Corruption allegations in US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks have generated some hot rhetoric from Turkey\u2019s leaders. But with no genuine bombshell contained in dispatches released so far, it may simply be business as usual in Turkish politics.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at a municipal ceremony in Ankara on December 1, vowed to file a lawsuit connected with an allegation contained in one US cable in 2004. The cable asserted that he had opened eight Swiss bank accounts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have discussed these issues with the US administration,\u201d Erdogan said. \u201cThey have extended their apologies, but it\u2019s not enough. They have to take all necessary measures against these diplomats.\u201d<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen whether Erdogan follows through on his threat to sue for what he claims is slander. But his harsh stance is an indication of how — with a general election only six months away — corruption claims, character snipes, policy condemnations, and plain insults contained in the leaked dispatches may feed into Turkey\u2019s fractious domestic politics in ways that could damage relations with Washington.<\/p>\n
According to Henri Barkey of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, Erdogan\u2019s harsh statement was likely intended to preempt any damage the cables might cause. \u201cThe United States is very unpopular in Turkey and it is unlikely that assertions in US cables will have much resonance,\u201d he told Eurasianet.org. \u201cBut Erdogan has to go on the offensive, he has no choice in order to contain it just in case. The best defense is offense obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n
The secret bank accounts claim is not the only potentially damaging allegation made in the 30 or so Turkey-related cables brought to light by WikiLeaks so far. Other claims — all denied by those involved — include an allegation that Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul described current Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as \u2018exceptionally dangerous\u2019 in a secret conservation with US ambassador Eric Edelman in 2004; Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek allegedly urged foreign investors to sell stock in Turkey\u2019s Dogan Media Group, just as the government became embroiled in a tax battle with the corporation; and MKEK, Turkey\u2019s state run arms manufacturer, may have been negotiating a weapons deal with Iran that would violate UN sanctions, as alleged in a cable signed off by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February this year.<\/p>\n
Analysts in Istanbul and Ankara believe it is too soon to predict what impact, if any, the allegations in the cables will have on Turkish domestic politics, which is so polarized that opinions are hard to shift even in the face of the most dramatic revelations. \u201cThe ones that have come out so far aren\u2019t enough to turn the tables in Turkey,\u201d Cengiz Candar, a columnist for the daily Radikal, told Eurasianet.org.<\/p>\n
In laying bare the hidden tensions and mistrust between Washington and Ankara, the Wikileaks cables may even benefit the AKP by revealing its independence from the United States. \u201cIf they show the AKP is not a puppet of America, they will help the AKP,\u201d Hurriyet Daily News columnist Yusuf Kanli told Eurasianet.org. \u201cIn terms of anti-Americanism, they will try to play it down in their foreign policy approaches, but domestically they will play it up of course.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cables may have more serious implications in that they reveal Turkey\u2019s isolated stance towards Iran. In one dispatch from 2009, Davutoglu offered a spirited defense of Ankara\u2019s foreign policy in the Middle East to senior US diplomat Philip Gordon, claiming it offered a \u2018third way\u2019 to that of Iran and Saudi Arabia, meaning that it could \u2018limit Iranian influence in the region.\u2019 But other cables revealed the private alarm of most Middle Eastern governments at the prospect of a nuclear Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will see how these leaked documents will influence the government’s Middle East policies,\u201d commented Semih Idiz in the daily Milliyet newspaper. \u201cBut we do now plainly see that Turkey is isolated not only in the West when it comes to the subjects of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, but also amongst Middle Eastern regimes. It does not seem very realistic to go on as before and to pretend that nothing has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
With only a fraction of the nearly 8,000 leaked cables to date originating from Turkey in the public domain, it is always possible that more damaging revelations may turn up. As it is, the Islamic-oriented press in Turkey has lots of fodder. In cables that have already surfaced, Edelman, the neo-conservative former American ambassador, has described Islam in Turkey as \u201cstultified, riddled with hypocrisy, ignorant, and intolerant of other religions\u2019 presence in Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Jeffrey — a more incisive and sympathetic US envoy \u2013 adopted a more nuanced tone in a dispatch on Turkey\u2019s perceived drift away from the American sphere: \u201cDoes all this mean that the country is becoming more focused on the Islamist world and its Muslim tradition in its foreign policy? Absolutely. Does it mean that it is \u2018abandoning\u2019 or wants to abandon its traditional Western orientation and willingness to cooperate with us? Absolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day we will have to live with a Turkey whose population is propelling much of what we see,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis calls for a more issue-by-issue approach, and recognition that Turkey will often go its own way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor’s note:\u00a0 Alexander Christie-Miller is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, where he writes for the Times.<\/p>\n
via Turkey: Will WikiLeaks Cables Upset Status Quo in Ankara? | EurasiaNet.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Corruption allegations in US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks have generated some hot rhetoric from Turkey\u2019s leaders. But with no genuine bombshell contained in dispatches released so far, it may simply be business as usual in Turkish politics. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at a municipal ceremony in Ankara on December 1, vowed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":29220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4540],"class_list":["post-27792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27792","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=27792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}