![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/ERDOGAN3.jpg\" "\\"ERDOGAN3\\"")
\nBy Spengler<\/p>\n
\nBy Spengler<\/p>\n
The American commentariat is shocked, shocked <\/em>, to discover that Turkey \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thas abandoned the Western alliance for an adventurous bid to become the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tdominant Muslim power in the Middle East. Tom Friedman of the New York Times \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tsuggested on June 15 that “President [Barack] Obama should invite him for a \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tweekend at Camp David to clear the air before US-Turkey relations get where \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthey\u2019re going – over a cliff.” Friedman blames the European Community for \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\trejecting Turkey’s membership bid which, he says, was a “key factor prompting \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurkey to move closer to Iran and the Arab world”.<\/p>\n But it is not quite so simple. Friedman and the conventional wisdom are wrong, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tas usual. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is behaving dreadfully, to the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpoint that a group of retired senior Turkish diplomats denounced him for \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t“neo-Ottomanism”. But Turkey has not moved closer to Iran, except in tactical diplomatic terms. The problem is more subtle: America’s blunders in Iraq gave \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIran the chance to become a regional hegemon, and Turkey must vie with Iran for \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthis role as a matter of self-preservation.<\/p>\n In a recent essay [1], I portrayed the Mavi Marmara<\/em> incident in which \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tnine Turks were killed by Israeli commandos onboard one of the six boats \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tattempting to breach the blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, as a Turkish \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tfarce. It should be obvious to anyone with access to YouTube that Erdogan \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tconducted an exercise in guerilla theater, which qualifies as a comedy of sorts \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tunless you were one of the dead Turks on the boat. What has transpired over the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpast eight years, though, is a tragedy.<\/p>\n Turkey is held together by weak glue. It never was a nation-state, despite \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tfounding father Kemal Ataturk’s ferocious efforts to make it appear to be one. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKurds comprise somewhere between six million and 20 million (the Kurdish \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tnationalists’ claim) of Turkey’s population, and Kurdish separatism poses a \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcontinuing threat to Turkey’s national integrity.<\/p>\n For the usual corrupt and foolish reasons, world opinion has focused on the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tnine dead Turks on the flotilla; of far greater consequence are the several \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tdozen Turkish soldiers who died at the hands of Kurdish guerillas in the past \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttwo weeks. More important still are the 2,000 or so Turkic people who died in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKyrgyzstan in the past weeks. Much less distinguishes a failed state like \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKyrgyzstan from an apparently successful state like Turkey than Westerners \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthink.<\/p>\n America is about to leave Iraq; Iraq is likely to break up; and if an \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tindependent Kurdish state emerges from the breakup it will become a magnet for \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKurdish separatists within Turkey. Erdogan has 1,500 Kurds under arrest, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tincluding the mayors of some Kurdish towns.<\/p>\n Ataturk’s post-war secularism defined “Turkishness” as a national identity that \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thad never before existed. “Turkishness” is something of a blood pudding. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOttoman identity had nothing to do with nationality in the Western sense. It \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twas religious and ethnic. A fifth of the population of Anatolia before World \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWar I was Christian, mainly Armenian and Greek; virtually all were expelled or \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tmurdered. The Turks killed more than a million-and-a-half Armenians, employing \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKurdish militia to do most of the actual dirty work (that is why what is now \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t“Turkish Kurdistan” was until 1916 “Western Armenia”. The modern Turkish state \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twas born in a bloodbath, and founded on massive population shifts. The enormous \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKurdish minority got the southeast as a consolation prize but still longs for \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tits own language, culture and eventual national state.<\/p>\n Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a monster, but for the Turks a useful monster. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe 1988 Anfal campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq killed up to 180,000 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tof them, and the crackdown on the Kurds after the 1991 First Gulf War killed as \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tmany as 100,000. The Turks, by contrast, killed perhaps 20,000 to 40,000 Kurds \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tduring the 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n Turkey in 2003 refused America permission to open a northern front against \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSaddam out of fear that the war would destroy Turkey’s ability to control its \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\trestive border. The destruction of the Iraqi state, moreover, created a de \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tfacto independent Kurdish entity on Turkey’s border, the last thing Ankara \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twanted. If America had simply installed a new strongman and left, Turkey would \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thave been relieved. But America’s commitment to “nation-building” and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t“democracy” in Iraq, to Ankara’s way of thinking, meant that Iraq inevitably \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twould break up; the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq would become a breakaway \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tstate; and Iran’s power would grow at the expense of Turkey.<\/p>\n Turkey has many reasons to fear Iran, whose possible nuclear ambitions make it \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ta prospective spoiler in the region. But there is another vital issue. Among \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthe fault lines that run through the modern Turkish state is a religious \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tdivide. Iran exercises influence through the Alevi minority in Turkey, a \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\theretical Muslim sect closer in some ways to Shi’ite than Sunni Islam. No \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\taccurate census of the Alevi exists; they may comprise between a fifth and a \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tquarter of of Turkey’s population. The late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKhomeini, declared the Alevi to be part of Shi’ite Islam in the 1970s, and they \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thave been subjected to occasional violence by Sunni Turks.<\/p>\n The Iraq war undermined the position of the Kemalist military, which had \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tbloodied its hands for decades in counter-insurgency operations against the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKurds. Erdogan’s Islamists argued that the weak glue of secular Turkish \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tidentity no longer could hold Turkey together, and proposed instead to win the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKurds over through Islamic solidarity. The Kurds are quite traditional Muslims; \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tunlike the Turkish Sunnis, the provincial Kurds of southeastern Turkey and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tnorthern Iraq often practice female circumcision.<\/p>\n After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the George W Bush administration saw no reason \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tto back the Turkish generals who had let them down in Iraq, and instead threw \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttheir backing to the Islamists, on the theory that Erdogan represented a sort \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tof “moderate Islam” that would provide an example to other prospective \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tdemocratic Muslim regimes. When Erdogan won parliamentary elections in 2003, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBush invited him to the White House before he took office, a gesture that \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpersuaded most Turks that America had jettisoned its erstwhile secular allies, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tas I wrote in 2007. [2]<\/p>\n The Bush State Department stuck to the story of “moderate Islam” in Turkey even \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twhile Erdogan used outlandishly extra-legal methods to dismantle the secular \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\testablishment, as I wrote in 2008. [3] In fairness to the State Department, the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tidea that Turkey was home to a specially moderate strain of Islam was not the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tinvention of American foreign policy analysts but of the Islam specialists of \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthe Jesuit order. Father Christian Troll, a German Islamologist who advises \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPope Benedict XVI, and his student Father Felix Koerner popularized the notion \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tof a less virulent strain of Turkish Islam. I reviewed Koerner’s book on \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurkish Islam in 2008. [4]<\/p>\n One cannot blame the Bush administration (nor the Jesuit Islamologists) for the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tperson Erdogan has become. By the turn of the millennium, Kemalist secularism \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twas a grotesque relic of 1930s European nationalism. Turkey’s leading novelist, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOrhan Pamuk, evoked the spiritual misery of secularist Turkey and the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tattractions of radical Islam in his Nobel-prize-winning novel Snow<\/em>, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twhich I reviewed in this space in 2004. [5]<\/p>\n To the extent that there was some hope of keeping Turkey in the Western camp, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthough, the Bush administration’s nation-building blunders in Iraq and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcredulous admiration of “moderate Islam” in Ankara destroyed it.<\/p>\n Political Islam as a replacement for Kemalist nationalism is the glue that will \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thold Turkey together, in Erdogan’s view. It does not seem to be doing a good \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tjob. Islamic solidarity was supposed to persuade the Kurds to behave \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthemselves, along with a few nods in the direction of the use of the Kurdish \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tlanguage, which the Kemalists tried to suppress. The killing of 11 Turkish \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tsoldiers in raids staged from Iraq and the bombing of a military bus in Ankara \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tshow that Kurdish resistance has not diminished. Erdogan, previously so \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tconcerned about human rights and the Biblical injunction against killing, raged \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthat the Kurdish rebels will “drown in their own blood”.<\/p>\n Erdogan’s political Islam failed to stabilize Turkey. It will contribute to \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tinstability in the region to an extent that is difficult to foresee. Iran now \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thas the more reason to assert its influence in Iraq, perhaps by encouraging the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tbreakup of the country and the emergence of a Kurdish state that might threaten \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurkey.<\/p>\n Turkey, in turn, has all the more reason to agitate among the Turkish-speaking, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tor Azeri, quarter of Iran’s population. Iran will use its influence among \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurkish Alevis to challenge the Turkish Sunni establishment; Iran will \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tencourage Turkish separatism. Meanwhile Erdogan’s alliance of opportunity with \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHamas undercuts the American-allied Sunni Arab states, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tArabia, not to mention Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority.<\/p>\n With the United States in full strategic withdrawal, a Thirty Years War in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twestern and central Asia seems all the more likely.<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/em> Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, senior editor at First Things magazine <\/em> (www.firstthings.com).<\/div>\n <\/p>\n By Spengler The American commentariat is shocked, shocked , to discover that Turkey has abandoned the Western alliance for an adventurous bid to become the dominant Muslim power in the Middle East. Tom Friedman of the New York Times suggested on June 15 that “President [Barack] Obama should invite him for a weekend at Camp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":20287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[78,120,204,1153],"class_list":["post-20286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-ergenekon","tag-gulen","tag-nagorno-karabakh","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20286","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=20286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\nIt was not the European Community, but rather the George W Bush administration, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthat pulled the rug out from under Turkey’s secularists and built up Erdogan as \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ta paragon of “moderate Islam”. America’s feckless nation-building policy in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIraq helped Turkey over the edge into Islamism.<\/p>\n
\n1. Fethullah \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGulen’s cave of wonders Asia Times Online, June 9, 2010.
\n2. Why does Turkey \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thate America? Asia Times Online, October 23, 2007.
\n3. Turkey in the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthroes of Islamic revolution? Asia Times Online, July 22, 2008.
\n4. Tin-opener \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttheology from Turkey Asia Times Online, June 3, 2008.
\n5. In defense of \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurkish cigarettes Asia Times Online, August 24, 2004.<\/p>\n__._,_.___<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"