Turkey: Coming to America

Date: 24/01/04

A big agenda for Tayyip Erdogan's trip to the United States

LAST year, when Turkey's parliament refused to let American troops use Turkish soil as a launch-pad to strike Iraq, it seemed that the “strategic partnership” forged over 50 years between Turkey and the United States was in danger of collapse. Then, just as the two allies sought to patch things up, American troops in northern Iraq arrested 11 members of Turkey's special forces on suspicion of planning to assassinate Kurdish officials. Turkey's top general, Hilmi Ozkok, loudly denied this and said the detention of his men for two days in Baghdad marked the “biggest crisis” between the two countries.

Tempers on both sides have since cooled. Yet differences over Iraq remain the biggest source of friction between Turkey and America. Iraq is sure to dominate the agenda when Turkey's mildly Islamist prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, lunches with President George Bush this week, on his first official trip to Washington since taking office last March.

The Turks' biggest concern is over Iraqi Kurds' demands for an autonomous state, including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Should the Kurds persist in their claims for an ethnically-based federation, said a Turkish general, Ilker Basbug, last week, the future would be “difficult” and “bloody”. The fear is that American support for Iraqi Kurds might re-ignite separatist passions among Turkey's own long-repressed Kurdish minority.

Last autumn's ding-dong over whether Turkish troops should go to Iraq has not helped. In October Mr Erdogan pushed through parliament a measure authorising the deployment of 10,000 Turkish troops, chalking up useful brownie points in Washington. But by November, the Americans had withdrawn the request for the troops, after Iraqi Kurds had threatened to fight them if they arrived. Coming on top of America's reluctance to move against 5,000 rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) holed up in Iraq, this deepened the suspicions of Turkey's generals that the Americans favoured the Kurds.

Mr Bush will reassure Mr Erdogan that his government is as committed to dealing with the PKK as it is to preserving a united Iraq. But in private American officials concede that some of Turkey's concerns are legitimate. Turkey has been helping the American occupation by opening bases and airspace to coalition aircraft and personnel. It deserves something in return.

The trouble is that since September 11th America's interests have shifted. During the cold war, Turkey's role was to help contain the Soviet Union. Today, says America's ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, reform in the Muslim world “is America's most important strategic initiative”, in which Turkish success may play a big role. “The idea of a secular, democratic Turkey moving towards the European Union and led by an Islamist-oriented party”, he says, “would be a huge stench in the nostrils for the likes of al-Qaeda.” (That group claimed responsibility for suicide-bomb attacks against British and Jewish targets in Istanbul in November.)

To fulfil that dream, Mr Bush will urge Mr Erdogan to keep leaning on the stubborn Turkish-Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, to resume talks with the Greek-Cypriots to reunite Cyprus on the basis of the UN peace plan. Not only would a deal over Cyprus enhance Turkey's chances of opening membership talks with the EU; it would also give Mr Bush a useful foreign-policy victory to show off at NATO's summit in Istanbul at the end of June.

Mr Erdogan might reply that it is Turkey's hawkish generals, all bitterly opposed to the UN plan, who need convincing - and not just over Cyprus. If Turkey is to evolve into the full-fledged democracy underpinned by moderate Islam that America wants, the generals and other members of Turkey's secular elite must learn to coexist peacefully with millions of openly pious Turks, instead of calling them all Islamic militants. Some such subversives may wonder how it is that the prime minister's wife, Emine, is banned from official functions in Ankara because she wears the Islamic headscarf, and yet can be received by Laura Bush for coffee at the White House.