation era. It is unlikely that a federal Iraq will be able to survive without the active support of its neighbours, or at least some of them. Turkey’s views on the Iraq question have been heavily influenced by its Kurdish dimension. The final status of the Kurdish provinces in Northern Iraq as well as the fate of the bases of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) will heavily draw upon the Turkish position. It is interesting to see how the new US administration will try to appease Turkey without alienating its hitherto strongest and most credible allies in Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds.

Iran will be another issue. US efforts to prevent the rise of Iran as a nuclear power have been circumscribed by the apparent intractable cost of a military intervention, as well as the involvement of Iran in almost all open conflicts in the Middle East against US interests, be it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria or Palestine. The prospect of Iran developing nuclear weapons is alarming not only the US administration but also the whole Middle East. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Turkey would feel directly threatened by a nuclear Iran and could also feel tempted to seek their own nuclear armament, which could have disastrous consequences for global stability. The United States needs again the strong support of Iran’s neighbours in its attempt to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and probably pre-empt their reactions in case Iran indeed develops nuclear weapons.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will also be on the table. The Erdogan administration spent plenty of political capital to establish Turkey’s regional role. Turkey was no more uninterested in what was happening in the Middle East; it developed a peace and conflict resolution agenda. The disclosure that Turkey was brokering secret Israeli-Syrian negotiations last year for a settlement in the Golan Heights provided ample proof for this. On the other hand, the close links of the AKP government with the Hamas leadership in Gaza caused repeated frustration in Tel Aviv and Washington. This came to its peak last month when Erdogan lashed out against the Israeli President Shimon Peres in the World Economic Forum. This was a move which hurt Turkey’s broker role in the region but made Erdogan very popular in the Arab Middle East. The close links of the AKP government with Syria and Hamas make it all the more interesting interlocutor for Obama, especially at a time he is pondering ways to break the existing deadlock and engage Syria and possibly Hamas.

Nonetheless, the most important reason for the expedited visit of President Obama to Turkey is not linked to a regional problem. Obama wants to use Turkey as the stage to address the Islamic world. Eight years of GW Bush administration have caused enormous damage to the relations between the West and the Islamic world. US policies in the Middle East, the Palestinian question, the Iraq war, the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prison debacles have tarnished the image of the United States among world’s Muslims. Obama wants to clean the US slate and make a new beginning. A symbolic visit to a Muslim country and address to the Islamic world was long discussed among Obama’s foreign policy advisors. Turkey was chosen for this, not only because of its position between the West and the Islamic world, but mainly because of the identity of its ruling party. The AKP could be seen as an example of a party of Islamist political roots, which was able to escape from a strictly Islamist agenda and engage with Western intellectual and political discourses. By adopting Turkey’s European vocation and contributing significantly to the reform process which led to the opening of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations in 2005, the AKP made a big service to Turkey’s democratisation cause and transformed itself into a conservative democratic party. A new term “Muslim democracy” the equivalent of “Christian democracy” in the Islamic world was even suggested for the description of the new party. Under the AKP Turkey joined Spain to form the “Alliance of Civilisations,” an UN-sponsored initiative aiming to bring about conciliation and peace in the relations between the Islam and the West. The transformation of this party provided ample proof that Islam and democracy are not incompatible. Conveying this message to the Islamic world will be one of the main aims of Obama’s visit to Turkey.

There is no doubt that discussions will be difficult, and agreements may not be reached in all issues. Yet the very event of the Obama visit can already be considered as a vindication of Turkey’s ambitious multilevel foreign policy. Through hard and systematic work, Turkey has been able to establish itself in the forefront of world diplomacy. The reaction of the Greek government and press, when the news about Obama’s decision to visit Turkey reached Athens was uneasy. It could become fruitful, if it sparks a long-needed discussion about a revitalisation of Greek foreign policy and a redefinition of its strategic priorities.

(Published on Athens News on 20 March 2009)

Turkey and Israel: Behind the Davos Debacle

2009-02-22T14:10:00.002Z

The meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos are known for their ambition to act as catalysts in long-lasting international disputes. Davos' idyllic Alpine landscape and the informal character of the meetings are meant to help leaders reach conciliation and conflict resolution. This was the apparent intention of the organisers when they organised a panel entitled "Peace in Gaza" with the participation of President of Israel Shimon Peres, the Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Moussa. Alas, the meeting turned out to be anything but peaceful. In fact, it looked more like the Gaza conflict. Replying to Peres' comment, Erdogan referred to Israel's violation of the Sixth Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" adding that "you [Israelis] know well to kill people" and that "you are killing children." The decision of the panel moderator and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius not to let the Turkish Prime Minister finish his comment due to time constraints led to a debacle. A furious Erdogan left the panel protesting against the moderator and prematurely departed for Turkey in protest within hours. So did the whole numerous Turkish delegation. Erdogan was greeted in Istanbul by thousands of cheering Turks who hailed Erdogan's position in the Gaza conflict as well as his decision to leave Davos. In a statement Erdogan stressed that he was not a "tribal leader" but a Prime Minister of Turkey and demanded respect. Erdogan's move becomes all the more interesting, if one considers that he has been one of the most regular participants of the World Economic Forum meetings. His visits even predated his ascendancy to power in Turkey.

The Davos affair was the latest in a series of incidents manifesting a constant deterioration of Israeli-Turkish relations. In conventional Turkish foreign policy, the strategic partnership between Turkey and Israel was a primary determinant of the country's position in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The alliance of both states with the United States was seen of utmost importance for Western interests, regional stability and the deterrence of Islamic fundamentalism. In addition, Turkey's minimal or inimical relations with most Middle Eastern states meant that the opportunity cost of such a policy was rather low.

This changed in 2002 when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power. Informed by its Islamist origins and willing to introduce a more multi-faceted foreign policy, the AKP government launched a new Middle East policy. Identification with Israel was far from given, while overtures were made to all Middle Eastern states. Economic cooperation was promoted with Gulf states, relations with Syria –an old enemy– significantly improved, new energy deals were signed with Iran. Turkey developed an interest in the acting as a mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict. When the visit of the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Ankara in 2006 met with major concern in Israel and the United States, Turkey's response referred to the need to engage Hamas, if a resolution of the Palestinian conflict were ever to be achieved. In 2008, Turkey appeared to lead a major mediating initiative between Israel and Syrian regarding the Golan Heights, which aspired to remove one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a lasting peace in the Middle East. Turkey, the country with the second biggest army in NATO, was now promoting a new "soft power" profile, aiming to win international prestige through facilitating conflict resolution and building peace.

Yet the recent Gaza crisis came to shed doubt regarding Turkey's ability to act as an honest and impartial broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unlike in previous conflicts, the AKP government refrained from taking a balanced position. It strongly condemned Israeli military operations, dismissing the Israeli argument about the need to stop the launch of missiles against Israel. Public outcry against Israel took official tone when the Turkish Ministry of Education issued a decree calling all Turkish public schools to keep one minute of silence in memory of Palestinian children killed in Gaza. When badly injured Palestinians to Turkey were transported to Turkey to receive medical treatment, Erdogan was among the first to visit them in an Ankara hospital on 14 January 2009. He was apparently so shocked by what he saw that he burst into tears on camera. In light of these, the Davos incident was rather not an isolated reaction.

What could lead Erdogan undermine a long-standing alliance with Israel as well as a painstakingly developed Middle East mediator role? Upcoming municipal elections may be an answer. Anti-Israeli sentiment is very strong in Turkish public opinion, as well as identification with the plight of the Palestinian people. As a major economic crisis is looming, the uncertain future of Iraq has an impact on the Kurdish question in and outside Turkey and no significant improvements have occurred in the EU front, there is growing apprehension about a disappointing result in the March 2009 municipal elections. A pro-Hamas stance would also appeal to the Islamist and conservative segments of the AKP clientele which have grown uneasy with the inability of the government to deliver a solution for the headscarf issue.

While beneficial on the domestic front, this policy shift may impair foreign policy. Just as the Armenian lobby has enjoyed the support of the Greek lobby in promoting the recognition of the 1915 deportation of Ottoman Armenians as genocide, the Turkish lobby has enjoyed the support of the Israeli lobby in forestalling such recognition. For instance, the deletion of the term "genocide" from the annual messages of the US President to the Armenian-American community in recent years was attributed to the Israeli lobby.
As Turkey lacks a strong lobby of its own in the US, Israeli support is crucial. Whether such support will now continue is open to question. Making matters worse, Presiden Barack Obama is on record as having supported a Congressional motion to recognise the Armenian genocide. In conclusion, it is worth noting some of the critical remarks against Erdogan's comments In Turkey and Israel. Referring to recent incidents in southeastern Turkey, the Vice President of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) Emine Ayna argued that "the AKP also knows well to kill children." The head of Israeli Ground Forces Major General Avi Mizrahi said that Erdogan "should have looked at his mirror" before attacking Peres. The Prime Minister of Turkey may not be the most convincing preacher of pacifism after all.

(Published on Athens News on 20 February 2009)

Ergenekon Strikes Back: Arrests and Questions Mount

2009-01-16T18:23:00.003Z

On Wednesday 7 January the Ergenekon affair made yet another triumphant comeback to Turkey's headlines. A new series of arrests involved thirty persons, including three retired generals, Tuncer Kilinc, Erdal Senel and Kemal Yavuz, a former President of the Higher Education Council (Yuksek Ogretim Kurulu-YOK), Kemal Guruz, and nine low- and mid-level active duty officers. Reaction to the new judicial actions was multifarious. The Chief of General Staff Ilker Basbug had a six-hour-long meeting with the commanders of land, air, and sea forces. Thereafter, he had unannounced meetings with President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an apparent attempt to show the military's serious concern about these developments. The news had a negative impact on the financial market, which slumped more than 5 percent on that day. Experts argued that this sharp decline should not be exclusively attributed to the Ergenekon news. The Turkish stock exchange market has recently enjoyed a "bear market rally," so a correction was expected. Its magnitude though had certainly to do with what had happened in Ankara on that Wednesday.

This was the first time that a person involved in the Susurluk affair, which had provided a glimpse into the criminal activities of Turkey's deep state in the 1990s, was arrested in the framework of the Ergenekon investigation. Ibrahim Sahin, a former Deputy Chief of the Special Forces Unit of the Turkish Police, had been imprisoned for six years due to his involvement with the Susurluk affair. Following his early release from prison, Sahin is said to be involved into the masterminding of a new series of assassinations. Following the instructions of maps found in Sahin's house a cache of weapons, bombs and ammunition was unearthed in Golbasi, in the suburbs of Ankara, while more searches took place in other locations in Ankara and other cities. The arrest of Sahin may mean that the prosecutors could establish a link between the Susurluk and the Ergenekon cases. This could shed light to the activities of Turkey's deep state in an unprecedented fashion.

While Ibrahim Sahin may appear to be the most interesting detainee regarding the course of investigation, retired General Tuncer Kilinc is certainly the best known among those arrested last week. Kilinc' last position was that of Secretary General of the National Security Council (Milli Guvenlik Kurulu-MGK), the institution which embodied the military's tutelary role in Turkish politics. Kilinc attracted domestic and international attention in March 2002 when he intervened in the hottest political issue of the time, EU-Turkey relations. At a time Turkey was trying to recover from the 2001 financial crisis and EU reform efforts were gaining momentum, he claimed during a conference at the Istanbul Military Academies Directorate that he opposed Turkey's membership of the European Union adding:

"Turkey absolutely needs to seek new alliances. In my opinion, the best direction would be to seek an alliance with the Russian Federation, which would include Iran, without ignoring the United States—if possible. Turkey has not received any help from the European Union. The European Union has negative approaches to the problems that concern Turkey.

Such opinions came as a surprise to many, as the military was perceived as the single most important agent of Turkey's Westernisation. At a time the Western and democratic credentials of Turkish political Islam were questioned, the army was seen as an anchor of the country's Western orientation. And then, one of the most senior military officers of the country appeared to prefer Turkey's alliance with Russia, the archenemy of the Ottoman Empire or –even more bizarrely– the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, Kilinc was not alone in his aberration from the Western vision of Kemalist orthodoxy. When the process of Turkey's European integration made clear that Turkey's full membership of the European Union would require the end of the military's tutelage over Turkish politics and society, some officers opted for the preservation of their institutional prerogatives. Advancing an anti-Western, isolationist agenda would secure the survival of the Kemalist regime and also bring Turkey closer to states strong but not famed for their democratic credentials such as Russia and Iran. What came to be known as Turkey's neo-nationalism (ulusalcilik) combined the anti-Western attitudes of traditional political Islam, the far right and the far left with the anti-democratic elements of the Kemalist bureaucracy. This synthesis which Kilinc personified has been a pervasive feature of Turkey's disparate anti-EU alliance. Its traces can be found in the Ergenekon affair.

At the political level, the major opposition Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP) took again openly the sides of the defendants. Ever since the outbreak of the Ergenekon affair, CHP members have argued that Ergenekon is an AKP ploy to eliminate its political opponents. The CHP leader Deniz Baykal even came to the point of arguing that "if Erdogan is Ergenekon's prosecutor, I am its attorney." Following last week's arrests, Baykal repeated in a special news conference that

".... we are looking at a political case and not a legal trial. In this case, we don't see the application of the law but rather a political settling of accounts by the use of the law.....We have seen this only in periods of regime change. Similar to the period before Khomeini and Hitler…."

Following the decision of the Constitutional Court in July 2008 and the hardening of the AKP's position in a number of issues related to Turkish national security, many argued that the relations of the AKP government with the military entered a detente and this could slow down the course of the Ergenekon investigations. Last week's developments proved that either no such deal existed or that the Ergenekon prosecutors pursue a truly independent investigation. Procedural shortcomings have been often noted. They referred both to the treatment of defendants and criminal procedures. The case of Kuddusi Okkir, an arrested defendant who was diagnosed with cancer during his custody and was released in July 2008 in miserable condition only days before his death is indicative. It is an irony though that these complaints look very similar to comments made in reports of the European Union, the very institution the defendants are said to have joined forces against.

(Published on Athens News on 16 January 2009)

Turkish Views on Greek Riots: Is There Anything to Envy?

2008-12-21T08:36:00.002Z

The riots, which shook Athens and a number of other Greek cities last week, understandably attracted considerable attention by Turkish media. Detailed reports appeared on several newspapers, and columnists attempted to explain the events and link them to developments in Turkey. In the past, Turkish media interest in such news originating from Greece would have had a sardonic side. Images of looting, lawlessness and state collapse would have enjoyed disproportionate coverage by these media which considered Greece a "not so European" country and resented the alleged "preferential" treatment, which allowed it to join the European Economic Community, while Turkey's application has not met with fruition for decades. Nowadays, such reactions may be limited to the fringe nationalist press. However, increasing interaction and communication between the two societies has led to investigation of the reasons of the riots in comparison with trends within the Turkish youth.

Some columnists saw these riots as evidence of the politicisation of the Greek youth. The government's hesitance to use violence against the rioters was also perceived as evidence of the endurance of democratic values in the country. Had such events taken place in Turkey, they argued, the police would have been given a "blank check" to deal with the issue. If things did not cool down immediately, declaring a state of emergency and bringing the army to the streets would be all natural. Public sensitivity for the death of a youngster by a police officer was juxtaposed to the more than twenty such incidents in Turkey during the last two years which failed to provoke any public reaction. In the words of the chief editor of Taraf Ahmet Altan:

I must say that that I envy the Greeks. They show a really serious reaction against state suppression of the youth, they try to prevent that the state raises its arm against the youth with big demonstrations. After all these events, it would not easy for a police officer to point a gun at a youngster. Then I thought that such sensitivity does not exist among us [Turks]. We do not mind the killing of thousands of young people in war....While we were leaving them to mountains, trenches, military bases; the number of youngsters killed in police departments was also rising. We did not react to these deaths. No civil demonstrations were made.... None even thought about it. For us, our children were for some reason not worth as much as the children of the Greeks.

This sympathetic look towards the events can be understood within the Turkish political context. Turkish political culture has been so deferential to the state, that any incidents of civil disobedience would be extremely rare or meet the opposition of the public opinion. This is not to say that there were no incidents of civil disobedience in Turkey. The youth movement was particularly active throughout the 1960s and 1970s under adverse conditions much like its Greek counterpart. 1974 is the key year where the paths of the two countries diverge. Greece's defeat in the 1974 Cyprus war brought about the collapse of the Greek junta, the dismantling of the Greek "deep state" and the consolidation of democracy. The Greek left succeeded in dominating ideological discourse. In the case of Turkey, the Cyprus victory had the opposite effect. It led to the reinforcement of the tutelary role of the military in Turkish politics and society. While civil unrest and a considerable influence of the left on the marketplace of ideas continued throughout the 1970s, the military coup of 12 September 1980 dealt a lethal blow against the Turkish left. Scores of leftist intellectuals and activists were tortured and imprisoned, and the political party system was carefully engineered, so the left would be contained. The imposition of a 10 percent electoral threshold was instrumental in that respect. Since the 1980 coup the Turkish left has not been able to claim a significant role in Turkish politics. Turkey's major opposition party, the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP) which had addressed some of the leftist political issues in the 1960s and 1970s, returned under the leadership of Deniz Baykal to its nationalist, statist and bureaucratic roots. The absence of the Turkish left has led many commentators to look for inspiration in the recent Greek riots, which often meant overlooking the fundamentally antisocial character of these events.

The recent riots have not emerged in a social vacuum. They reflect a deteriorating crisis in almost every respect of the Greek public sphere. A political system characterised by populism, nepotism, mediocrity and clientelism is matched by an archaic education system which fails to equip its students with knowledge necessary to thrive professionally and compete internationally. It also reflects an increasingly conservative society, spoiled by populist politicians, which has repeatedly rewarded those who refuse to address the country's real and serious problems but prefer to appeal to the short-term interests of their electoral clientele. As inertia thrives, a part of the country's youth has adopted a violent anarchist subculture, a by-product of Greece's intellectual fermentation in the 1970s. These anarchist groups have enjoyed overt support or tolerance by a large number of the media and elite. Despite their small size and by means of violence these groups have succeeded in stalling most serious reform efforts concerning education. Moreover, they have instilled a subculture of populism, cynicism and anomie into a considerable part of Greece's youth. The tragic event of 6 December was the straw which broke the camel's back and brought the country's chronic problems to the surface.

Turkey may still face serious obstacles to its democratic consolidation. A civil-military bureaucratic establishment, which continues its struggle to maintain a tutelary grip over democratic politics and society, serious shortcomings in human rights protection and a looming divide between the secularist and the conservative part of the society are serious problems raising questions about the future of Turkish. Yet the same country is able to maintain and promote excellence in its educational system and present successes at the higher education level, which Greece would envy. While more "civil disobedience" might indeed help Turkey's path towards a fully democratic political system, Greece's "hooded revolutionaries" would make no good guides in that respect.

(Published on Athens News on 19 December 2008)

Kurds and the AKP: The End of an Affair?

2008-11-22T08:52:00.003Z

Rising Kurdish support for the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AKP) has been one of the key elements of the party's political success. In the elections of 22 July 2007, the AKP won more votes in the provinces of southeastern Turkey than the Kurdish-leaning Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi-DTP). This followed a trend already witnessed in 2002, where Kurds who migrated to the big cities of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana voted heavily for the AKP. This shift was a reward for the party's democratisation efforts; support for EU membership and successful economic policy and of course a statement against the military and the judiciary which had precipitated the early elections. Turkey's Kurds appeared to be the most pro-EU membership population group and for understandable reasons. Turkey's EU membership would not only guarantee full respect for Kurdish minority rights; it would also enable high rates of economic growth, of which Turkey's Kurds one of the most marginalised groups of the country's population would benefit. This vote could also be deciphered as a warning for the political representative of Turkey's Kurds, the DTP. The party had failed to overcome its internal divisions, express a clear opposition to the use of violence for the advancement of Kurdish rights and join efforts to promote Turkey's democratisation and EU membership cause. This was noted by the voters who shifted away.

More than a year after the elections, the picture has not turned brighter. Turkey's economic situation has deteriorated. Having already paid a high toll to political instability, caused by the summer 2007 political crisis and early elections, as well as the 2008 closure case against the AKP, Turkey was caught in September into the maelstrom of the global financial crisis. The exchange rate of the New Turkish Lira has slumped about 20 percent against the US dollar and the Euro, and this has significantly aggravated the service of the country's foreign debt. The upcoming global economic recession spells no good omens for the most dynamic sector of Turkey's economy, manufacturing. Achieving strong growth due to increasing exports, Turkish manufacturers will probably have to suffer a slump in their sales, due to the global decrease of consumer demand. A significant slowdown of Turkey's GDP growth will hit the bulk of the populations and undermine one of the two pillars of AKP's political success, economic wellbeing for the majority of the population. This could cool off voters irrespective of their Turkish or Kurdish ethnic identity.

On the political front, there is barely any progress regarding democratisation reform. The government has suspended plans for a new constitution which would –among other issues– improve the protection of minority rights. On the contrary, many columnists argue that the government is slowly approaching mainstream bureaucratic positions on the Kurdish issue. Erdogan's recent visit to the Kurdish-inhabited provinces of southeastern Turkey was meant to improve the government's image but failed to change the mood. In fact a statement he reportedly made on 3 November in the southeastern city of Hakkari was close to "Either love it or leave it" (Ya sev ya terk et). This has been a common slogan of Turkish nationalists, at first referring to Istanbul minorities. Armenians, Greeks and Jews had to "love Turkey", meaning they had to voluntarily assimilate; otherwise they had to "leave", i.e. emigrate. While Erdogan vehemently denied the verbatim use of the slogan, he stressed in a parliamentary meeting a few days later: "We said, 'One nation, one flag, one motherland and one state.' Those who don't like this may go anywhere they like." Tension has also been growing on other fronts. The Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) has escalated its attacks against Turkish military positions. On 3 October, a remote Turkish military outpost at Aktutunlu next to the Iraqi border was attacked. 17 Turkish soldiers were killed in an attack which shocked Turkish public opinion. This attack sparked outrage and heated nationalist feeling in Turkish media. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court is expected to issue its decision on the closure of the Kurdish-leaning DTP. If the DTP is closed, as many fear, then this could lead to the further radicalisation of the Kurdish population and the weakening of moderate Kurdish political figures who try to mediate a solution for the Kurdish question.

As Turkey was increasingly influenced by US election campaign and Barack Obama's successful political message, Fehmi Koru, a prominent columnist of the AKP-leaning, conservative daily Yeni Safak attempted a daring comparison. He argued that when Erdogan came to power in 2002, he shared many political features with today's Obama. However, after six years in power, Erdogan has lost his reformist drive and started defending the status quo. In other words, he was increasingly looking like Bush. Erdogan reacted angrily to Kuru's comment and understandably so: Who would like to be compared to Bush under current conditions? Nonetheless, many commentators agreed that the gist of Kuru's argument, AKP's reform fatigue and increasing accommodation with the bureaucracy was valid. Four years before, Erdogan had visited southeastern Turkey again. In that visit he had become the first Turkish Prime Minister who openly admitted the existence of a "Kurdish question" and argued that its solution could be achieved in the framework of Turkey's democratisation. This daring approach seems to have dissipated along the way and replaced by mainstream nationalist arguments.

The election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency may well mean a shift of US policy in Iraq in the near future. This will inevitably involve Iraqi Kurds and Turkey. Finding common ground with Iraqi Kurds in the framework of a post-conflict Iraq solution will be a golden opportunity for Turkey to undercut the lifeline of the PKK. To achieve this though, the AKP government needs to deliver on its promised and forgotten political reform agenda and thus contribute to the isolation of the PKK from the bulk of Turkey's Kurdish population. The upcoming municipal elections of March 2009 might serve as a warning signal for a government whose reformist drive seems to have considerably weakened over the last year despite clear popular mandate for the opposite.

(Published on Athens News on 21 November 2008)

Turkey’s Troubled Judicial System

2008-10-18T21:11:00.002+01:00

Reform has become one of the most common political buzzwords. Politicians around the world love to be identified as "reformists". They want to look determined to break with the status quo, bring about bold changes in legislation and resolve stagnant problems. What these political leaders often fail to say, however, is that introducing changes to the legal framework is only one part of the story. Making this work is another and much more difficult part. The case of the Turkish judiciary is ample proof of this.

In recent years, few other state institutions have harmed Turkey's international image more than its judiciary. All of the European Commission's annual reports monitoring Turkey's progress towards accession have highlighted the persistence of serious shortcomings in the legislative framework and operation of the Turkish judiciary.

State Security Courts (Devlet Guvenlik Mahkemeleri - DGM) used to be one of the favourite topics. Established in the early 1970s, they were mixed military-civilian courts responsible for crimes against national security. Soon the number of crimes falling under their jurisdiction expanded so much that virtually any act of political dissent could be understood as a "threat against national security" and prosecuted without a fair trial. DGMs were eventually abolished in 2004, yet a lot of problems persisted, not least of which were those concerning issues of political freedom.

The recent indictments against the incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi - AKP) and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi - DTP) were no surprise. Since its inception in 1961, the Turkish Constitutional Court has closed 24 political parties. While AKP did not become the 25th, the decision in fact reflected the prosecutor's argument regarding the alleged anti-constitutional operations of the party; it only fell short of his proposal to shut the party.

A decision on the fate of DTP is pending and bound to have a major effect on relations with the Kurdish minority. If DTP becomes the 25th party to be banned, this could only weaken moderate Kurds and further deteriorate the situation in the southeastern part of the country. While experts have argued since a debate for a new constitution was launched last year that Turkish legislation should converge with the Venice Criteria, which set the European standards for freedom of political parties in December 1999, no change was recorded. Moreover, lack of reform was matched with the judiciary's negative predisposition. Many Turkish judges have seemed unable to follow suit with the pace of social and political developments. Between 1999 and 2004, when Turkey was moving full-speed towards democratisation and European integration, they seemed the exception, which confirmed the rule. When this process came to a standstill, they spearheaded efforts to undo parts of the reform.

Such opposition often came from the highest level. The Turkish Court of Cassations (Yargitay) has issued several decisions that are highlighted by a spirit of isolationism and obstinate opposition to reform steps. The law allowing the sale of real estate to foreign citizens has been repeatedly deemed unconstitutional. While Turkey's economy was thriving because of increasing foreign direct investment and numerous Turkish corporations expanded abroad, selling Turkish land to foreigners was seen as a compromise of national sovereignty that had to be fought.

In a decision last year regarding a case involving the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the court found the chance to reiterate the official denial of not only the use of the term "ecumenical" but also the legal personality of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This came at a point when European pressure was mounting and several domestic voices were calling for a reconsideration of the Turkish official position.

In May 2008, the Court of Cassation reached a new peak by annulling a constitutional amendment that had been approved by the parliament and removed obstacles to the use of headscarves in universities. This provision was found to be against the constitutional principle of secularism and, therefore, automatically null and void. Thus, the court seemed to introduce a tutelary role over the parliament and its sovereign right to amend the constitution.

'Insulting Turkishness' or 'Turkish nation'?

Violations of freedom of speech through judicial action have also been plentiful. Due to the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, many intellectuals were prosecuted for "insulting Turkishness". The 2006 Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk and the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink whose murder by a nationalist juvenile in January 2007 shocked Turkey were two of the most prominent victims of this legislation.

Mounting pressure from Europe led to the modification of Article 301 in April 2008. What was protected from insult is now the "Turkish nation" and not "Turkishness". In addition, filing a case now requires the approval of the ministry of justice. This falls short of the abolition of Article 301, which local human rights organisations and European authorities require.

The AKP government decided to take a middle position between reformists and nationalists and avoid antagonising the judiciary. Anti-EU feeling was already growing in the judiciary. In a May 2008 speech, the departing president of Turkey's Conseil d'Etat (Danistay), Sumru Cortoglu, warned European authorities to respect Turkish sovereignty and not intermingle with Turkey's domestic affairs.

By identifying themselves with the radical secularist opposition to Turkey's EU-supported democratisation, a large part of the judiciary shows that they have had little understanding of the fundamental transformation of the Turkish society since the 1980s. An introvert and socially conservative outlook was often amplified by a lack of overseas education, even a command of foreign languages. This facilitated the rise of a phobic world view, which opposed the prospect of Turkey's democratic consolidation and European integration. Democratisation was linked with the rise of minority and particularistic interests and eventual partition, while European interest in Turkish domestic affairs was linked to imperialist attempts to partition the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.

This is not to say that the Turkish judiciary is unique in being conservative and unwilling to compromise what it perceives as national interest for an improved protection of human rights. Analogous problems have been also observed in Greece where verdicts of the Court of Cassation (Areios Pagos) have sometimes resulted in humiliating condemnations for Greece at the European Court of Human Rights. Yet the current stakes in Turkey are high and the judiciary's involvement in political affairs unprecedented. Turkey needs an impartial and democratic judiciary, a custodian of human rights and the rule of law, not of a given social class. Educating Turkey's judges to this mission will be a key step towards the country's democratic consolidation.

(Published on Athens News on 17 October 2008)

Bridging Islam and Democracy in Turkey: A Look into the AKP Controversy

2008-10-09T16:56:00.003+01:00

The summer of 2008 was yet another turbulent one for Turkish politics. The closure case filed on 14 March 2008 by the Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya against the country's ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AKP) was not a novelty in itself. Twenty four political parties have been closed by the Turkish Constitutional Court since its foundation in 1962. Yet this was the first time a case was launched against an incumbent party. The reason for the closure was the party's transformation into a "focal point of anti-secular activities." The case was heard on 1 and 3 July, and on 30, the Court delivered its verdict. While six of the eleven judges agreed with the Prosecutor's proposal that the party be closed, they failed to reach the qualified majority of seven votes, necessary for such a decision. This meant that the party only faced a written warning and a curtailment of its state subsidy by 50 percent. So what coined as "Turkey's judicial coup" was averted at the last moment and for a single vote. The country avoided a major political crisis, early elections and an escalation of the tension between the secularist and the Islamist segments of the society which could have reached extremely dangerous dimensions. The decision came as a big relief for the Turkish financial market and was hailed by the international community as well as the supporters of Turkey's EU membership in Turkey and abroad.

What attracted though so much attention to the fate of this party? The very idea of banning a party which collected almost 47 percent of the vote in the July 2007 parliamentary elections based on inconclusive evidence would have made a travesty of Turkish democracy. Besides, the AKP has become the key political actor in the process of Turkey's democratisation reform. Despite its Islamist roots, the party has adopted a clear pro-European position since it took over power in November 2002 and has realised a reform programme, which was unprecedented in recent Turkish history. The AKP government's policy triggered the December 2004 decision of the European Council for the start of accession negotiations. Turkey's European dream seemed to come closer to realisation than ever, and this was due to a party with Islamist political roots. The debate whether Islam was the single most important factor for the virtual absence of democratic regimes in the Middle East has been ongoing since the "clash of civilisations" thesis was introduced. It was reinforced after the horrendous terror attacks of 11 September 2001 and the 2003 US occupation of Iraq. Some argued that Islam intrinsically failed to recognise the separation of religion and state, and this rendered impossible the emergence of a democratic regime in a Muslim country. The case of Turkey differed –they said– because of its radical secularisation programme.

When Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, launched a radical reform programme to "bring Turkey to the level of contemporary civilisation," he aimed to put Islam into firm state control and minimise its social and political appeal. Islam was considered as one of the primary reasons for Ottoman underdevelopment. Turkey's modernisation was conditioned upon the development of a secular, "religion-free" society. Early republican attitudes towards religion were clearly reminiscent of French laicité. Islam came under direct state control and Islamic brotherhoods were closed. While references to Islam as official religion were removed, laicism (laiklik) was elevated to a principle of the Republic of Turkey. Nonetheless, the appeal of this top-down modernisation effort was limited beyond the circles of a secularist middle class which had espoused the principles of the Ataturk reform. The big majority of the Turkish people did not dismiss Islam and remained sceptical of the radical aspects of Ataturk's modernisation programme. This became clear when multiparty politics were introduced in 1946. Parties which were deviating from the Kemalist secularist orthodoxy maintained a consistently strong popular appeal. The threat of Turkey's Islamisation became one of the main pretexts for the repeated military interventions and closures of parties with the alleged aim to turn Turkey into an Islamic state. Yet what escaped the attention of Turkish secularist elites was that the country was undergoing a parallel modernisation process. Alongside the Kemalist modernisation paradigm, an alternative path towards modernisation emerged. A new rising urban elite refused to dismiss Islam, was critical of the excesses of Kemalist reform and suggested a new version of Turkish modernity, which would combine Islamic and Western values. Members of this new Muslim bourgeoisie benefited the most from Turkey's opening to the world economy in the 1980s. Eventually they saw the clear economic, political and social benefits of Turkey's membership of the European Union.

The AKP, a product of the transformation of Turkish political Islam, became the political representative of this social movement. Having shed Islamist suspicions against "Christian Europe," they subscribed to Turkey's EU candidacy. Turkey's European integration would set most favourable conditions for the country's economic development. At the political level, the implementation of the Copenhagen Criteria for EU membership would inevitably lead to the consolidation of Turkish democracy. Turkey would realise her long-standing ambition to join the European zone of peace, stability and cooperation. At the social level, the establishment of a liberal, tolerant public sphere would help set a framework for full protection of human rights and mutual toleration between the diverse segments of Turkish society, secularists and Islamists, Turks and Kurds, Alevis or non-Muslims.

At the same time Turkey's secularist elite which had traditionally represented the West failed to respond to the transformation of the political agenda of the AKP and suggest an alternative vision of Turkey's European integration. This failure was exemplified in the case of the main opposition Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP). Instead of spearheading the EU reform process, it increasingly adopted a nationalistic, isolationist and phobic attitude towards the European Union which allowed the AKP to monopolise Turkey's EU membership vocation. In effect, it identified with the most reactionary elements of the military and civil bureaucracy, which saw that Turkey's democratic consolidation would mean the end of the tutelary role they enjoyed. In addition, it fomented the fears of the secularist middle class which became increasingly uneasy from the growing social and political clout of the social forces the AKP represented. The AKP was accused of using the European Union and democratisation as a window-dress for its real agenda, Turkey's Islamisation. The candidacy of Abdullah Gul for the presidency of the country in April 2007 was interpreted as a symbolic step towards that direction. The concerted reaction of the CHP and the bureaucracy led to the July 2007 elections, a triumph for the AKP. Yet even after the elections the CHP continued its fear-mongering campaign on the issue of the alleged Islamisation threat, while it was insensitive to much more serious threats for Turkish democracy, such as the bureaucratic intervention into democratic politics and the existence of nationalist secularist terrorist groups such as the Ergenekon.

One should underline that the AKP was also responsible for allowing this climate of mutual suspicion to rise. In the years following 2004, the reform zeal clearly abated. The AKP was caught in the rising nationalist rhetoric which grew more suspicious against the European Union and vehemently opposed US foreign policy. The lack of progress regarding the rights of Alevis and non-Muslims also led to doubts about its commitment to human rights when these were not favouring Sunni Muslims. The AKP also failed to make any openings towards the secularist middle class, which would signal that lifting the limitations that Muslims faced would not result in the imposition of similar limitations on secularists. Focusing in the aftermath of the 2007 elections on the headscarf issue and not treating it in a context of a wider constitutional reform encapsulating the full protection of rights of all Turkish citizens was a grave tactical error. It allowed the CHP to instigate fears about a hidden Islamist agenda and gave the pretext to the Chief Prosecutor to file a closure case against the party. Despite its shortcomings, the AKP is still –given the absence of a secularist pro-European party– the main actor of democratic change. With its solid parliamentary majority it can re-launch a democratisation reform programme which could bring Turkey closer to EU membership and also lift all suspicions about its true intentions at the domestic level. Due to its popular origins, the AKP is also uniquely positioned to influence the bulk of Turkey's population towards the adoption of the European project. Socialising the majority of Turkish people into European liberal democratic values is a difficult task. Yet no party is better poised to achieve this than the AKP. Its success could also have a positive effect on the relations between Europe and Islam. More importantly, the success of the AKP experiment is a powerful example in defence of the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Parties with Islamist political roots are not inherent enemies of democracy, but can be co-opted to its cause, if proper incentives are given and policies implemented. This can inform global strategies regarding political Islam and promotion of democracy. In light of this, with the court decision of 30 July the effort to reconcile Islam and democracy escaped a grave blow.

(A German translation of this appeared on the quarterly magazine Kulturaustausch on 1^st October 2008)

The New Cyprus Negotiations and the Turkish Military

2008-09-23T16:03:00.004+01:00

After a period of relative obscurity, the Cyprus question has come back to the press headlines. More than four years after the Annan plan referenda, the most serious attempt to reach a solution to the long standing island's dispute is under way. The two leaders of the island's communities, Dimitris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat started regular meetings on 3 September 2008 with the aim to achieve what has proved impossible in almost fifty years of negotiations. There is an aura of optimism: The two leaders have maintained very good personal relations for years and are known as "moderates" in their respective communities when it comes to the Cyprus question. Yet the beginning of the negotiations was marred by an incident indicative of the obstacles to be faced in the future.

Following the opening of the Ledra Palace checkpoint in Nicosia in April 2003, several other checkpoints were opened throughout the Green Line straddling across the divided island. They meant to facilitate communication, a basic condition for the improvement of strained relations between two communities, which have lived in virtual separation for more than forty years. No checkpoint was opened, however, in the divided Tylliria region in north-western Cyprus. This meant hardship for local Greek and Turkish Cypriot refugees who had to travel for many kilometres to Nicosia in order to visit their villages just a few kilometres on the other side of the Green Line. The opening of the checkpoint near the occupied village of Limnitis (Yesilirmak) was suggested as a solution. Negotiations followed suit, and an agreement was finally reached for a tentative opening of the checkpoint. Turkish Cypriots would cross through Limnitis on 8 August 2008 to visit the today deserted Turkish Cypriot exclave of Kokkina (Erenkoy) on the anniversary of the fierce bicommunal battles which took place there in 1964. Greek Cypriots would cross on 2 September to visit Morphou (Guzelyurt) and attend a mass at the town's St. Mamas Cathedral. While the first leg of the agreement was realised, the second was not. Shortly before 2 September, the Turkish military forces rejected the Greek Cypriot crossing on "security reasons." This move gave a clear signal about the role which the Turkish military continued to claim in the Cyprus issue, as well as the real limits to the powers of Talat that it posed.

To better understand the position of the Turkish military on the Cyprus question, one needs to keep in mind the key significance of the Cyprus question for Turkish domestic politics. With the exception of Turkey's participation in the UN force in Korea, the Cyprus invasion was the first overseas military operation in the history of republican Turkey. The victory of summer 1974 reinforced the prestige of the Turkish military and legitimised its intervention into Turkish domestic politics. It is ironic that Turkey's military victory in summer 1974 ended up as one of the biggest obstacles to the consolidation of Turkish democracy. On the other hand, Greece's military defeat had the opposite effect. The military defeat brought about the fall of the Greek junta as well as the wiping out of all the vestiges of the Greek post-war "deep state," which were active in both the Greek 1967 coup and the Cypriot 1974 coup.

Gradually a redefinition of the grounds for Turkey's military presence on the island took place. Turkey's presence was not simply linked to the protection of the rights of the Turkish Cypriot community. It was rather projected as a "vital issue for Turkish national security." Cyprus was seen as a key ring in Turkey's imagined axis of enemy neighbours ranging from cold-war Bulgaria to Greece, Syria and the Soviet Union. Through this process of securitisation, the Cyprus question joined the Kurdish and secularism questions as an instrument for the promotion of the military's tutelary role in Turkish politics. The perpetuation of the conflict ended up much more favourable for the military's interests than any compromise solution. This also helps explain the gradual hardening of the Turkish position. The proclamation of the independence of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" in 1983 underlined that Turkey was not interested in a negotiated solution on the island. According to the adage of these days, "the lack of a solution is the solution." Both Turkish Cypriots and Turkish democracy became hostages to a status quo which mainly served the domestic interests of the Turkish military elite. The exorbitant price which Turkish Cypriots paid through their international isolation was considered negligible. So was the cost for Turkey's EU membership aspirations. Turkey's increasing international isolation was in fact serving the interests of the military on the domestic level. Accusing the European Union of trying to compromise Turkish strategic interests in Cyprus was easier than objecting to the demise of the military's tutelage over the political system, an essential part of any Turkish democratisation programme.

This position was questioned for the first time with the rise of the AKP government into power in November 2002. Mounting reaction by Turkish Cypriot citizens against the Denktas regime, the resolve of the AKP government to remove obstacles to Turkey's EU accession and the tacit support of the then Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok made possible a new, less "securitised" reading of the Cyprus issue. These allowed Turkey's support for the Annan Plan in 2004. It is questionable whether all the conditions which enabled this policy shift in 2004 exist today. While recent domestic developments in Turkey have strengthened the position of Erdogan, this does not mean that he could again easily bear the brunt of supporting a compromise solution in Cyprus, especially when the prospect of Turkey's EU membership looks rather vague. A new consent by the military similar to the one given in 2004 is not a given; on the contrary, the military could pose obstacles to the negotiations. This does not mean that negotiations are doomed to fail. It does mean though that even stronger political resolve may be necessary in the months to follow.

(Published on Athens News on 26 September 2008)

The End of Turkey’s Judicial Drama: The Way Ahead

2008-08-18T07:13:00.008+01:00

Let us state the obvious from the beginning. On 30 July 2008, Turkey escaped a major political and economic crisis that could have lead to the escalation of serious social cleavage. The proposal of Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya to close Turkey’s incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) failed to garner the support of the qualified majority of seven of the 11 Constitutional Court judges necessary for such a decision. It convinced only six. Thanks to one vote, AKP escaped closure, and the supporters of Turkey’s democratisation, inside and outside the country, sighed with relief.

Yet, this AKP victory could be considered as pyrrhic. Yes, the party escaped closure and having 71 of its leading figures banned from politics. Although contingency plans had already been drafted - including the formation of a new party and the “takeover” of an existing small political party with the en-masse accession of the party MPs - all of them could have met with additional judicial or administrative obstacles.

On the other hand, the Constitutional Court's verdict did not acquit AKP. In fact, it was the only one of Yalcinkaya's proposals that failed to attract the qualified seven-vote majority. Ten of the 11 members of the Constitutional Court agreed with the chief prosecutor's allegation that AKP had become a “focal point of anti-secular activities”. Six sided with the prosecutor on his sentence proposal, voting for the party's closure. However, four judges voted for the party to be issued a warning and fined an amount equal to 50 percent of the annual state subsidy, approximately 13 million Euros.

As the full text of the decision has not been released yet, one can speculate that the court considered AKP's initiatives to lift some administrative barriers on the country’s Muslims as evidence of its anti-secular activity. These initiatives could include the 2004 attempt to lift restrictions graduates of religious vocational high schools face when trying to enter higher education institutions, as well as the recent amendment of the constitution that would allow for headscarves to be worn in universities. Such an argument would mean that the court took a strongly illiberal position on the issue of secularism, which has become the heart of the conflict between AKP and the leading opposition, Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The court apparently reconfirmed its aloofness to all discussions about the need to develop a more tolerant version of secularism that would respect individual autonomy and freedom of choice and establish a neutral state attitude towards religion. Such a signal was already given with the court’s decision in June to annul the constitutional amendment aimed at easing headscarf restrictions because of its “opposition to the constitutional principle of secularism".

Despite the refusal to close the party, a Damocles sword is hanging over AKP. This uneasiness was expressed last week when rumours about the possible launch of a second case against AKP spread in Ankara and immediately affected the financial markets. It was speculated that the chief prosecutor would launch a second case, more limited this time, aimed at banning from politics the AKP members who had turned it into a “focal point of anti-secular activities". Such a conclusion could emanate from the fact that the court decision accepted the allegation of the indictment that the party had indeed become such a point. (last sent wordy and unclear, rewrite) It is questionable, though, whether a second case would enjoy even the limited social support which the first case did..

The crisis in the relations between CHP and the military was one of the most spectacular consequences of the decision. High-level CHP officials, who obviously hoped that AKP would be closed first, accused military leaders of having reached a tacit agreement with AKP. In an unprecedented move, they even questioned the integrity of the recently retired chief of general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, when they pointed out that he would maintain the use of a state-owned armoured automobile after his retirement. Divisions within the secularist camp also underlined in the course of the Ergenekon investigations were hard to disguise.

The existence of these divisions facilitates any AKP attempts to reach a rapprochement with the moderate part of the secularist camp. Failing to make any progress on issues such as freedom of expression and Alevi and non-Muslim minority rights, as well as focusing exclusively on the headscarf issue helped raise suspicion about the party's commitment to the democratisation reform. This commitment can be best signalled through the acceleration of the reform process and renewed interest in the EU accession negotiations. This reform would necessarily include a major constitutional amendment, if not the promulgation of a new constitution.

A new constitution would allow AKP to eliminate any suspicions that it intends to gradually achieve the Islamisation of the society and apply discriminatory measures against the secularists. By improving the constitutional protection of all fundamental human rights and freedoms, the AKP would signal to moderate secularists its determination to widen the space of individual autonomy for all and not only its pious voters.

Having convinced the moderate secularists about these intentions through the content of the constitutional reform, the AKP will be able not only to promote the religious freedom of Sunni Muslims but also to limit the ability of the judiciary to intervene in politics by annulling constitutional amendments and banning political parties on dubious legal grounds and factual evidence. In addition to alleviating social divides in Turkey, these steps would help rejuvenate Turkey’s faltering EU accession process.

In the aftermath of the court decision, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged his determination to lead Turkey to full EU membership. He did the same after the triumph of his party, almost a year ago on 22 July 2007, with meagre results.

The court decision marked the end of a lost year for Turkey’s political reform and social conciliation. It is up to AKP to seize the opportunity now emerging and restore the parliament as the hub of political reform. There is no time or grace period left.

Dr Ioannis N Grigoriadis is a Lecturer at the Department of Turkish & Modern Asian Studies, University of Athens and a Research Fellow at ELIAMEP

(Published on Athens News on 15 August 2008)

The Ergenekon Case Moves from “Small” to “Big”: Turkey’s Bureaucracy Divided

2008-07-20T09:34:00.006+01:00

In the last few months, Turkish politics seems to have been taking place less in the Parliament and more in court rooms. A series of revelations and arrests in the framework of the Ergenekon investigation has attracted attention away from the closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). As the Ergenekon affair was unravelling in the spring of this year, many commentators made a careful distinction between what they called the “small” and the “big” Ergenekon. The “small” Ergenekon referred to the group of officers, lawyers, journalists and others arrested in the police operations of January 2008. Most of these detainees belonged to the fringe of Turkish society. Being members of marginal nationalist groups, on the left or right, they had limited social appeal. The “big” Ergenekon though referred to a group of generals, leading journalists and academics who were suspected to be the masterminds behind the Ergenekon group. Most columnists doubted that the investigation would dare to touch them.

The arrests of Ilhan Selcuk, Dogu Perincek and Kemal Alemdaroglu in March 2008 gave the first hint that the prosecutors would not be willing to spare prominent suspects. Yet few could expect the twist which the events took last week, when two retired four-star generals, Sener Eruygur and Hursit Tolon, were among a group of high-profile suspects detained on 1 July 2008. In a country where the military has been held as “untouchable” and the perpetrators of military coups have not been held accountable for their deeds, these arrests were indeed a seminal event. This Monday, the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin filed a 2,455-page-long indictment against 86 persons involved in the Ergenekon affair. They were charged with organising an armed terror group and orchestrating a coup attempt. However, this document did not include charges against the latest group of arrested, including Eruygur and Tolon. These would follow in a separate indictment.

The arrest of the two generals brought attention to a news story from the magazine Nokta in March 2007. Nokta published what it claimed to be excerpts from the diary of the retired Admiral Ozden Ornek. They included information about two coup plots against the AKP government in 2004 organised by Eruygur, Tolon and other top-rank officers. Shortly thereafter, Ornek claimed that the documents were a forgery, the police raided the offices of Nokta and the magazine had to suspend its operation. Following the arrest of Eruygur and Tolon, information reinforcing the Nokta claims has appeared in the media in addition to information about two additional coup plots and a set of covert operations aiming to wreak social havoc, polarise existing divisions in the country and create conditions facilitating a military coup. Both Eruygur and Tolon had acquired leading positions in Turkey’s nationalist secularist civil society in the aftermath of their retirement. In fact, Eruygur is the President of the Ataturkist Thought Association (Ataturkcu Dusunce Dernegi-ADD), which organised the massive anti-government demonstrations “in defence of the Republic” last year. Now allegations rose that increasing pressure against the AKP government was not only limited to peaceful demonstrations. It may have included the murder of the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in February 2006, the bomb attacks against the offices of the secularist daily Cumhuriyet in May 2006, the bloody attack against Turkey’s Administrative Court in May 2006 and even the murder of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007.

Interconnections between the Ergenekon affair and the case against the AKP are the focus of wide discussions. On the one hand, it is argued that the AKP uses a part of its friendly judiciary to put pressure upon his opponents on the eve of the critical decision of the Constitutional Court on the closure of the AKP. Its alleged aim would be to enforce a compromise between the government and the secularist elite. This could entail the survival of the AKP party organisation and its leading cadre, even if this would have to be done under a different party name. On the other hand, others argue that the indictment against the AKP gains new significance in light of the recent Ergenekon revelations. The indictment against the AKP could be seen as one more stage of the deep state’s all-out attack against the AKP, implemented not only through the operations of the Ergenekon group, but also through its loyal judiciary.

Which side will win this struggle is hard to predict. One of the most interesting findings from the Ergenekon affair though is the emergence of significant divisions within the Turkish military and judiciary. It appears that the former Chief of the Turkish General Staff Hilmi Ozkok has been one of the primary targets of the Ergenekon group. Being perceived as “weak” or even “crypto-Islamist” because of his unwillingness to undertake initiatives against the AKP government, Ozkok represented a Turkish military loyal to the Turkish Constitution and the principles of democracy. His recent meeting with President Abdullah Gul aiming to alleviate social tension and his repeated public support for Turkey’s EU integration project have reconfirmed this stance. In addition, his refusal to disprove the existence of the Ergenekon-led coup attempts attested that the case was not simply an AKP forgery against its political opponents.

The same division has pervaded across the judiciary. Turkey’s Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cassations Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya filed on 14 March 2008 a closure case against the AKP, a party which won 47 percent of the popular vote less than a year ago. A decision of the Constitutional Court on 5 June 2008 annulled a constitutional amendment allowing the use of the headscarf and questioned in its rationale the very principle of popular sovereignty. On the other hand, Zekeriya Oz, the Istanbul prosecutor, who together with his two assistants Mehmet Pekguzel and Nihat Taskin has been running the investigation of the Ergenekon affair for the last eighteen months, has become the protagonist in what might become a turning point in the struggle of Turkish democrats against the deep state. To paraphrase the famous conversation between the Prussian King Frederick the Great and the miller Arnold, “if there are no judges in Ankara, there are still some in Istanbul.”

Dr Ioannis N Grigoriadis is a Lecturer at the Department of Turkish & Modern Asian Studies, University of Athens and a Research Fellow at ELIAMEP

(Published on Athens News on 18 July 2008)

The “Neighbourhood’s Pressure”: A Debate on Turkey’s Fluid Social Dynamics

2008-06-21T07:44:00.005+01:00

While Turkey’s institutional crisis shows no signs of abatement, it is worthwhile looking into the sociological dimensions of the ongoing power struggle. One useful tool for this is the term “neighbourhood’s pressure” (mahalle baskisi) coined by Prof. Serif Mardin. Mardin, the octogenarian doyen of Turkish sociology, introduced the term about a year ago in an interview. He caused sensation, as he touched upon the most sensitive aspect of Turkey’s societal transformation. Mardin’s early academic interest in Turkish Islam, particularly in Turkey’s most prominent Islamist thinker in the 20th century, Said Nursi, resulted in some of the most authoritative books on Turkish Islam. While this work established him as a leading expert on the field, he also made plenty of enemies among the secularist academic establishment. Despite his impeccable academic record, his teaching in some of the best US and Turkish universities, Mardin was twice refused membership of the Turkish Academy of Sciences. The apparent reason was his dispassionate approach of Turkey’s Islam, which was not fulfilling the Kemalist credentials of the Academy’s gatekeepers.
In his interview to the daily Vatan, Mardin used the term “neighbourhood’s pressure” to allude to Turkey’s changing social dynamics. The secularist middle class, the “centre”, has been exposed to mounting social pressure due to the rise of a conservative class, the “periphery”, which, while becoming increasingly westernised and globalised, questioned several social values upon which the Republic was founded. This included the role of religion in the shaping of public space and social ethics. Municipalities, which came under the control of peripheral political forces in the 1970s, became the focal point for the empowerment and the dissemination of these values. This eventually resulted in exerting indirect pressure upon the secularists to impose their communitarian values. Lack of respect for individual autonomy meant that whoever diverged from given social values would have to face severe social sanctions.
The term was immediately used by the secularist opposition against the AKP government policies, in the turbulent months which marked the second half of 2007. In particular, the AKP attempts to allow the free use of the headscarf in university campuses was presented as the clearest example of the assault which Turkey’s urban class was allegedly undergoing by the “uncouth neighbourhood forces.” It was argued that the government’s EU membership agenda was only a pretext. Turkey would soon leave the track of EU membership for the path of Islamisation and approximate Malaysia, an illiberal democracy, where economic liberalism thrives but individual autonomy is limited by Islamic social values.
As the debate became overtly politicised, Mardin intervened in order to clarify his position. He stated that he did not agree with a political use of the term which implied an unchangeable, reactionary nature of Islam. He dissociated the term “neighbourhood’s pressure” from the AKP government arguing that this is an independent phenomenon preceding the emergence of this party. The neighbourhood was the main collective unit of the Ottoman Muslim society, organised around the mosque, Islamic brotherhoods and guilds, which espoused a certain set of social values heavily influenced by Islam. When Ataturk launched his reform programme, republican education aimed to substitute a new set of social values. In that Kulturkampf, the “teacher” was juxtaposed with the “imam.” The teacher of the republican school became the vector of the secularist, positivist principles of the Republic, while the imam represented the set of traditional social values inherited from the Ottoman society. In Mardin’s opinion, the result of this struggle was clear: In the battle for the hearts and minds of the Turkish people, the teacher was defeated. Mardin pointed at the intellectual poverty and dryness of Kemalism which allowed for Islamic ethics to gain undisputed preponderance in society. Kemalism’s interest in moral issues, “the good, the right and the beautiful” was scant, and Islam remained the strongest factor in the formation of Turkish social ethics. Therefore, any steps towards Turkey’s democratic consolidation were inevitably followed by a rise in the public visibility of Islam, as the social values espoused by the majority of the society became increasingly pronounced. These values were not the same with those espoused a century ago. Globalisation, economic liberalism had left their trace on them, while they were still characterised by a heavy Islamic imprint. The rise of the AKP was therefore not the cause of the “neighbourhood’s pressure” but rather its effect. It mirrored at the political level what had been noted at the ideological level. Ironically the “imam” had shown greater adaptability to world ideological and economic trends than the “teacher.” Therefore, he turned out to be more successful.
Mardin added that the main shortcoming of the “neighbourhood’s pressure,” its lack of respect for individual autonomy and difference was not a feature exclusively characterising the conservative camp, but pervaded the whole of Turkish society. Both secularist and conservative camps were not willing to tolerate each other’s moral values and individual choices. Therefore, the real issue at stake was how to inculcate a spirit of toleration for individual choice which could allow both secularists and Islamists to follow different lifestyles in mutual respect within the same society. This would require a fundamental mental shift from both sides, and the European Union would be in the best position to facilitate this transformation process. By setting political liberalisation as membership criterion and through socialisation with European political and social values it could diffuse political liberalism and increase respect for individual autonomy. Under these conditions, both conservative and secularist lifestyles would be possible and mutually tolerated.
For the time being, this discussion may sound a bit lofty. If the highest court shows little respect to the constitutional order, it is difficult to demand popular respect for the rule of law and individual rights, let alone build social confidence and trust between embattled sides. Reconciliation between the centre and the periphery could only be reached through the cultivation of a liberal culture of mutual toleration. The debate, which Mardin’s interview has sparked, highlighted the difficulty as well as the significance of achieving this task.

(Published on Athens News on 20 June 2008)

The Ecumenical Patriarchate: Between International Recognition and Domestic Suspicion

2008-05-23T22:03:00.007+01:00

This year’s Time Magazine annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people included a surprise for many in Turkey. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I was elected 11^th among the list of “leaders and revolutionaries.” The reason for Bartholomew’s election was summarised succinctly by Archbishop of Canterbury and Head of the Anglican Church Rowan Williams: “Patriarch Bartholomew, however, has turned the relative political weakness of the office into a strength, grasping the fact that it allows him to stake out a clear moral and spiritual vision that is not tangled up in negotiation and balances of power. And this vision is dominated by his concern for the environment.” Bartholomew was joined in the list of the 100 select by only one other citizen of the Republic of Turkey: Mehmet Oz, a Turkish-American heart surgeon of Columbia University. The reaction of the Turkish media to this news was not a surprise in itself. Most Turkish newspapers, normally eager to jubilantly report “international distinctions,” downplayed the news, while others referred to Oz in their news heading and only briefly referred to Bartholomew in the body. This comprised an additional attestation of the uneasy attitude of the Turkish public opinion towards the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Victimised by Turkish nationalism throughout the history of republican Turkey and portrayed as a “fifth column” and an “enemy within”, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has faced obstacles which often questioned its very operation within the borders of Turkey. In what has been aptly coined as the “Sevres Syndrome”, the fear of Turkey’s partition along the broad lines of the 1920 Sevres Treaty, the Patriarchate has been considered to be one of the potential key levers for Turkey’s destabilisation. The fear of the creation of an “Orthodox Vatican” within the Istanbul city walls has haunted the thoughts of Turkish nationalists.

All these influenced state and public opinion attitudes towards the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Official republican Turkish views denied the Patriarchate the use of the term “ecumenical” and even a legal personality. Instead, it was considered a domestic religious institution. The Patriarch was not recognised as the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox, but of Turkey’s –now tiny– Greek minority, a low-level religious official, accountable to the Istanbul prefect. At the same time, the operation of the Patriarchate has been obstructed by numerous administrative and legislative hindrances. Confiscations of immovable assets, obstacles to recruitment and education of Turkey’s Orthodox clergy, the closure of the Heybeliada (Chalki) Religious Seminary, the toleration of Papa-Eftim family’s usurpation of church buildings, pious foundations and assets were an indicative list of the problems faced. Moreover, while significant progress has been achieved on a number of issues pertaining to human and minority rights since 1999, progress was barely noticed regarding the issues of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In some cases, Turkish courts reapproved long state policies. In a decision issued in June 2007 regarding a case involving the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Turkish Court of Cassations (Yargitay) found the chance to reiterate the official denial of not only the use of the term “ecumenical” but also the legal personality of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In its own words, “the Patriarchate, which has been allowed to remain on the Turkish territories, is a religious institution which has no legal personality and which has religious powers only over the members of a certain minority in the Turkish Republic....there is no legal basis for the claim that the patriarchate is Ecumenical.” This came at a point European pressure was mounting and several domestic voices were calling for a reconsideration of the Turkish official position.

The recalcitrant official position has increasingly come at odds with Turkey’s painstaking efforts to project itself as a key player in intercultural and interreligious dialogue. Its collaboration with Spain in the 2005 “Alliance of Civilisations” initiative, which was later endorsed by the United Nations, indicated that amply. In the post-September 11 global environment, Turkey, the sole secular democracy in the Muslim world, aimed to act as a “bridge” between the Western and Islamic words. Nonetheless, these ambitious projects fell short of plausibility, given the country’s dismal record regarding its religious minorities. How could a country serve as a force of moderation and an honest mediator between Islam and Christianity, when it has not been able to deal with systematic religious discrimination within its own borders? The case of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was the most striking, exactly because of the increasing international acclaim and the potential corroboration of Turkey’s role as “cultural bridge” through the Patriarchate’s smooth operation.

Many Turkish intellectuals and columnists have realised the importance of the Patriarchate as an invaluable cultural and political asset. They argued that the resolution of the Patriarchate’s problems could benefit Turkey more than the Patriarchate itself. A thriving Ecumenical Patriarchate could not only attest to Turkey’s multicultural and multi-religious heritage, but also comprise a strong advocate of Turkey’s European vocation. Despite disappointment about the meagre results of the reform regarding the issues of the Patriarchate, Bartholomew has already consistently supported Turkey’s EU membership and used his influence among some of the most sceptical European actors. The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in November 2006 had attracted the ire of Turkish nationalists and Islamists. Yet it was during this visit that the Pope watered down his once vehement opposition to Turkey’s EU membership. In addition, the increasing international profile of Bartholomew could resonate very well with the image of an Europeanising, democratising Turkey.

During the visit of the Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis to Ankara last January, a statement by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a joint press conference stirred hopes about a change in Turkish official policies. Erdogan stated that the question of the ecumenical character of the Patriarchate is “an internal affair of the Orthodox world,” a remarkable shift from conventional denial policies towards a conciliatory stance supported by liberal Turkish intellectuals. While ensuing developments did not vindicate that initial optimism, Time Magazine reminded why resolving the problems of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is important not only for Turkey or Greece, but also for the whole world.

(Published on Athens News on 16 May 2008)

Turkey’s “Judicial Coup”: The Dear Cost of Reform Inertia

2008-04-16T12:20:00.007+01:00

Barely a year after the “e-coup” of 27 April 2007, when a statement posted on the website of the Turkish General Staff intervened into Turkey’s presidential elections, Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya contributed one more term to Turkey’s troubled political vocabulary. The indictment Yalcinkaya filed on 14 March for the closure of the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the banning of seventy-one of its leading figures from politics –including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan– has already been called as Turkey’s first “judicial coup.” In a 162-page-long document, little more than a compilation of news reports and statements, Yalcinkaya put forward the claim that the AKP has become a “focal point of anti-secular activities.” Despite legal expert views which pointed at technical defects of the indictment, the Constitutional Court unanimously decided on 31 March to hear the case.

Ironically, the AKP fell victim to its own reform inertia. After the party’s triumphant electoral victory last July, it set a comprehensive constitutional reform among its first priorities. Despite its numerous amendments, Turkey’s current constitution still bears a heavy authoritarian imprint from the junta which drafted it in 1982. A five-member experts committee presided by Turkey’s most eminent constitutional law expert, Prof. Ergun Ozbudun was appointed with the task to prepare a new civil constitution, which would fundamentally expand the scope of individual freedoms and remove the tutelary prerogatives of the bureaucracy institutional remnants of . This included an amendment of the articles on political parties, to bring them in line with the “Venice Criteria” of the Council of Europe which allow the enforced dissolution of political parties only in cases where they “advocate the use of violence or use it as a political means to overthrow the democratic constitutional order, thereby undermining the rights and freedoms protected by the Constitution.” The draft was submitted last autumn, yet the government failed to endorse it. Instead, it entered a protracted political battle over a single issue, the headscarf. While this issue could have been easier dealt within the framework of a wider constitutional reform, the AKP government preferred to strike an alliance with the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) solely on the headscarf issue and amended the Constitution. This allowed for the polarisation of political climate and facilitated the launch of the indictment. In addition, the AKP overlooked two significant warning signals. The first was the indictment of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) on 16 November 2007 to which the AKP remained ominously silent. The second was a statement by Yalcinkaya on 17 January 2008, in which he argued –in view of the turban crisis– that “political parties cannot undermine the principle of secularism” and that “the Constitution and law provide sanctions for those which do.”

Most experts see only a little chance that the eleven-member Constitutional Court acquit the AKP and its leadership. The dubious decision of the same Court on the Presidential election quorum last June which led the country to early elections, as well as the unanimous character of the decision to hear the indictment are cited as evidence. Since the election of Abdullah Gul to the President’s office last August, many have seen the Constitutional Court and the military as the last “bastions” of Kemalism.
This leaves the government party with little manoeuvring space. Pursuing a comprehensive constitutional amendment on the basis of the submitted civil constitution draft seems to be the most probable response. Through the modification of articles related to political parties in compliance with the “Venice Criteria,” the AKP would secure its political survival. Through the amendment of other articles in the direction of improving human rights protection and democracy, it would also help deter the accusation of amending the constitution simply to forestall the Court’s decision and forge a wider social support base.

Then the question comes to party vote arithmetics and majority rules. According to the Turkish Constitution, a constitutional amendment is adopted, if approved by a majority of two-thirds (367 votes). If approved by more than of sixty percent (330 MPs) and less than two-thirds of the vote, then the bill is brought to a referendum. As the AKP controls 339 seats, reaching a two-third majority would require cooperation with either of the two biggest opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) or the MHP. While the first seems impossible under current political conditions, the second also seems unlikely given the illiberal traits of the party. It is hard to imagine how the MHP would agree to a new civil constitution expanding individual freedoms and minority rights. Alongside being technically difficult, an AKP-MHP constitutional alliance could also prove impractical, as it could face an additional obstacle, again at the Constitutional Court level. It is probable that the CHP would file an appeal to the Court against such a constitutional amendment requesting it be declared null and void as “contravening the fundamental principles of the Republic.” This could bring the country to an institutional deadlock even more serious than the current one. For these reasons, pursuing a constitutional referendum appears to be the most popular option among party officials. Just like the CHP attempted to move Turkish politics to its favourite field, the Constitutional Court, the AKP would move it to its power base, the people. With its 339 seats, the AKP can theoretically bring about such a constitutional referendum. However, given the secret nature of vote and the narrow margin of nine votes above the sixty percent threshold, the support of the twenty MPs of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) might prove critical. While the AKP would hesitate to provoke the nationalist feelings of Turkish public opinion by publicly striking a deal with the DTP, its covert support would be more than welcome.
The indictment of the AKP has brought to the fore the striking institutional defects of the Turkish political system. In the words of the EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, it has revealed a “systemic error” in the Turkish constitutional framework. Rehn also added that political issues such as those referred to in the indictment are “debated in the parliament and decided through the ballot box, not in court rooms.” Seen from a domestic perspective, it is yet one more episode in the struggle between the Kemalist social elite which wants to maintain a tutelary role over Turkish politics and society and the peripheral political forces which have used democratisation, economic stability and the prospect of EU accession as powerful legitimation mechanisms both domestically and internationally. It remains to be seen whether the current political crisis could be turned into an opportunity to revive the long-dormant democratisation reform process.

(Published on Athens News on 18 April 2008)

Turkey’s Headscarf Question: In Search of a Liberal Consensus

2008-03-18T15:42:00.009Z

Turkey often prides itself to be a secular state, the only secular democracy in the Islamic world. Yet a closer look shows that the Turkish version of secularism does not mean state indifference towards religion. In a Jacobin vein, Ataturk perceived Islam as the main reason of Ottoman underdevelopment and attempted to bring it under firm state control. This picture changed in the 1980s, when the Evren junta reintroduced Islam into Turkey’s official ideology. The apparent aim was to offset the centrifugal influences of communism and Kurdish nationalism, by putting emphasis on Islam as the cement of Turkish society. Religion courses became again mandatory in state schools, while an ideology called “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” gained wide appeal. These developments were followed by the rise of an Islamist bourgeoisie. Usually having their origins in Anatolia, in cities such as Kayseri, Adana, Konya and Denizli, the Islamist urban elite benefited from Turkey’s economic liberalisation in the 1980s and became increasingly affluent, educated and assertive. This questioned the social predominance of the secularist elite of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

The headscarf became the symbol of a powerful social movement, as well as a Kulturkampf between the secularist and the conservative segments of Turkish society. It suggested an alternative vision of modernity for Turkey, which opposed the top-down secularist modernisation programme of Ataturk and suggested a version which was closer to Turkey’s Ottoman religious and cultural tradition. The increasing significance of Islam was reflected into politics with the meteoric rise of the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi). Relations between the Islamists and secularists became increasingly strained. The “soft coup” of 28 February 1997, in other words the ultimatum of the military against the coalition government led by the Refah leader Necmettin Erbakan, led to radical measures aiming to deter the alleged Islamist threat. These included imposing stricter limitations to the use of headscarf in the public sphere and banning it from universities. Yet only five years after this secularist backlash, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AKP) a party originating from Turkey’s Islamist political tradition won in 2002 the absolute majority of parliamentary seats.

In the meantime, a fundamental change had taken place in the ideological orientations of the party, which also affected its interpretation of the headscarf issue. While the AKP supported the lift of the headscarf ban, it was doing so on a liberal and not an Islamist argumentative basis. It advocated a reform of Turkish secularism, which would not be synonymous with firm control and favouritism of Sunni Islam but respect for religious freedom of all, Sunnis, Alevis, non-Muslims and atheists. This version of secularism would let Turkish women choose whether they would like to use the headscarf in public or not.

The headscarf issue was something the AKP government needed to resolve to appease its conservative and Islamist clientele. Europe seemed –like in so many other issues back in 2002– to offer the solution. The case of Leyla Sahin offered a rare opportunity. Sahin was a medicine student who was forbidden entry to the campus of Istanbul University because of her headscarf. Eventually she had to immigrate to Vienna where she completed her university studies. She did file, though, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, accusing Turkey of violation of Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects the freedoms of thought, conscience and religion. The Court failed to fulfil Sahin’s expectations. In its verdict, it did not support the ban, but did not find it contrary to Article 9, either, and rejected her appeal. This verdict disillusioned the AKP government which saw that European institutions were not willing to give a liberal solution to the headscarf problem on its behalf. It also fuelled Euroscepticism and thoughts that European institutions were applying double standards. In the eyes of many conservative Turks, Europe seemed to water down its liberal sensitivities when it came to issues related to Islamic religious freedom.

The headscarf issue became the crux of the grave political crisis which broke out in April 2007 and led to the triumphant AKP victory in the elections of 22 July 2007. The issue remained highly topical, as the AKP government put forward a constitutional amendment to ease the headscarf ban in universities. A wide social debate followed suit. The new Islamist or conservative middle classes felt empowered to claim what they have considered as a blunt violation of their religious freedom. On the other hand, a large segment of Turkey’s secularist middle class objected to the lifting of the headscarf ban. They saw in that measure the first step towards the Islamisation of Turkish society and the eventual subversion of Turkey’s republican regime. When the Parliament approved the amendment with a large majority on 7 February 2008, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-CHP), Turkey’s major opposition party, appealed to the Constitutional Court requesting that the amendment is called null and void, as it contravened the secularist essence of republican Turkey. Some university rectors followed that line, declaring their intention not to ease headscarf restrictions, regardless of the amendment.

Are these fears founded? Turkish secular liberals consider them to be exaggerated. They argue that increasing numbers of covered women on the Turkish streets are not evidence of Islamisation, but of the deep social changes Turkey has been experiencing as a result of its democratisation process. Millions of women who lived in the margin of Turkish society and were absent from the public sphere can now participate in social life, work, get education. What increased were not their numbers but rather their mobility and visibility. Besides, extensive surveys, such as those published by Carkoglu and Toprak in their 2006 study “Religion, Society and Politics in a Changing Turkey” suggested that the real percentage of covered women slightly fell over the last years - although it did remain a solid majority of about 60 percent. Others argue that keeping the ban on the headscarf does not resolve any problems related to women’s disenfranchisement. On the contrary, it turns it into a political symbol, fuels radical Islamism and may in practice produce the opposite results regarding women’s rights. Imposing restrictions to the use of headscarf in the public sphere means that many women miss the chance to attend university education, win income outside their homes, participate in social life; in other words, make the first important steps for their emancipation. Few women have the chance of Sahin who could escape the ban by immigrating to Western Europe.

What is really at stake in the headscarf dispute is the possibility of a mutually respectful coexistence of multiple lifestyles in Turkey. Can toleration of individual choice become the defining principle and the solution to the problem? Much of this depends on the stance of the AKP government. The government needs to signal the sincerity of its intentions with actions on issues opposing Sunni Islamic social domination. Recognising the existence and providing equal access to state benefits to Alevis and non-Muslim minorities would show that its commitment to liberalism is not instrumental but principled.

Dr Ioannis N Grigoriadis teaches at the Department of Turkish & Modern Asian Studies, University of Athens, and is also a Research Fellow at ELIAMEP

(Published on Athens News on 21 March 2008)

The Ergenekon Affair and the Turkish Orthodox Controversy

2008-02-15T14:08:00.005Z

A SERIES of arrests in the last weeks has brought to the fore the links of the Turkish deep state (derin devlet) with one of the most paradoxical constructions of Turkish nationalism, the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate.
Criminal investigation has been unravelling the traces of the Ergenekon gang, a product of the cooperation between the Turkish deep state and far-right extremists. Named after the mythical location of the birth of the Turkish nation, Ergenekon's membership consists of retired officers, policemen, rogue intellectuals and lawyers. What brought this group together was its members' determination to derail what they saw as Turkey’s course towards partition, in other words Turkey’s democratisation reform.
They developed links with organised crime with the aim to orchestrate the assassination of prominent liberal intellectuals and minority leaders. In their lists featured the names of Orhan Pamuk - Turkey’s first and only Nobel Prize laureate - Kurdish political leaders such as Ahmet Turk, Leyla Zana, Sebahat Tuncel and Osman Baydemir, as well as Fehmi Koru, columnist of the liberal Islamist daily Yeni Safak. Their aim was to wreak havoc in Turkish society through a series of assassinations and provoke one more military coup in 2009, bringing Turkey’s democratisation process and EU accession negotiations to a precipitous end.
Their underground activity was abruptly stopped on 23 January 2008, when 33 persons were arrested, including Veli Kucuk, a retired army general; Fikret Karadag, a retired army colonel; Sami Hostan, a key figure in the Susurluk affair, a car accident which shocked Turkey in 1996 by disclosing the links between the deep state and organized crime,; Guler Komurcu, a columnist of the Aksam daily; and Kemal Kerincsiz. The latter is a lawyer who repeatedly attracted publicity through his lawsuits against Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Orhan Pamuk, as well as the organisation of an academic conference on the Armenian question in 2005.
Kucuk, seen as the most prominent of all detainees, was thought to be the founder of JITEM (Jandarma Istihbarat ve Terorle Mucadele), a clandestine organisation of the Turkish Gendarmerie with the mission to instigate terrorist attacks that would then be attributed to other groups, Islamist or nationalist. Kucuk was suspected of involvement in the assassination of a senior judge in Turkey’s Supreme Administrative Court in May 2006, a bomb attack against the Istanbul premises of the secularist daily Cumhuriyet in the same month and even the assassination of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007. Evidence found during the police operation only reinforced these suspicions.
One of the detainees was Sevgi Erenerol, the press officer of the Independent Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate. To make things even more interesting, it was reported that the detainees were regularly meeting and even storing ammunition in Panagia Kafatiani, one of the most historic Orthodox churches of Istanbul. Panagia Kafatiani was the effective headquarters of the Ergenekon. To understand how this could happen, one needs to look into the history of one of the most bizarre by-products of Turkish nationalism: the Independent Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate.
In the years of the 1919-1922 Greek-Turkish war, Mustafa Kemal, the Republic of Turkey's first president, won an unconventional ally. A Greek Orthodox priest from Akdag Maden in East Central Anatolia, Pavlos Karahisaridis - later to become widely known as Papa-Eftim - joined Turkish nationalist forces in their struggle against Greece. His mission was to win the loyalty of the hundreds of thousands of Turkish-speaking Orthodox living throughout inner Anatolia, the Karamanlis, and create an Orthodox subdivision of the Turkish nation.
His efforts were intensified in autumn 1922 after the defeat of the Greek army with the creation of the “Independent Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate." The Mandatory Population Exchange Convention of 30 January 1923 dealt a heavy blow to Papa-Eftim’s project. The adoption of religion as the criterion of the mandatory population exchange meant that all his would-be Anatolian followers would be forcefully sent to Greece.
Papa-Eftim’s family was exempted from the exchange through a decision of the Turkish Council of Ministers. Papa-Eftim then settled in Istanbul and repeatedly attempted to occupy the Ecumenical Patriarchate and turn it into a Turkish national church. He also appealed to the Karamanlis component of Istanbul’s Greek minority, which was spared by the population exchange. These attempts met with failure, as the Orthodox flock of Istanbul - including the Karamanlis - remained indifferent to his appeals to join Turkish nationalism.
Yet, with the support of the republican Turkish state, Papa-Eftim stormed and occupied in time the four Orthodox churches of Karakoy (Galata), together with their very affluent pious foundations (vakf). He also took an impeccable Turkish name: Zeki Erenerol.
With virtually no flock other than his family, Papa-Eftim managed an enormous wealth. His Independent Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, unrecognised by all but the Turkish state, looked more like an affluent family business looting the property of a helpless minority than a church.
Papa-Eftim, who was awarded the Medal of Independence, the highest decoration of the Republic of Turkey, soon developed links with far-right extremists. When he died in 1968, he was succeeded by his sons and grandsons. Sevgi Erenerol is Papa-Eftim’s granddaughter and sister of the current "patriarch", Pasa Umit Erenerol. The ejection of Papa-Eftim’s family from the occupied Galata churches and the restoration of the rightful proprietors to the assets of the Galata pious foundations is one of the issues the Ecumenical Patriarchate has persistently raised.
Turkish liberals met the disclosure of the Ergenekon affair with relief and concern. What alarmed many was the evidence of an unprecedented alliance between the Turkish deep state and rogue far-right elements. As the liberal intellectual Murat Belge stated in an interview with the daily Taraf, the deep state used to see the far-right as a usable dirty tool but never founded an alliance with it.
Under the new conditions set by Turkey’s EU membership perspective, rogue elements of Turkish society seem to have felt threatened and joined forces. The police operations of January 23 dealt a heavy blow to them. The extermination of such organisations, however, will be anything but easy.
What remains to be seen is whether the involvement of the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate in such criminal activities incites Turkish authorities to restore the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Istanbul’s Greek minority to the churches and the assets of Greek pious foundations in Galata. After all, it is Papa-Eftim’s “church” and not the Ecumenical Patriarchate that seems to be involved in subversive activities against the Republic of Turkey.

(Published on Athens News on 15 February 2008)

AKP and FDI in Turkey: Investigating the consequences of a success story

2007-12-18T09:40:00.002Z

by Ioannis N. Grigoriadis and Antonis Kamaras

The policies of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government on issues like EU-Turkey relations, Turkey's Iraq policy and the visibility of Islam in the public sphere have been closely followed and documented by local and international media.

However, the impact of AK Party policies on Turkish political economy has received less public attention, despite its enormous significance. The AK Party has silently undermined the economic underpinnings of Kemalist statism by facilitating the exponential rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Turkey. By doing so the AK Party has changed beyond recognition the country's informal economic constitution, premised on a historically state-created and subsequently state-dependent business class of exclusively Turkish origin.

Under AK Party rule, Turkey has attracted approximately $50 billion in FDI, far more than since the republic's foundation by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923 up to 2002. Significantly, this has been welcomed by the country's corporate elite, who fill the ranks of Turkey's top employers association, the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD). The 2001 crisis separated the wheat from the chaff in the Turkish corporate scene. The less reputable conglomerates, whose success was solely based on incestuous relationships with the state, were driven to the wall. Turkish economic nationalism, of Kemalist vintage, lost its most vociferous corporate representatives.

The conglomerates left standing benefited from the post-2001 consolidation and were in position to expand partnerships with foreign multinationals due to their best-of-breed characteristics. They also recognized that FDI inflows were indispensable for the country's overall stability and, consequently, for their own future survival domestically and internationally. Moreover, they realized significant capital gains by the rise of valuations in the İstanbul Stock Exchange (İMKB) or by selling non-core operations to foreigners. Cumulatively these factors have led Turkey's corporate elite to effect a remarkably coherent shift in favor of an open, well-regulated Turkish market place; a market place capable both of welcoming FDI, even if that means increased competition in their home turf, and also of generating ever-increasing amounts of capital flows from international investors abroad to which they could have access to.

Rising FDI has also been instrumental in the AK Party's political dominance. By contributing to macroeconomic stability, FDI helped remove one of the key threats to its rule, a recurrence of the 2001 economic crisis which would give an opening to the Kemalist establishment. Equally important was the reinforcement of the AK Party's Western credentials. The vote of confidence, expressed in billions of dollars by such names as Vodafone, Fortis and BNP, speaks of an AK Party-led Turkey becoming increasingly integrated into the world economy and with Europe in particular, rather than one unmoored and drifting to an Islamic hinterland. And despite the setbacks in the country's EU accession process, FDI flows have maintained the confidence of international portfolio investors that Turkey is indeed a strong convergence story, just as much as other EU pre-accession countries, featuring an accessible market place, improved governance and rising incomes.

The alliance between the AK Party and Turkey's corporate elite in welcoming FDI has challenged the Kemalists' economic modernization monopoly. This classic expression of Atatürk that Turkey should always strive to "reach contemporary levels of civilization" has now become fully appropriated by the AK Party. Turkey has -- by dint of its economic growth and stability, its welcoming of foreign investors, as well as its own increasingly confident business class -- become stereotypical under the AK Party's rule as opposed to unorthodox, of what it is to be a modern and contemporary country. By the same token, the secularist establishment no longer has a positive economic agenda. Historically it was the determination of the Kemalist elite to replace the Ottoman minority bourgeoisie -- the Greeks, the Armenians and the Jews -- with a Turkish business class that underlay its success and wider societal acceptance. It has been a long time since this project has been exhausted. And the corporate names that this project has given birth to have themselves spelled out its demise by essentially saying that we are strong enough to accept foreigners in prominent positions in Turkey's economic life.

Where does that leave the Kemalist establishment? Devoid of a comprehensive agenda for the country's future, it has been reduced from the nation's vanguard to a guardian of its privileged position. Admittedly the establishment still attracts the support of a large part of the country's professional, secular middle class. Although they have been among the primary beneficiaries of the AK Party-led economic growth, they fear that the consolidation of AK Party rule could lead to irretrievable regression in Turkey's social life. Important as these pillars of support are, they cannot camouflage the absence of a realistic alternative. Barring a major international economic crisis, the AK Party will continue to monopolize with the vital support of the country's corporate elite and of foreign direct investors, the country's only viable option for the future.

* Ioannis N. Grigoriadis is a lecturer at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies at the University of Athens and a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Antonis Kamaras has worked as investment banker in İstanbul for the past three years and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. This article is based on a study which will appear in the upcoming issue of the academic journal Middle Eastern Studies.

(Published on Today's Zaman on 17 December 2007)

Turkey: From Domestic Crisis to Regional Challenge

2007-12-12T09:03:00.001Z

The spectacular victory of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the 22 July 2007 parliamentary elections contained a set of clear political messages. The Turkish people rewarded the AKP for the economic growth and political stability which its government had secured. Besides, it clearly condemned military interventions into politics. The grave political crisis which erupted after the military’s e-memorandum of 27 April 2007 and the Constitutional Court’s decision of 1 May 2007 turned out to work to the electoral benefit of the AKP. The dramatic –and highly unusual for a single-government ruling party- increase of the AKP electoral strength should be primarily be attributed to popular reaction against the military intervention. Despite the high profile which the Turkish military has enjoyed in Turkish public opinion and the –often exaggerated– concern of many secular Turks about the potential Islamization of Turkish society under the AKP, this was not translated into support or even toleration for their blunt intervention. The uneventful election of Abdullah Gül to the Presidential office on 28 August 2007 comprised the culmination of AKP hegemony in Turkish politics and a turning point in republican Turkish politics. The third message was addressed to Turkey’s traditional political parties. Those parties whose electoral strength had plummeted in the 2004 elections again performed very poorly. The CHP failed to provide a credible political alternative to the AKP and was caught in a nationalistic, populist rhetoric which repelled many of its potential voters. The MHP recovered its position in the Parliament capitalizing on the general rise of nationalism without though approaching its 1999 percentage, while parties like the DYP and the ANAP got results which put their very existence into question. The public’s rejectionist stance pointed at the serious structural deficiencies of the Turkish political party system. Finally, Turkey’s Kurds sent a powerful message to the pro-Kurdish political movement in Turkey. By increasing their support for the AKP, they manifested that they shared AKP’s agenda for economic development, minority rights reform and Turkey’s EU membership and objected to political extremism.

However Turkey’s post-election political climate has become seriously aggravated under the influence of developments in the field of foreign and security policy. The deep political crisis in Iraq has allowed for the resurgence of the PKK security threat and a serious deterioration of US-Turkey relations, as the deadliest PKK attacks for more than ten years hit Turkey. Moreover, the already strained US-Turkey relations faced the possibility of an all-time low, when the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress approved on 10 October a declaration on the recognition of the Armenian genocide and it seemed probable that the Congress itself would follow suit. Although the government has wisely avoided inflammatory rhetoric and disproportionate reactions, the threat of Turkey’s gradual shift towards isolationism and rampant anti-Western nationalism cannot be precluded. It is imperative that the United States act promptly to eliminate the PKK security threat emanating from Iraq. The European Union whose role in triggering the reform since 1999 is hard to overstate, should also continue to offer a balanced set of reform incentives and a credible membership perspective. Turkey needs to maintain a moderate stance against the PKK provocation and accelerate reform in a broad range of issues –including minority rights– in view of its EU accession negotiations. The European Union should express its support for Turkey’s struggle against the PKK, clearly signal that the decision for Turkey’s eligibility for EU membership is final, as well as that Turkey’s accession negotiations will be conducted on a fair basis. Western support is critical for controlling and resolving the current crisis.

* Dr. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis is a Lecturer at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies, University of Athens and a Research Fellow at ELIAMEP.

(Published on The Bridge Magazine on 11 December 2007)

Examining Greece and Turkey's past

2007-10-16T21:33:00.001+01:00

ALTHOUGH Greek-Turkish relations have lionised the news of the two states for years, there are very few books on the subject in English. So, Thanos M Veremis' Greeks and Turks in War and Peace is a welcome addition to the sparse bibliography and aspires to cover in condensed form the entire period from the fall of Constantinople to the institution of the Ottomans, up until 2007.

The author describes the institution of the Ottoman state and the window of opportunity that this opened to the non-Muslim populations, but he does not treat the Greek War of Independence in any detail. As interstate relations proceeded in the 19th century, so does the narrative widen. The Ottoman reforms known as the "Tanzimat" are certainly given a fair hearing in this work.

The chapter on the strategic quest of the "Rum millet" in the Ottoman Empire questions the conventional occidental wisdom, according to which Greeks - in and out of the kingdom - totally identified with the irredentism (Megali idea) of the Greek state. Veremis argues convincingly that there existed a variety of views and positions among the "Rum" in anticipation of the empire's disintegration.

Many Ottoman-Greek businessmen and intellectuals of the 20th century's first decade were in close contact with Ottoman circles aspiring to transform an authoritarian regime into a federal, constitutional monarchy in which religious and ethnic communities would enjoy equality of rights. Such a state of affairs would guarantee the welfare of the Greeks, already enjoying significant freedoms following the Tanzimat reforms. Ion Dragoumis and Athanassios Souliotis-Nikolaidis expounded similar views in the Hellenic kingdom. The Young Turk Revolt of 1908 temporarily created the illusion of a liberal movement that would save the decaying empire.

The Balkan Wars and the First World War proved that the decline of the Ottoman state was permanent and its segmentation into nation-states inevitable. This, however, also spelled disaster for the Ottoman-Greeks who were swept away along with other ethnic communities by the nationalist gales.

The Lausanne Treaty of 1923 signified the end of the long cohabitation between Turks and Greeks and the creation of two ethnically based nation-states. The relationship of the two occupies the larger part of this book. A common Italian and, later, Soviet threat contributed to the first Greek-Turkish detente in 1930.

The chapter on the history of Cyprus from 1878-1948 sheds light on the subsequent clash between the Greek-Cypriots and their British overlords, and then between the two indigenous communities of the island. The protracted Cyprus crises, which peaked during the attempt against Cyprus President and Archbishop Makarios' life and the Turkish invasion of July 1974, also exacerbated the Aegean problems between Greece and Turkey. The continental shelf, the militarisation of the islands, the air space issue, etc are examined in detail. The detente between the two states since 1999 and Turkey's prospect in the EU constitute a source of optimism on the future of bilateral relations.

It is, of course, impossible to exhaust 553 years of history in 287 pages, but this handsome edition offers an honest attempt in excellent English. The lay reader and young diplomats will have much to gain by taking it into consideration.

* Greeks and Turks in War and Peace (Athens News, 2007, 287pp) is available at News Stand, Eleftheroudakis, Papasotiriou, Compendium, Ellinika Grammata and www.amazon.co.uk for 17 euros. Or order directly from the Athens News by sending an email to mangel@dolnet.gr or phone 210-333-3735

* Ioannis Grigoriadis is a professor at Isik University in Istanbul, Turkey

(Published on Athens News on 5 October 2007. The original piece was written in Greek and translated by Athens News staff)

Is Moderate Political Islam the Key for Democratisation in the Middle East?

2007-10-14T07:26:00.001+01:00

Although the number of democratic states has risen considerably in recent years, democracy has by no means dominated the sphere of world politics. This point is particularly valid in the Middle East. This region has remained the least affected by the democratisation waves, which have reshaped world politics since the end of the Second World War. The Middle East has become a bulwark of authoritarianism, conflict and instability and a breeding ground for terrorism. The recent US military adventure in Iraq, which claimed to become the harbinger of democratisation in the region, only made things even worse. Under these adverse circumstances, the question of how to promote democratic reform in the region remains imperative.

The European Union has been among the global actors engaged in the promotion of democratisation in the Middle East. Under the umbrella of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), democratisation has become one of the primary strategic objectives of the Union. Yet despite all good intentions, what is missing is robust engagement with domestic political actors willing to support the reform process. A recent volume edited by Muriel Asseburg (Moderate Islamisten als Reformakteure: Rahmenbedingungen und Programmatischer Wandel (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2007)) addresses the role of a potential key reform actor in the region. Moderate Islamic political parties have emerged powerful in several Middle Eastern states and attracted global attention, due to their reformist political agenda. Asseburg’s edited volume focuses on the cases of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt and the Palestinian Territories. It examines the priorities of moderate Islamic parties and the formation of their reform agenda and explores how these parties are transformed when they gain stakes in the political process, either through participation in the parliament or through government rule. It also scrutinises the question whether the integration of Islamists contributes to the stabilisation of authoritarianism or paves the ground for a more pluralistic, democratic political system.

In the volume, it is argued that, while moderate Islamic parties usually adopt conservative positions in social issues, they generally support the reform of the political system in the direction of democratisation. Fight against corruption, improvement of political participation, establishment or consolidation of the rule of law, protection of fundamental human rights are some of the issues which have formed the core political agenda of several moderate Islamic parties. The increasing influence of liberal democratic political values on the political programs of these parties has been an encouraging domestic political signal, regarding the prospects of democratisation. The case of Turkey is characteristic in that respect. The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP), a moderate Islamic party which came to power in November 2002, has linked its name with the most profound democratisation reform programme since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1946. This added to the legitimacy of Turkish political Islam and stabilised the rule of the AKP government. The fact that a party from the periphery of Turkish society with Islamic political origins turned out –in view of Turkey’s prospective EU membership– to contribute to Turkey’s democratisation more than the Kemalist guardian elites of Turkey’s Western orientation is both a historical irony and evidence of the transformative ability of European political institutions.

The motives of these parties are often doubted by some political analysts. They argue that the commitment of these parties to liberal democratic principles may be thin and of purely instrumentalist nature. In other words, they may use the rules of the democratic game to ascend to power, but there is no guarantee that they will continue to play by them when they are established. The fear that the hidden Islamist agenda of moderate Islamic parties may emerge, as soon as they gain control of their respective states, haunts many European political actors and local secular liberal groups. Although these fears may not be fully unrealistic, the experience of recent years has shown that Islamic political parties, which have entered the democratic political game by participating in the parliament or the government, have rather moderated their political agenda and adopted more circumspect positions on the relation between Islam and the state than attempted to precipitate an Islamist takeover. In any case, a process of transition from authoritarianism to democracy cannot be risk-free, many threats may lurk on the way, and Islamism is just one among them. Adopting such views precludes the possibility that these parties may be influenced by liberal democratic values and form a synthesis similar to the Christian-democratic synthesis, which has become an enduring theme of numerous Western European political systems.

The volume comes up with a set of recommendations for the improvement of EU democratisation promotion policies in the Middle East. The European Union should aim at the improvement of legal and political institutions, which set the framework for the participation of Islamic and non-Islamic actors in the political process. The lifting of state of emergency, the improvement of legislation pertaining to fundamental human rights and political rights are essential for the promotion of domestic political pluralism. Assisting in the organisation of free and fair elections and cooperating with democratically elected governments is also of major significance. Finally, European institutions are called upon to establish links with the civil society of Middle Eastern states. Even though the majority of civil society organisations may be of Islamist political orientation, this should not deter European engagement. The aim of this would be the establishment of a dialogue between domestic Islamist and secular actors and European political institutions. Such initiatives could contribute to the elimination of stereotypes and to the better understanding and cooperation of all parties. It is impossible to achieve political liberalisation and democratic consolidation without engaging the political forces, which have the biggest popular support and often comprise the only alternative form of political organisation to authoritarian regimes. The example of Turkey’s AKP can serve as useful guideline in engaging other Islamic political movements. European institutions need to devise the appropriate for each state “sticks and carrots” which will facilitate a re-conceptualisation of Islamic political identity on liberal democratic lines and the transformation of democratisation from an elite issue to a cause that the masses can endorse. Imbuing political Islam with liberal democratic norms is a difficult but not chimerical target for European political institutions. Asseburg’s edited volume provides useful advice in that direction.
(Published in the Bridge, Issue 5, April 2007)