Analysis: Turkey's shift toward Iran, Syria is no short-term blip

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Turkey's response to the Gaza offensive has highlighted a deep rift in relations. Erdogan in the course of the operation questioned Israel's UN membership. The atmosphere in Turkey during Operation Cast Lead became deeply charged against Israelis and Jews - with a number of ugly incidents recorded across the country. Erdogan attended the emergency summit in Doha on January 16 that was convened by Syria and Qatar to offer support to Hamas.

Turkey's courting of Hamas and hosting of Islamist gatherings form part of a more general regional policy pursued by the AKP government in Ankara. The AKP seeks to build Turkey's regional "strategic depth" - in its preferred phrase - by building up relations with Syria and Iran. This is presented as a desire to counter-balance, rather than replace, Ankara's already deep links with the West.

However, in the current situation of sharp polarization and cold war in the region, it is becoming increasingly unfeasible for countries to maintain close relations with both the US-led and the Iranian-led camps. The prospect of Turkey moving toward the Iranian-led alliance can no longer be dismissed as fanciful.

Turkish analysts have noted the rise of a "Muslim nationalist" orientation in the country, of which the political dominance of the AKP over the last half decade forms the political expression.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304831652&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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1. Definitely not a good sign

But others saw this coming with Edrogan and his party, and no one paid much attention, because it was all about "democracy"!

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2. Nope, not a good sign.

I'm not sure how one is supposed to fix Turkish internal politics, but Bush seemed to go out of his way to annoy them.

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3. "Muslim nationalist"

Useful expression. Extreme nationalism pops up from time to time as a component of some ideology, but religion isn't considered a "nationality" in the West.

Of course, under the Ottomans it was, and many of the passports in the region still require religion be listed even though "ethnicity" in the sense of ethnolinguistic group is not listed.

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4. The Turkish man's burden

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Erdogan himself has explained his behavior in Davos, where he stormed off stage in reaction to criticism by Israeli President Shimon Peres, as an attempt to defend the honor of the Turkish nation. He is not the first Turkish leader to feel he is entrusted with such a responsibility. Ataturk, and Adnan Menderes - the prime minister overthrown and hung following a military coup in 1960 - are both examples. However, their declarations used to be focused on Turkey domestically.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union reawakened some imperialist notions in Turkey. It began with a sense that it was Turkey's responsibility to introduce democracy to the Turkic populations in the former Soviet republics. These days, the AKP is conducting an information campaign aimed at repositioning Turkey in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Arab Middle East. In its aspiration to hegemony, Turkey is competing with both Iran and Egypt - and, in its imagination, maybe even Israel.

The Kemalist elite is uncomfortable with this attitude. Its members are embarrassed by Erdogan's public outbursts, even if criticism of Israel is acceptable to most. The premier's "non-normative" outbursts have led some establishment commentators to go so far as to publicly question his psychological stability.

The new Turkish "burden" highlights the fact that Turkey is part of the Muslim Middle East. Just as the Kemalists were gearing up for accession to the European Union, Erdogan came along and emphasized the very elements they had tried to suppress for the past century. Just this week, journalists and academics associated with AKP launched a campaign asserting that Europe has no future without Turkey, a claim that seems detached from 21st-century realities. Reality, rather, demands the furthering of reforms and compliance with EU requirements.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065688.html

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5. VIEW: Who lost Turkey? —Dominique Moisi

“Who lost Turkey?” That question, often raised in the past, has been heating up in the aftermath of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s emotional outburst during the recent World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos, when he abruptly left a panel he was sharing with Israeli President Shimon Peres. And the Turkish question matters greatly, because it touches on some of the most unstable and unsettling of the world’s diplomatic disputes.

If Turkey has indeed been “lost”, those responsible include the European Union, the United States, Israel, and Turkey itself. The EU’s growing reservations about Turkey’s membership have been expressed unambiguously by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the US, former President George W Bush gets some of the blame because of the war in Iraq. Israel, too, has played its part in Turkey’s alienation from the West, as a result of the Lebanon war of 2006 and its recent military operations in Gaza.

All of these events have disturbed and disoriented Turkey, and are magnified by the domestic impact of worst global economic crisis since the 1930s.

Of course, Turkey’s secular, pro-Western elites may still consider the EU and the US important, if not indispensable, allies and partners, and they may consider Islamic fundamentalism, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran real or at least potential threats. Yet they are also convinced that Europe has behaved improperly toward Turkey, through a combination of short-term populist reflexes and the absence of a long-term strategic vision.

Daily Times (PK)