22.08.1996

Part Islam, part chauvinism

There has been an interesting, if not particularly pleasant change in Turkish foreign policy. The change has not been towards improved relations with Greece, Syria or Armenia. If anything, relations with these countries have worsened - especially in the case of Greece.

This country is indignant over the killing of two Greek Cypriots by the Turks in disputes on the Green Line in Cyprus. One was beaten to death, and the other was gunned down when he tried to remove a Turkish flag.

Turkish foreign minister Tansu Ciller seems to regard it as natural to gun people down if they lay unsanctified hands on the national emblem. Even though Ciller regularly pops up on the Western media wearing Armani suits and employing ‘conciliatory’ language, she slapped down the USA when it administered a mild rebuke to Turkey over the flag incident. Her appearances on the Turkish media, on the other hand, see her promoting an ‘uncompromising’ line - to the extent that she sometimes dons traditional clothing to emphasis her Turkishness.

This lack of humanitarian scruples is of a piece with the general approach of the Turkish authorities in all walks of life, they are almost as bad on the streets of Istanbul as they are on the Green Line or in the mountains of Kurdistan. The Turkish ruling class seems to regard it as unnatural to behave in any other way.

National chauvinism is the main weapon that holds Turkey together in its present form, despite the real ethnic diversity of the country’s population - not just Kurds, but also Arabs, Laz, Cherkess or Circassians, Georgians, Azeris, the Armenian remnant that survived the 1915 genocidal massacre, and many other groups. The official line speaks of the “happiness to be a Turk”. This is quite blatantly designed to conceal and divert attention from the very deep discontent of so much of the population. In reality, the main enemy is at home, perhaps to a greater extent in Turkey than any other country. Whipping up hostility to neighbouring countries is one way of stopping the average inhabitant of the Republic of Turkey from realising that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer, that the worst criminals are the ones wearing police uniforms, or that the war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is unwinnable, no matter how many villages are destroyed.

Yet there has been a change. This was signalled when the Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan recently visited Iran. At one level, this contradicts the xenophobia visible elsewhere in Turkish official life. It is interesting because the USA is Iran’s number one enemy and made its displeasure about Erbakan’s visit plain. Erbakan went on to conclude a valuable energy deal with Iran, whereas the USA is attempting to introduce sanctions on anyone trading with the Islamic republic. So far the US protests against Turkey’s action lack any real bite. After all, Turkey is an important means for projecting American military power from the bases the USA has there. However, it may be the start of a trend.

Much of the Turkish left regards Turkey as a “neocolony” of the USA. This was true during the Cold War, but the collapse of the Soviet Union has introduced some fluidity into the situation. The authorities in Turkey can play the Islamic card and manoeuvre for advantage, but it risks blasting the society open along Islamist/secularist lines. Revolutionaries in Turkey should prepare for a situation where the Islamists are denouncing the USA as vigorously as the left, and therefore need to expose the fundamental hollowness of the ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric of the mullahs and clerics - which, in the first and last analysis, is a cover for reaction.

John Craig