APPENDIX 15
Memorandum from Malcolm Cooper
FOREIGN POLICY
ISSUES REGARDING
TURKEY
1. Turkey occupies a singular position in
the international arena. On the home front, it is one of the few
reasonably well-developed economies to fail to break free from
the growth/inflation spiral. Although democracy is fairly well-established,
four governments were removed in the second half of the 20th century
by various forms of military action, with at least the implicit
support of most of the electorate. On the international front,
it is one of the few democracies in the world still involved in
a genuinely antagonistic confrontation with a neighbouring democracy
(Greece). It appears to switch erratically from the pursuit of
European integration to attempts to become a regional Asian power.
Finally, it is the only Muslim country to initiate something resembling
a military understanding with Israel, and it is the only Muslim
country that has actively sought a role in the Western military
response to the current Islamic challenge.
2. Any foreign policy approach to Turkey
must be based on an understanding of these apparent paradoxes.
To achieve this it is necessary first to grasp the key elements
of Turkey's geographical and ethnic/religious position. It is
then important to comprehend the historical context in which the
modern Turkish republic was created and the manner in which the
past still conditions politics and society. Following on from
this, one can then address the key issues likely to affect relations
with the country or to colour public opinion of Turkey within
Britain itself.
3. Geographically, Turkey is very much a
frontier state, with the bulk of its territory in Asia, but a
large part of its population on the eastern edge of Europe and
in increasingly close contact with the West. Although there has
been a large migration towards the cities of western Turkey, a
large part of the population is ethnically and culturally Asian.
European Turkey is directly engaged with the West, which provides
not only the most important trading partners, but also the workplace
for a large expatriate Turkish labour force and the competitors,
customers and corporate allies for Turkish industry. Agriculture
still accounts for some 45 per cent of employment, but the population
of the greater Istanbul urban area is now greater than that of
all of neighbouring Greece.
4. Historically, the two most important
features of the Turkish state are that it is still relatively
new, and that it represents an explicit national identity in which
"Turkishness" is defined through the nature of the state
and enshrined in the constitution. The modern Turkish Republic
was only created in the 1920s and 30s. Parliamentary democracy
only really began to function after the Second World War, and
the removal of no fewer than four governments by the army in the
following half century has interfered with the consolidation of
political systems. As a result, the republic still manifests some
of the insecurities that might be expected of a fairly new state,
both in the pursuit of foreign policy objectives and in the response
to perceived threats to domestic stability.
5. Equally important, the constitutional
nature of the country is built around the concept of the secular
republic, and the "indivisible unity of the Turkish state"
(the quote is from the preamble to the constitution). Most of
the major institutions of the state, particularly the army and
the judiciary, were created to defend secularism and unity, and
continue to perceive their role in these terms. With proportional
representation tending to produce a series of weak and unstable
coalition governments, the non-elected arms of the state have
tended to assume greater importance and wider-ranging powers than
is common in the West. The vital realisation to make here is that
they tend to do so with the implicit support of a larger part
of the population. Turkish popular politics are inherently defensive
and nationalistic. There is still a fairly widespread consensus
that the army in particular is the legitimate guardian of the
secular state. The fact that the army has intervened so frequently
in politics while maintaining its status as the most popular institution
in the country is evidence of the common belief that it has a
mandate to act in defence of secularism and unity.
6. The foreign policy picture regarding
Turkey can best be broken down into two broad fields: Turkey's
own international objectives and aspirations; and the international
response to Turkey's pursuit of its own domestic political agenda.
As both the foreign policies of individual western countries,
and the constitutions of supra-national bodies like the EU are
conditioned by views on such issues as human rights and competition,
there is a clear overlap between these two fields. This tends
to be a particularly source of difficulty with Turkey, as Turkey's
defence of domestic unity has often set it against foreign views
of what is right in the human rights area.
7. Turkey's slightly precarious position
on the edge of the European and Asian worlds has produced a need
for security and recognition, and a basically defensive stance
on foreign policy. It is important to realise that Turkey's most
aggressive actions over the past three decades, the invasion of
northern Cyprus in the 1970s and limited military incursions in
the southeast in the 1990s, were undertaken because of perceived
threats to Turkish domestic security. The continued Turkish presence
in northern Cyprus and the sometimes fraught relationship with
Greece are both rooted in concerns over the security of the nation
and have no real expansionist overtones.
8. Turkey's continued reaffirmation of its
active participation in NATO originates from a need to underline
its position as an independent and responsible member of the international
community. On a regional level, there is a genuine polarization
of policy that reflects the European/Asian dichotomy in Turkish
identity. In practice, Turkey's courtship with the European Union
and the expansion of Turkish influence over its Asian neighbours
represent opposing views of the country's trans-regional alignment,
and prioritization of one is often the product of lack of progress
with the other. The relationship with the EU is of paramount importance
from an economic point of view. Western Europe represents a far
more significant market for Turkish goods and a far more important
source of imports than either the Asian or the Arab worlds. With
the EU accounting for just over 50 per cent of trade in both directions,
Turkey really cannot afford exclusion, and it is has already gone
a long way towards opening its internal markets to competition.
Turkish-EU relations, however, have been be-devilled by the intrusion
of human rights issues into the discussion. While Turkey's huge
economic imbalances and rampant inflation continue to represent
the most tangible barrier to entry, the western perception of
Turkey as domestically repressive of human rights looms just as
large in policy formation.
9. The Turkish human rights issue revolves
around Turkey's own view of itself as a state. As mentioned above,
the Turkish constitution and the institutions created to protect
it are committed to a view of a single unified Turkish national
entity. Historically, there have been three main threats to the
cultural and political integrity of the state: communism, Islam
and the country's sizeable Kurdish minority. The first of these
is no longer an issue, but the other two are still potentially
worrying to Kemalist legislators, judges and soldiers. Both are
highly emotive issues, the first because it strikes at the secularism
that is central to the whole idea of the Turkish state, and the
second because it threatens the ideal that there is only one Turkish
identity. Both are perceived as domestic security issues, with
the result that the Turkish government tends to see Western criticism
of its response to the threats as dangerous and completely unjustified
interference in its maintenance of national unity.
10. Turkey has shown itself willing to respond
to western sensitivities on the human rights front. While, for
example, Turkey still has the death penalty, it has effectively
suspended its use, most importantly in its treatment of the captured
PKK leader Ocalan. Turkey really cannot afford to be excluded
from the expanding European political and economic union. It will
continue to be willing to bring its human rights policy closer
in line with western norms as long as western pressure is not
seen to be aiding forces that threaten the integrity of the state
itself. Thus foreign attempts to influence Turkish domestic policy
should be conditioned by a better understanding of the two key
issues that continue to concern Turkish policy makers.
11. On the religious front, it is vital
to realise that Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, and government
policy towards Islam is not anti-religious per-se. During the
Cold War, the Turkish Army was even prepared to support religious
education as an antidote to communism. Official opposition is
entirely centred against religion as a political force threatening
the secular state, and has little or nothing to do with persecuting
individuals for their beliefs.
12. On the Kurdish front, it is equally
important to understand that government hostility is only directed
against individuals or organizations supporting the creation of
some form of separate Kurdish entity as an alternative to Turkish
nationality. A large part of the ethnic Kurdish population is
now integrated in the better developed western half of the country,
and the Turkish government can and will argue that ongoing economic
development programmes in the east are aimed at the some objective.
To argue (as was done in some of the British press late last year
in connection with UK support for a major dam project) that there
is no real difference between Turkish and Iraqi policy towards
the Kurds is wrong-headed and potentially counter-productive.
Malcolm Cooper
January 2002
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