Don’t be afraid, US: Talk

I'm sure Secretary Rice's speechwriters are grappling with the question of to what extent and in what manner the US should talk about what at first sight seems to be an internal matter for Turkey. Like many issues, one can hear conflicting views on this in Washington. One school of diplomacy, as argued by former Ambassador to Ankara Morton Abramowitz and one of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright's policy planning advisors, Henri Barkey, maintains in a Newsweek article that the US should (definitely) privately or (if necessary) publicly make the following clear to Ankara: Attempting to remove the AK Party in this manner endangers bilateral cooperation and makes US support of Turkish positions politically difficult. The opposing view, which you would see emanate more from military-industrial complex-friendly circles like the ATC, would suggest the US should not interfere in this matter at all.

Should the United States stand on the sidelines when "the threat to Turkey's stability is sufficiently grave, and the potential damage to US interests so great that at some point a more forceful US intervention is warranted," as the Abramowitz/Barkey article suggests? Or is Turkey's democracy "able" enough, as the ATC president, Ambassador James Holmes, told me in an interview, to successfully "work itself through" without "presumptuous" lectures by a fellow democracy?

Well, the European Union, at the expense of being perceived as "presumptuous" by many in Turkey, especially within the old establishment, has chosen the politically incorrect way to deal with this clear and present danger to democratic stability. Good for them! Turkey's democracy is understandably more of a concern for Europe than it is for the US due to ongoing negotiations for full membership in the European Union. But would it really be intellectually honest for the US government to not share the burden of telling the Turks the truth with the Europeans while at the same time urging Europe and Turkey to converge? I don't think so. Is a less democratic, hence less European, Turkey in the best interest of the US? Definitely not. Can outside pressure make a positive difference in Turkey? It certainly can and it has. The one-and-a-half-century-long history of an Ottoman/Turkish reformation process is largely a product of Western interference. Do I expect Washington to then have the nerve to say things that would very much annoy Turkey's outdated secular nationalist establishment? Regretfully, no, I do not -- not now and especially not with this current administration.

The current US administration's foreign policy is largely guided by the fear of Islam and religious Muslims, a fear we could reasonably say is the outcome of the trauma of the Sept. 11 attacks. In addition to this fear, there is also a fear of completely losing the cooperation of the fanatically secular Turkish military, which still effectively dominates the bulk of state affairs, despite civilian EU reforms.

One will probably not be able to find religious Muslims that are more modern than those in Turkey. But regardless of how impressive some of the AK Party's accomplishments are, Washington has always feared and suspected its leadership for its religious background. A moment of truth came when the military issued a memorandum in April of last year directed at the AK Party. Historically, no civil force was able to survive such a threat before. For this reason, the US administration was quick to abandon the AK Party government, saying the US does not take sides. This essentially told the military establishment and the civilians in its sphere of influence to go ahead and lynch the AK Party as the US would do nothing to intervene.

The AK Party surprised many in both Washington and Ankara, however, as it was able to survive and emerged even stronger after getting 47 percent of the vote in last year's July elections. The lynching process continued nonetheless as self-appointed judicial guardians of Turkey's repressive secularism, most probably directed by mentors in the military, came after the government. The US reaction, most likely due to the 47 percent factor, began to lean more toward respect and support of democracy this time around, but it still lacked the necessary forcefulness.