U.S. and West Strain Turkish East-West Link

By James M. Dorsey

The opening at Edirne in western Turkey of a key link of the first Europe-to-Ankara superhighway began with a throat-slashing rather than a ribbon-cutting.

As a knife-wielding shepherd sacrificed four of his flock, the crowd cheered at the dedication ceremony attended by Prime Minister Tansu Ciller and other senior officials.

Skipping the part of the tradition requiring her to dab blood on her forehead, Mrs. Ciller, a neatly coiffed, elegant University of Connecticut-educated economist, took to the dais to speak of the road's significance.

To Mrs. Ciller, the road symbolized Turkey's role as a secular, democratic and stable nation in an unruly, increasingly radicalized world. It is also part of her bid to establish Turkey as the bridge between the Christian West and the Islamic Middle East and Central Asia. However, Ciller has yet to convince some of her Western friends that the existence of the road is far more significant than the disquieting details of the ceremony at its opening.

Their overreaction to Turkish abuses of human rights and to Turkey's conduct of the war against the Kurds in the southeast of the country, Mrs. Ciller argues, threatens to encourage exactly the kind of nationalism and religious fanaticism Europe and the U.S. say they would like to avoid.

Already, reactionary Islamic forces are gaining ground as a result of Turkey's internal economic and political problems. The danger of further isolation is compounded by Turkey's more nationalist foreign policy, its estrangement from the European Union, and recent strains with the United States.

Increasingly, Mrs. Ciller is losing patience with Europeans and Americans who fail to realize what her part of the world would look like if Turkey started to resemble any of its immediate neighbors, Iran, Iraq or Syria.

Rising Balkan tensions would demand greater NATO involvement were Turkey a less reliable ally, or if it resumed the kind of regional games its Ottoman rulers played a century ago.

"The world is in the process of being restructured, especially in this region," Mrs. Ciller says. "After the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism, there is a search for something else and that sort of search always gives rise to the crusader and his antithesis. Fundamentalist forces are at work both in the Middle East and in Europe...If it were not for Turkey, the Muslim fundamentalist forces would move right through Turkey and there is no way you could stop the clash. My mission is to make Turkey the bridge for the peace-making process."

To achieve that, she says, Turkey must join a customs union with the European Union by the end of 1995. This would be the last step before becoming a full-fledged EU member.

"If the West chooses not to see Turkey as part of it, we can choose our own path."

In addition, Mrs. Ciller sees Turkey's water monopoly as a tool that will help Middle East peacemakers plan ambitious economic projects. More than $2 billion in credits to former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, millions of whose citizens are Turkey's linguistic and ethnic cousins, are yet another pillar of Mrs. Ciller's bridge.

Nonetheless, Turkey's bid for regional power faces serious obstacles. Pro-Islamic parties are likely to win new victories in crucial by-elections. A resolution of Turkey's economic crisis could be derailed by differences within the government over privatization. And problems with its Western partners are bringing questions of Turkish identity again to the forefront.

Relations with Washington seldom have been as strained as they are today, even though Turkey played a key role in the U.S.-led war against Iraq and has since supported the economic embargo of President Saddam Hussain's regime.

Mounting U.S. criticism of Turkey's war against Kurdish rebels who threaten the country's territorial integrity convinces Turks that their Western allies apply double standards. Turkish irritation is fueled by the slowing down of U.S. arms supplies and the linking of aid to an improvement in the human rights situation and progress toward resolving the Cyprus conflict.

"The problem there is we acted with our allies whenever they needed us," Ciller says. "We've always done that...But my people have suffered, the East Anatolian people have suffered because we went along with the [Iraqi] embargo...We spent $5 billion in building a pipeline, and that pipeline is eroding away. Unemployment has increased in the southeast (because of the trade embargo against Iraq) and it is one of the reasons there is increased terror...

A Perceived Paradox

"And then you turn around and tell us: the military credits that are extended are not to be used for the fight against terrorism in the Middle East," says the prime minister, pounding her fist on the table. "Isn't that a contradiction? We go along in helping you...and then the United States reduces its foreign aid to Turkey," she adds, shaking her head at the paradox.

Other members of Mrs. Ciller's ruling True Path Party caution that Turkey wants to remain part of the Western world, but that it has other options if it is continuously rebuffed.

"We are not a small power. In 50 years we will be equal to Germany," says Cosgun Kirce, a spokesman for the growing nationalist strain in Turkish politics. "If the West chooses not to see Turkey as part of it, we can choose our own path."

"If the U.S. tries to create a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, Turkey will crush it," Mr. Kirce warns. "The U.S. alliance with Turkey is not compatible with creating a Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Any such state outside our borders will have subversive implications inside Turkey...If the U.S. takes measures that in the eyes of the Turkish people jeopardize their unity, Turkey will have no other choice than not to be a friend of America."

Attempting to soften the blows, Turkish President Suleiman Demirel couches the issues in more moderate language. "Turkey and the United States act together in world matters. You have a strong ally here, a strong friend here. Assume that you do not have a friend here and that there is a hostile country here like Iran. Or Iraq. Is it good for you? I don't think so," he says.

Nonetheless, strains with the United States, Turkey's most important political and military ally, are occurring at the same time it is receiving the cold shoulder from Europe, Turkey's foremost trading partner. Hopes for Turkish membership in the European Union are fading as Europe focuses instead on candidates in Scandinavia and Central Europe.

Privately, many Europeans describe the EU as an exclusive Christian club that could never absorb an Islamic country, certainly not one of 60 million people whose birth rate would make it the EU's largest state within 30 years.

"If Turkey is without Europe, it is not in the interest of Turkey. Europe without Turkey is not in the interest of Europe. One day they [the Europeans] will understand," warns Mr. Demirel, adding that Turkey is the region's only true democracy.

Yet sometimes even Mr. Demirel cannot avoid sounding nationalistic. "If Turkey is not a member of the European Union," he says, "Turkey is not going to die. Turkey will continue on her own way."

James M. Dorsey is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.