What Obama Should Say To Erdogan Hugh Pope, Bosch Public

What Obama should say to Erdogan Hugh Pope, Bosch Public Policy Fellow, The Transatlantic Academy On 7 December, U.S. President Barack Obama receives the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At a time of growing mutual suspicions, a face-to-face meeting will be of great importance between two men renowned for their straight-to-the-point frankness. There is arguably no other country in the world with so many areas of common interest with the United States, and yet Turkey both rashly overrates itself and is little understood and underrated in Washington. A steadying hand should be the two leaders’ first order of business. Just as a surprising number of Turks expend their energy analyzing Washington’s supposedly nefarious plots to split up their country, a growing number of Americans interested in Turkey are just as busy analyzing Ankara’s latest supposed conspiracies against transatlantic and U.S. interests: is it abandoning the West in favour of a neo-Ottoman dominion in the East? Is it loosening its half-century-old security anchor in NATO? Where is Erdogan’s rough-tongued criticism of Israel leading? Is the innovating prime minister’s feud with the Kemalist establishment turning him into a dictator? Do grandiose Turkish stands alongside authoritarian anti-Western regimes in the Middle East make Turkey “Islamist”? And is Turkey turning away from its U.S.-backed ambition of membership of the European Union? The answer to all this is short: none of the above. In fact, Obama and U.S. officials can start out with grateful recognition to the Turkish chief executive for the many areas in which the Turkish policy is closely aligned with the United States. Praise is deserved for Ankara’s role in what progress has been made in Iraq, itself largely due to an about-turn in U.S. attitudes to cooperating with Turkey in 2007. Turkey has been strongly supportive in Afghanistan and might to more; it is also helpful behind the scenes in Pakistan. The U.S. could go so far as to recognize that Turkey’s goals and achievements in the region -- freer travel between itself and several states, increasing intra-regional trade, joint Cabinet meetings, and projects to knit regional infrastructure together – offer a promising path towards greater stability, security, prosperity and better governance in a traumatized Middle East. Despite its exaggerated self-image as a critical regional dynamo – in fact, Turkey is better compared to a large car with an underpowered engine – its new track record compares positively to the West’s controversial actions in the Middle East in past decades. The U.S. and Turkey should resist what will be a temptation on both sides to spend the short time they have on their differences over Iran, Sudan or Israel/Palestine. For sure, the U.S. side needs to impress diplomatically on Prime Minister Erdogan how much his populist rhetoric in support of anti-Western bugbears is damaging Turkey’s position with its key partners and pro-Turkey constituencies in Washington and Brussels. And the U.S. should listen for any new message

Erdogan might be bringing from his recent visits to Iran and Syria, and hear out his likely argument that punitive sanctions against Iran’s nuclear ambitions will do little but consolidate yet another authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. But lengthy argument over these deeplyentrenched issues will prove a red herring and has little chance of changing either side, given that the two countries’ approaches to the region are dictated by fundamentally different domestic political imperatives. Instead, acknowledging that the Middle East is only one of several areas of overlapping U.S. interests with Turkey, Obama and the U.S. team should focus on two matters that will really test Turkey’s intentions, need urgent attention, and, in the long term, have the most game-changing potential in the region. The Turkey-Armenia protocols The first issue where the U.S. side can usefully help move a ball forward is Turkey’s process of normalization with Armenia. On 30 August, the two countries signed the texts of two protocols to normalize diplomatic relations and to open the mutual border, closed since 1993. The text of these protocols is based on a well-rooted bilateral process, but would likely not have been signed in Switzerland without the combined close engagement of the U.S., Russian and French governments. Indeed, this collaborative process is arguably one of the unsung top foreign policy achievements of the early Obama administration. But it has not yet reached a conclusion, and has now been left hanging riskily half-complete. The U.S. side should find out when the Turkish prime minister intends to push his parliament to ratify the documents. If the Turkish side demurs by noting objections from its ally Azerbaijan and repeating its insistence on upfront Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan in the conflict over the Armenian-occupied territory of Nagorno Karabakh, the U.S. should not let this pass. There are too many good arguments for rapid ratification: 15 years of non-recognition and border closure have done nothing to help solve the issue, whereas the confidence-building steps so far have already breathed some new life into talks on disengagement; ratification has a clear image benefits showing Turkey as the more powerful player moving a step ahead in seeking to resolve the situation; and to signal to the broader region that Turkey’s vaunted “zero problem” foreign policy has real substance. The wisdom of the normalization protocols is evidenced by the way that on both sides they are opposed by nationalists and radicals. Above all, the U.S. side should spell out in frank terms that it expects progress as a party with direct interests in the outcome. It should remind Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that they raised firm expectations in Washington that they are willing to do what is necessary to open the Armenian border. Interventions from President Obama in April Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in August helped make the signing of the protocols happen. This is in the U.S. interest: major strain is put on the U.S.-Turkish relationship each year by the American

domestic political imperative of satisfying the demands of the strong Armenian diaspora on the question of genocide recognition. Ratified protocols would be a key argument for the U.S. administration that Turkey is coming to terms with the Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians during the First World War through a bilateral sub-commission with Armenia. Without suggesting that the U.S. should use the genocide label in its annual 24 April anniversary statement – a bad idea that would re-legitimize maximalist nationalist arguments on both Turkish and Armenian sides – the U.S. should make clear how uncomfortable it will be made if Turkey has not ratified the protocols by the end of this year. At the same time, the U.S. should reassure Turkey that it will do its best to help by pressing for the protocols to be ratified in Armenia; by committing to work on its own and with its OSCE Minsk Group partners Russia and France to avert the risk that Azerbaijan tries to derail the whole process by some precipitate military action; and that while there should be no formal link between the protocols and the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, the U.S. will ensure that Armenia understands that long-term normalization with Turkey means withdrawal from the occupied areas of Azerbaijan. The coming EU-Turkey showdown The second goal of the U.S. must be to impress on Prime Minister Erdogan the importance the US attaches to Turkey’s convergence with the European Union. Erdogan has given a low priority in recent years to the EU. He is bitter about the failure, due to a Greek Cypriot veto in 2004, of his real effort to reach a deal on the U.S.-, UN- and EU-backed reunification of Cyprus and the withdrawal of Turkish troops; angry about the way the EU has done nothing to block Greek Cypriots’ use of EU levers to slow Turkey’s negotiations on membership to a crawl; and discouraged by public and cynical opposition to the goal of full Turkish EU membership from the German chancellor, the French president and other EU leaders. This sense of unfair exclusion is almost certainly informing the sharp negativity of his rhetoric as he embraces anti-Western leaders in the Middle East, as is his sense that investing his political capital in the EU process is a waste of his time. The U.S. should convince Erdogan that explicitly resurrecting the EU goal can still give him a political win, and is vital in any case. Erdogan has long underrated the importance of Turkey’s convergence with the EU to its success. It is the chief cause of the rocketing rise of foreign investment in Turkey in the mid-2000s and has long been the main locomotive driving Turkey’s modernization efforts. The resulting new economic dynamism and success in reforming the state have inspired much of the Middle East’s new esteem for his country. The EU-Turkey relationship suffered from the EU’s own inner turmoil since 2005. But the EU has now ratified the Lisbon Treaty, has begun work on its new structure, and is seeing fears of a financial meltdown recede. As it regains confidence, it will turn once again to its successful

strategy of enlargement. Even French media are now suggesting Turkey needs to have a better deal. After all, Istanbul is for all practical purposes already both a European metropolis and a booming regional hub. Airline route maps are black with connections between many Turkish cities and Europe, at the same time as Middle Eastern cities, while well-served, do not support nearly so much traffic with Turkey. Millions of European tourists come and go every year. European banks and other brands are high street names all over Turkey, complementing the more than three million ethnic Turks who live in Europe. Although EU states may be economic rivals of the US, American officials have for many years rightly made support of the EU-Turkey convergence the central plank of their Turkey policy. It is a people-to-people relationship that gives flesh to the hard bones of the U.S.-Turkey relationship, which is much more of a state-to-state, strategic affair. Repairing the EU-Turkey relationship is vital if there is to be any real collaboration between Turkey and NATO. A Turkey empowered by a healthy convergence with the EU is also likely to have much stronger hand as it seeks to build trust, integration and commercial interaction both with and between the difficult states of the Middle East. The EU-Turkey relationship is however about to be ship-wrecked of the divided island of Cyprus, an outcome that will cripple the whole nexus of issues that Cyprus represents about Turkey’s relationship with the EU. Absent real progress in current reunification talks, the current pro-settlement Turkish Cypriot president is likely to lose power in April 2010. Unless there is a breakthrough, this will be not just a slow-burn disaster for the million Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but it has every chance of poisoning the whole political climate in the eastern Mediterranean for a decade or more. The U.S. has so far wisely stayed mostly on the sidelines of the new talks, since interventions by outside powers are one reason that Greek Cypriots rejected the last best chance of a solution in 2004. The key problem is that Turkey and the Greek Cypriots do not talk directly, and therefore have no trust in each other and cannot see that the other side truly wants and needs a deal. While recognizing the generally positive contribution of Turkey to make the talks work, the U.S. should impress upon Erdogan that his only chance of reaching a settlement is by reaching out to the Greek Cypriots. Polls show that Greek Cypriots simply do not believe that Turkey would implement a deal on the withdrawal of its troops, so Ankara must find a way to convince them of its good faith. Turkey must be persuaded to act big: the Turks number 75 million people and have a powerful army occupying the northern third of Cyprus, while the Greek Cypriots are just 800,000 people with only the moral advantage of EU membership. It is not enough that since 2004 the Turks can justifiably claim to have acted more constructively than the Greek Cypriots. The U.S. should underline to Erdogan certain facts of life: any breakdown of talks on the island will effectively mean partition of the island with almost no chance of meaningful recognition of any self-declared Turkish Cypriot state; that this will mean

the technical freezing of of the EU-Turkey relationship, which, mainly because of Cyprus, has already run out of negotiating chapters that it can open; that the law cases relating to Turkish occupation of property in the European Court of Human Rights will be either saddle Turkey with a multi-billion dollar burden it cannot afford or put Turkey under sanction from the EHCR’s parent organization, the Council of Europe; that if reunification talks are seen to be a pretence, Turkey will be left exposed as the military occupier of one third of an EU state; that Turkey would be wise not to react with the deployment of gunboats again if, as is likely, the Greek Cypriots seek to leverage support from other EU states assert their internationally recognized rights to an Exclusive Economic Zone around Cyprus, a right contested by Turkey; and that the sum total of all these dynamics means that Cyprus will drive a deep wedge between Europe and Turkey that will be detrimental to the interests of all. The United States is part of this: past unfreezing of Turkish-Greek conflicts in the Aegean have all proved the impotence of the EU and required U.S. ambulance diplomacy. It is perhaps idealistic to suppose that the U.S. side will be able to rise over its urgent preoccupations with the long-running problems of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran – all problems in which Turkey plays important and mostly helpful roles in the transatlantic community that will clearly need to be discussed. But there is no doubt that progress on Armenia and the EU/Cyprus agenda need more urgent attention. In the long term, this is what will do the most favors to the shared U.S. and Turkish hope of a more stable and prosperous region.

The Turkey-Middle Eastern Drift Red Herring However they are transmitted, the U.S. messages should be founded on an assessment which starts by heavily discounting the swirling commentaries calling into question Turkey’s relationship with the Middle East, its modernizing ambitions, its interest in the EU and commitment to NATO, and the nature of its democracy. And, given the damage done to the relationship by neglect under the previous U.S. administration, any action agreed upon should be backed up with frequent visits to Ankara by senior American officials. It is true that Prime Minister Erdogan and his foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu in particular are interested in creating a new role for Turkey in the Middle East and among other Muslim countries. One reason is certainly the great interest the Middle Easterners now show in Turkey’s successes – partly because of its democratic legitimacy and progress in reconciling religion, ethnicity and patriotism in the national ideology, partly because of the success of Turkish sitcoms on prime time Arab television and partly because of the way Erdogan has publicly spoken up for the Palestinians. A much larger reason, however, is the way Turkey has reached the closest of any large Muslim country to Western standards of prosperity. Any lingering doubts about Turkey’s popularity in the Middle East should be put to rest by

polling data of more than 2000 respondents in seven key Arab countries published in November. The survey by the reputed Turkey Economic and Social Studies Foudantion (TESEV) shows that for Arabs and the Arab world Turkey represents a potential model (61%); a successful integration of Islam and democracy (63%); has a daily growing influence (71%); has the potential to make intra-Arab peace (76%); should play a bigger role (77%); is a friend of the respondent’s Arab government (78%); and should play a mediating role in the Israel-Palestine problem (79%). However Erdogan and Davutoglu would do well to take note that 64 per cent of Arabs believe EU membership makes Turkey is a more convincing partner for the Arab world. Indeed, for many Middle Eastern countries, and even a far-flung Muslim country like Indonesia, it is above all Turkey’s strong recent economic performance that has impressed Muslim countries. And the key to that prosperity is a huge wave of foreign investment in the mid-2000s, in which EU countries led the way. This followed Turkey’s move to start negotiations on full EU membership, and which signaled that Turkey was heading inexorably towards an era of greater stability and rule of law. The other leg of international confidence in the country is a sense of continuity and predictability in Turkey’s relationship with the U.S. Therefore, however bitter Prime Minister Erdogan may be about European negativism, and however hypocritical some Western positions may be, each time that he gives into the populist temptation to pour scorn on the Western consensus on Iran, Sudan or Israel, he is sawing off the branch on which Turkey sits. Even so, the fact is that Erdogan’s statements are mainly rhetorical. Following in the steps of Turgut Ozal in the 1980s, his main goal in foreign policy is doing business, namely the encouragement of deals with nearby countries and to support the hundreds of businessmen who typically travel with him. This is a natural refocusing on Istanbul of regional trade between the Balkans and Middle East, ending the unnatural hiatus of the Cold War and the iron curtain that sealed Turkey off from almost all of its historical hinterland. This is a reversion to the geographical commercial patterns of the Ottoman Empire, or indeed the Byzantine Empire before it. It has little to do with Islam or neo-Ottomanism. Indeed, the biggest beneficiary has been trade with Russia, now Turkey’s biggest single trading partner, a relationship that in Ottoman times was chiefly characterized by a dozen terrible wars. It’s worth recalling too that the richest part of the Ottoman Empire was not the Middle East, but the Balkans, then known as Turkey-in-Europe. There are changes in Turkey’s patterns of trade, but they are not surprising. In the last two years there has been a noticeable fall-off in trade with the EU and growth with the Middle East. But this has more to do with short-term opportunities created by high oil prices filling Middle Eastern coffers, accompanied by a collapse in European demand due to the financial crisis. There is no fundamental rush to the East, and roughly half of Turkey’s trade remains with EU states as normal. As the table below shows, Turkey’s overall trade with the Middle East or the 57 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference is still lower than it was in the heyday of

1988. And if the oil price swoons again – as in 1998 – the share of the Middle East in Turkish trade would likely fall back once more. 1988 Exports in USD ($) Iran Iraq Syria Near and Middle East

2008

% of % of Absolute total Absolute total Absolute figure exports figure exports figure 545.6 194.7 mn 5% mn 1% 2.0 bn 986.2 mn 8% NA NA 3.9 bn 142.9 mn 1% 309 mn 1% 1.1 bn

2.6 bn 271.4 Russia* mn EU – 27 5.6 bn 760.7 US mn *USSR data used for 1988 Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC)

1998

3.4 bn

% of total exports 1.5% 3% 0.8%

22%

2.7 bn

10%

25.4 bn

19%

2% 48%

1.4 bn 14.8 bn

5% 55%

6.5 bn 63.4 bn

5% 48%

6.5%

2.2 bn

8%

4.3 bn

3%

29%

4.4 bn 16.40%

32.6 bn

25%

In short, there seems no objective reason for the U.S. to fear Turkey’s engagement with the Middle East, as indeed it has been sensibly stated by Philip Gordon, assistant secretary at the US state department: “We are neither surprised by nor disturbed by an activist Turkish agenda in the Middle East.” Erdogan’s sharp-tongued criticism of Israel is however problematic for Turkey in Washington. But it is unfair to see such talk as being unique to him or his party, since Turkish politicians of all stripes have used harsh language against Israel in their day. Turkey has not withdrawn its ambassador to Israel, as past governments have done, and is still hosting Israeli ministers. There are also notable overall changes in the climate since 1996, when Turkey signed a landmark agreement on military cooperation with Israel. Back in those days of chaotic Turkish internal politics, Turkey’s military-dominated security establishment judged it needed an alliance with Israel against Syria; with Israel’s defence establishment to acquire new technology hard to get

from the U.S.; and with pro-Israel lobbyists to face down Armenian genocide resolutions in the U.S. Congress. Now Turkey has a remarkably close relationship with Syria; is in dispute with Israel over supplies of military equipment; and it has initiated its own normalization with Armenia that promises to be the best avenue yet for Armenians and Turks to achieve closure on the events of 1915. Perhaps most importantly, today’s Turkish government now in power is responsive to – and occasionally exploits – a high degree of Turkish public anger about Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, while back in the 1990s there was a hope that the Oslo process meant that peace was on its way. It is also worth noting that there is a different dynamic in Turkey relationship with almost every Middle Eastern country, as in the wider region. The bottom line is usually not Islam but is more about business, and Iran and Sudan have long been discrete areas of interest of fast commercial growth to Turkey. What is new, and what has gone wrong is the way Turkey is presenting these relationships, particularly Prime Minister Erdogan: racing to congratulate Ahmedinejad’s highly contested re-election performance, saying that talk of an Iranian nuclear program is “gossip” and dismissing International Criminal Court indictments of the regime in Khartoum on the grounds that “no Muslim could commit genocide”. The West may not have a clean record on supporting dictators, initiating wars and deploying weapons of mass destruction, but as a practical matter, Erdogan is unnecessarily feeding arguments to his and Turkey’s enemies in key centers in Washington and Brussels. Erdogan and Davutoglu’s new fashion of appeals to the Middle East on the basis of a supposed common religious identity is also a double-edged sword in the region. Their misconceived talking points about their role as “leaders of 1.5 billion Muslims” recall to other Middle Easterners the hegemonic attitudes of Iran’s early Islamic Republic, are offensive to other Muslim powers, and do not truly reflect Turkey’s broader ambition to integrate with Europe and be an all-round regional champion. Talk of an Islamic world – whether by Erdogan or by critics in Washington – is also overblown. Quite apart from a wide variety of ethnic differences, majorities of Iran and Iraq’s populations adhere to two or more varieties of the Shia Muslim rite, not the Sunni Muslim majority rite of Turkey. The isolated government of Syria, led by members of the Alawi sect, welcomes the short-term political relief of strategic support from Turkey, but is already worried that in the long term the current influx of small Turkish businessmen and their religious organizations could empower the long-oppressed Sunni majority of the country. To sum up, Turkey is far from heading off for the rogue badlands of the East, as more than one administration official has privately worried in recent months. In many ways it is a far more liberal and self-assured country than it was a decade ago. In fact, Erdogan and Davutoglu’s recent rhetoric represents a new self-confidence, sometimes bordering on the foolhardy, which may be disturbing to Washington because it is partly the same self-confidence being displayed by many regional powers as they move up to fill the space left by a weaker United States.

In such circumstances, the best partner for the United States to foster is a Turkey integrating with EU norms and standards, just as at heart Turkey should know that its best options are by openheartedly pursuing the path towards the EU – without prejudice to the eventual decision in a decade or two about whether it actually wants to join. It is unlikely to be able to sustain reform momentum on its own. Just as importantly, any real floating away from its main transatlantic allies could be extremely damaging – making its existing dependence on Russian energy into a strategically vulnerability to its northern neighbor, undermining its credibility in financial centers, and decreasing confidence in Turkey’s overall momentum of greater partnership with the U.S. and Europe.