CIAO DATE: 05/02

Turkey: Thwarted Ambition

Simon V. Mayall

Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University

January 1997

Introduction

At the end of the Cold War every country was forced to reexamine the fundamental assumptions that had formed their security policies for the last 45 years. Among the "victors" of the Cold War, few countries were faced with a more disparate set of new circumstances than Turkey. Unlike the United States and Western Europe, "victory" for Turkey had a very ambivalent quality. Almost overnight Turkey moved from being the buttressing flank of one strategic region, to the epicenter of a new one.

In a bipolar world Turkey had had the luxury of an uncomplicated security policy in which, broadly speaking, it aligned with the West, opposed the Soviet Union, and ignored the rest. In the new security environment, Turkey's geographical position and its military strength now made it a European, Balkan, Middle Eastern, Near Eastern, Caucasian, Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Sea power. Sharing borders with Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, Turkey's control of the Bosphorus Straits and the Dardenelles also made it a Black Sea neighbor of Russia, the Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. Turkey's ethnic roots lay in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans, influencing its interests, concerns, and sympathies. Its Muslim identity demanded a community of interest in the Middle East, through Pakistan, and across to South East Asia. This span of responsibility was a source of both excitement and concern, but these emotions were not often shared by its allies.

Turkey was an active participant in the Gulf War, and in its wake President Turgut Ozal stated, "It is my conviction that Turkey should leave its former passive and hesitant policies and engage in an active foreign policy." ¹ Between 1991 and 1993, Turkey seemed to embrace Ozal's vision, embarking on a broad range of diplomatic activity in Central Asia, the Trans- Caucasus, the Middle East, and the Black Sea area. These ambitions were supported by a wide range of Turkish public opinion, and by many observers in the West, ² particularly in the United States. ³ None of the immediate and demanding post-Cold War issues of Bosnia, the Middle East Peace Process, Iraqi sanctions, Operation Provide Comfort, Trans-Caucasus separatism, Russian activities in the "Near Abroad," CFE flank issues, NATO enlargement, Cyprus, Central Asia, and energy pipelines could be discussed without reference to Turkey. Enthusiasm and concern colored assessments of how Turkey would address these new challenges and opportunities. Many of these assessments were flawed by poor understanding of the dynamics of the Turkish state, society, and economy, or by lack of knowledge about the consistent elements in Turkish foreign policy.

In his history of the First World War, Churchill wrote, "I can recall no great sphere of policy about which the British Government was less completely informed than the Turkish." ⁴ He wrote this in 1929, some 6 years after the Treaty of Lausanne had formally recognized the new Republic of Turkey. Written with the benefit of hindsight, his comments encompassed not only the causes and consequences of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, but the whole conduct of British policy toward the late Ottoman Empire and the foundations of modern Turkey. The British were not alone in misunderstanding Turkey. Throughout the West, lack of comprehension was compounded by historical antipathy, while political and intellectual objectivity was distorted through the cloud of religious antagonism and cultural contempt.

This attitude persisted, and it was reflected in bland assumptions by the West regarding President Ozal's decision to close the Iraqi oil pipeline, only 4 days after the invasion of Kuwait. To many it seemed the natural response of a NATO ally to U.S. calls for assistance. In fact the active response of the Turkish Government was one of the most significant watersheds in Turkish security policy since the decisions to enter the Korean War and to join NATO. While Ozal's decision, in both style and substance, created bitter divisions in the Turkish political elite, it was barely noticed in the West, but did reflect the particular nature of Turkish state and society.

Geopolitics is "the relation of international political power to the geographical setting." ⁵ While geography itself does not determine specific political behavior, it nonetheless defines territory, resources, and neighbors, and thereby conditions, shapes, and influences a country's security policy choices. Historically, any ruler of Anatolia has to be a Janus, looking both East and West, and thereby drawn into the affairs of significantly different areas of political and cultural influence. It is this feature that makes Turkey sui generis and therefore such a difficult country to classify. Hence, while Mustafa Kemal (hereafter called Ataturk) ⁶ espoused a nationalist, secular, Western-oriented destiny, Turkey's position and the nature of its society could never make this an uncontested decision.

However, these choices were accepted as "national policy" in Turkey until well into the Cold War and were rarely challenged or criticized. Ataturk had entrusted this "national mission" to elites in the military and civil service establishment, and security policy was seen as a state monopoly over which politics and public opinion had little influence. Much of this acceptance was based on success. In over 70 years of existence as a state, Turkey survived the desperate circumstances of its foundation, the enduring antagonism or antipathy of most of its neighbors, the cataclysm of the Second World War, periodic Middle East conflict, and the global confrontation of the Cold War. Through all this the Republic was never invaded, defeated, or occupied, nor did it concede an inch of Turkish soil. In addition, the material benefits were clear.

This success was based on a firm set of security priorities, a hardheaded assessment of the realistic limits and potential of Turkish power, and the ability of the state to pursue this policy single mindedly. The Turkish state inherited from the Ottomans an ability to distinguish between "permanent" policy, taken as the foundation of all its actions and activities, and "temporary" policy, followed for a period in accordance with the circumstances. ⁷ The consistent policy aspects were not always discerned by those watching events in Turkey, and attention was more often captured by the military interventions, the often fractured state of Turkish politics, or by Turco-Greek confrontation, particularly over Cyprus. Therefore the full significance of Ozal's statement in March t991 was missed.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, Turkey underwent major socioeconomic change. This domestic dynamism led to debate over the Western orientation of security policy, but control of security policy by the elite ensured that it remained consistent with Ataturk's aspirations. However, the end of the Cold War, the removal of a direct Russian threat, ambivalence over the Gulf War, and the opening of new horizons exacerbated divisions. As the implications of the New World Order became clearer, so time and again Turkish opinion perceived Western foreign policy priorities running counter to its interests. Where these interests and priorities coincided, Turkey often found its ambitions thwarted by its geographical position or economic potential. What it felt to be a geostrategic position of continuing or growing importance, others now saw as one of potential liability. In an era of reduced threat, critics of Turkey had the luxury to question its political culture, the nature of its democracy, and its human rights record. Internal problems carried into the foreign policy arena, and external opinion impacted on the domestic order. The dichotomy between the aspirations and the tensions of the "national mission" were seen clearly in December 1995 when Turkey acceded to the European Union (EU) Customs Union; in the same month the Islamist Refah (Welfare or Prosperity) Party achieved its most significant electoral successes. In July 1996 the attempt to balance competing images of Turkey's place in the world was seen in the Refah-True Path Party (DYP) coalition government, which brought together the veteran Islamist leader Necmitten Erbakan, with the Westernized, military-supported secularist, Tansu Ciller.

It is the aim of this paper to assess Turkey's post-Cold War security policy to the present day, based on an examination of the foundations and exercise of both Turkey's defense and foreign policies. From this, the paper will assess how far Turkey's security policy has changed since the end of the Cold War, and the implications for its relationship with the West.

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Notes

Note 1. Philip Robins, Turkish Policy in the Gulf Crisis — Adventurist or Dynamic?, in Turkish Foreign Policy: New Prospects, ed. Clement H. Dodd (Wistow, Eothen Press, 1992), 70. Back

Note 2. In this paper the term "West" is used to refer to both to the geographic concept of the West, the countries of North America and those European countries in NATO and the EU, and to that group of countries bound by a broadly recognizable set of historical, cultural and religious ties. Back

Note 3. The enthusiasm of this time, regarding the future regional role of Turkey, is illustrated in Paul B. Henze, Turkey: Toward the Twenty-First Century, in Turkey's New Geopolitics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 1-35. Another study is Turkey's Strategic Position at the Crossroads of World Affairs (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1993). Like a number of U.S. studies it provides a good overview of Turkey's options in different regions, but underestimates the constraints on Turkey's actions imposed by geography, economics, and internal structures. Back

Note 4. Winston S. Churchill, The Aftermath (New York, 1929), 380. Back

Note 5. Saul B. Cohen, quoted in Colin S. Gray, "The Continued Primacy of Geography," in Orbis 40, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 247. Back

Note 6. In 1935 Mustafa Kemal decreed that every Turk would follow the Western practice of adopting a surname. He himself dropped the titles Ghazi and Pasha, and the Arab name Mustafa. He took the name Ataturk, Father of the Turks, and henceforth signed himself Kemal Ataturk. Lord Kinross, Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1993), 473-474. Back

Note 7. Memorandum by Ahmed Atif, the Reis Effendi, to the divan, 1798, quoted in Ferenc Vali, Bridg, e Across the Bosporos (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 42. Back