{"id":20045,"date":"2010-06-24T11:42:54","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T09:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=20045"},"modified":"2014-01-05T19:47:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T17:47:05","slug":"erdogan-charts-a-new-course-to-the-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/06\/24\/erdogan-charts-a-new-course-to-the-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan charts a new course to the east"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"file:\/\/\/C:\/DOCUME%7E1\/KAYABU%7E1\/LOCALS%7E1\/Temp\/moz-screenshot.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<h1>DEBORCHGRAVE: Talking Turkey<\/h1>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<div>\n<p>By Arnaud  de Borchgrave<\/p>\n<p>7:25 p.m., \t\t\t\t\t Wednesday, June 23, 2010<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>Turkish  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the lawmakers of his  Islamic-rooted party at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey, Tuesday. Dec.  1, 2009. Turkey said late Wednesday that Turkish soldiers in Afghanistan  will not be part of any combat operation. Turkey says it is reviewing  whether to increase its commitment to NATO&#8217;s mission in Afghanistan.  Erdogan will travel to Washington for a Monday meeting with President  Barack Obama, who is seeking additional troops from NATO allies in  Afghanistan. (AP Photo\/Burhan Ozbilici)<\/div>\n<div><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttweetmeme_style = 'compact';\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttweetmeme_source = 'washtimes';\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly';\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tservice_api = 'R_a6895e4a6af44aa36a49080184db916a';\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div><script src=\"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/ds\/badge2.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\/news\/2010\/jun\/23\/talking-turkey-43683123\/\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Geopolitical  tectonic plates began grinding menacingly five years ago when Turkey  embarked on negotiations for membership in the European Union. But it  didn&#8217;t take long for Ankara to conclude that the EU was playacting.  There was little appetite for adding 70 million Turkish Muslims (80  million by the end of a projected 10-year negotiation) to EU&#8217;s 20  million Muslims (Pakistani Brits, North African French, Turkish  Germans). Church attendance in Europe is in steep decline while  thousands of mosques are filled to overflowing. It was time for Turkey  to move on.<\/p>\n<p>In 2003, Turkey already had demonstrated that its  close alliance with the United States in particular and the NATO  alliance in general could not be taken for granted. As the U.S. 4th  Infantry Division was about to disembark in Turkey and transit to Iraq  to be part of a pincer movement on Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime, Ankara said  no, and the pincer collapsed. Adding much expense and replanning, the  4th ID was rerouted around the Arabian Peninsula to Kuwait. Then-Deputy  Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a preparatory conference with  Turkish leaders, had misread the signals.<\/p>\n<p>Turkish leaders, like  many others around the world, had a hard time understanding the motives  behind President George W. Bush&#8217;s decision to invade Iraq. Saddam,  stripped of diplomatic gobbledygook, was the West&#8217;s best defense against  the Iran of the mullahs. They had fought an eight-year war (1980-1988)  to a Mexican standoff that had cost one million casualties on both  sides.<\/p>\n<p>In 1949, Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize  Israel. A close military alliance was part of the relationship. The  Israeli air force could use Turkish airspace for training. It also was  valuable space for an Israeli attack on Iran&#8217;s nuclear  installations.<\/p>\n<p>But  all that changed overnight. In short order, Israel and Turkey went from  being close friends to antagonists heading for the brink of enmity. The  detonator was the Israeli invasion of Gaza in January 2009, which  killed 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. The break in Turkish-Israeli  relations came when Israeli commandos boarded a flotilla of Turkish  vessels bound for Gaza with relief supplies. Israel branded the  civilians aboard as activists in the Islamic group Insani Yardim Vakfi  (IHH), on par with al Qaeda. But IHH is also a key supporter of Prime  Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan&#8217;s ruling party.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Erdogan&#8217;s warm  embrace of Iran&#8217;s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Istanbul as &#8220;a dear friend&#8221; and  his opposition to further sanctions against Iran (voted June 9 by the  U.N. Security Council) mark Turkey&#8217;s new &#8220;BlackBerry diplomacy,&#8221; a break  with conventional diplomacy &#8211; when major shifts take place in real time  above the heads of foreign-policy officials and the diplomats with whom  they normally deal.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Erdogan declines to call Hamas a  terrorist organization, and he no longer sees Turkey&#8217;s role in NATO as a  priority. And to make sure there was no possibility of the country&#8217;s  military staging what might have been a fifth coup since 1960 to oust a  civilian government, Mr. Erdogan ordered the arrest of 52 military  commanders in February. Code-named Operation Sledgehammer, the purported  plan was to blow up mosques and museums as a signal for the military to  overthrow the Islamic-oriented government.<\/p>\n<p>Government denials  notwithstanding, prosecutors have jailed about 400 people, including  soldiers, academics, politicians and journalists. This explains why no  one is willing to criticize Mr. Erdogan for the record.<\/p>\n<p>Ever since  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an army officer in World War I, abolished the  Ottoman Empire&#8217;s caliphate in 1924, introduced the Roman alphabet to  replace Arabic script, gave women the vote and permission to dress in  Western clothes, and created modern Turkey, the military have considered  themselves guardians of the secular state against Islamist  encroachment.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line, as explained off the record by  politicians, academics and journalists in Istanbul this week, is that  Mr. Erdogan and his cronies have convinced themselves this will not be  America&#8217;s century as was the 20th, that the geopolitical balance of  forces is shifting east, and that it is Turkey&#8217;s role to assume a  leadership position in the Middle East that would be designed to bridge  the gap between Sunni and Shia Islam. (Turkey is 80 percent Sunni.)<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Erdogan also believes he can persuade Iran to suspend its secret  nuclear-weapons program just shy of making a bomb or missile warhead.  Instead, Iran would follow the examples of Japan and Brazil, countries  that have the wherewithal to produce such a weapon in six months.<\/p>\n<p>Mr.  Erdogan, like most world leaders, had high hopes for President Obama.  But now they see he is unable to master a dysfunctional system of  government; that he may lose one or even both houses of Congress in  November; and that Afghanistan appears to be headed for another debacle  comparable to Vietnam circa 1975 (when Congress stripped South Vietnam  of military aid, in effect inviting North Vietnam to administer the coup  de grace). Turkey still maintains 1,750 soldiers in Afghanistan, albeit  in a noncombat role to train Afghan soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>One cynical Turkish  ex-foreign minister, speculating about the Afghan war, confided, &#8220;The  way things are going, your Congress will have made Afghanistan secure  for China to make a deal with a new Taliban regime to exploit the $3  trillion worth of minerals verified by U.S. intelligence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Turkish  officials who see the global balance of power trending eastward also  can see over the horizon a great Turkic nation that spans most of  Central Asia. For them, this is a more exciting vista than a slow NATO  retreat from Afghanistan. Or a European Union, where Turkey&#8217;s nemesis,  Greece, the sick man of Europe, almost collapsed the painfully erected  House of Europe.<\/p>\n<p><em>Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor-at-large of  The Washington Times and of United Press International.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Copyright 2010 The  Washington Times,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DEBORCHGRAVE: Talking Turkey By Arnaud de Borchgrave 7:25 p.m., Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the lawmakers of his Islamic-rooted party at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey, Tuesday. Dec. 1, 2009. Turkey said late Wednesday that Turkish soldiers in Afghanistan will not be part of any combat operation. Turkey says [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":76547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[120,1153,1018],"class_list":["post-20045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-gulen","tag-politics","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}