PULSE of TURKEY No 18..............THURSDAY, JUNE 25th, 1998
TURKEY CAUTIOUS ABOUT NATO ENLARGEMENT
Military cooperation agreement signed with Poland. Turkey insists on priority to Bulgaria and Romania for NATO enlargement. Changed structure of threat induces Ankara to other security calculations. The Orthodox allegiance in the Balkans leads to Multinational Peacekeeping Force with Turkey’s initiative.
Defence Minister Ismet Sezgin signed in Warsaw a defence cooperation agreement with Poland on June 22nd with a pledge: “Turkey will be happy to see Poland as a member of NATO and will do its best to help Poland adapt to NATO standards.”
It was an important step forward in Washington’s and NATO’s plans to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the Alliance at its 50th anniversary celebrations in Washington in April 1999, because Turkey has been one of the main difficulties, if not stumbling blocks, to the speedy realisation of this scheme.
Turkish Parliament takes its time about NATO enlargement
Turkey has very old and friendly relations with all three of these Central European countries and, in principle, it has no objection to be in the same Alliance with them. But for several reasons it is dragging its feet about ratifying the agreement for this enlargement of the Alliance.
Although Foreign Minister Ismail Cem signed on December 16th, 1997 the NATO Enlargement Treaty which the U.S. Senate has already ratified and President Clinton signed on May 21st the Instruments of Ratification, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the TGNA (Turkish Grand National Assembly) has not done so since last April when the Agreement came up with it. There is no sign either that it will do so before the summer recess. Into the bargain, the Chairman of the Committee, Murat Karayalçýn, told international panels in London and Istanbul on the New Atlantic Initiative that the ratification of the agreement by the U.S. Senate did not mean that its Turkish counterpart would do the same. Karayalçýn says that before ratifying the agreement the Foreign Relations Committee will carefully examine the financial consequences for Turkey of the new members, its impact on the the defence arrangements and the pros and cons of the adherences. These calculations and appraisals may take a few months and require on the spot contacts with the candidates.
That is why the Polish Presidential Secretary and the Under Secretary of the Polish Foreign Ministry visited Karayalçýn, among other Turkish rulers in Ankara in May, stressing the historic friendly relations that have existed between Turkey and Poland for 600 years and expressing the wish that Turkey would not be the last country to ratify the treaty.
Defence Minister Sezgin’s statement in Warsaw was, therefore, a significant indicator that the western allies would not meet with the same difficulties in Turkey’s hands in NATO as they are exercising with the Greek vetoes in the EU on almost every question that concerns Turkey.
Still contrary to the practice throughout its long membership with NATO, Turkey has been acting rather slowly and cautiously towards the Alliance on this matter for several reasons and Turkey’s annoyance with the Greek vetoes is certainly one of them especially after the Luxembourg rebuff. As Karayalçýn said in a televised interview, he had heard recently several Turkish MPs saying after Luxembourg, “Why does the West allow the Greek vetoes against us and we never use vetoes against them on matters of importance to them?”
Greek vetoes give the Turks an idea, but reasons are deeper
Still it goes totally against Turkey’s deep-rooted diplomatic principles to act finicky on matters of substance such as security and NATO, and this caution on the part of Turkey about NATO enlargement has deeper reasons than just annoyance over the Greek vetoes.
The first reason is the linkage Ankara has established between NATO and the European Union as well as its defence organisation, the West European Union. When Tansu Çiller was the Foreign Minister in the Erbakan Government, even before the Luxembourg rebuff, she was the first to declare such a linkage between accession to NATO and the EU and WEU memberships. Karayalçýn approves of this stance and says that it was the West that first established such a linkage. It still does, as several official documents clearly show.
Indeed, the 12 countries considered for accession to the EU and NATO are almost identical, with minor differences due to mostly the Turkish-Greek disputes. Turkey is 12th on the list of EU accession in practice (though not in official documents due to the Greek factor) and the Greek Cypriots are also one of the 12. In NATO’s list of 12 potential members, there is naturally no Turkey, nor the Greek Cypriots. Instead, there are Albania and Macedonia, mostly thanks to Turkey’s influence in the Alliance. The other 10 candidates are identical for both organisations – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are in the first “wave” in both and Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia and Lithuania follow them.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Balkan Affairs Chief, Ünal Çeviköz, says, “With the Madrid summit of NATO and Luxembourg summit of the European Union, the drive for European integration has emerged into a new phase and has gained new momentum. The ultimate target of the new European architecture is to create a united, prosperous Europe, without new dividing lines and rich with a multitude of cultures.”
In other words, the parallel drawn between the NATO and EU enlargements is not Çiller’s or Turkey’s invention, but a fact, and the difficulty Turkey is encountering in one is inducing it to slow motion in the other organisation in which it has a weighty role and influence.
The second and more important reason for the slow ratification is Turkey’s wish to see Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Slovakia within NATO along with the other three Central European countries. This is because the Balkan countries face a bigger threat than Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. While the Central European ones are given priority in NATO enlargement, due to certain calculations of balances of power among the big NATO members, Turkey’s neighbours are neglected.
Turkey and Bulgaria cooperate against new threat
The third and most important reason is the changed nature and structure of threat, after the downfall of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Now that an armed Soviet threat is no longer the question what is the threat? What is NATO defending its members against?
The answers to these questions are also the reason for Turkey’s insistence on the second point, ie including the two Balkan countries in the Alliance. Turkey believes that instead of an armed confrontation with the enemy the threat is now subversion, racialism, racial cleansing and terrorism. The Balkans are more the scene of these activities than Central Europe, as evidenced by the events and even war crimes, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo and the unrest in Albania and Macedonia.
That is why Turkey is trying to have a close relationship and cooperation with its neighbours against this new threat. It is a fact that the anti-terror report Defence Minister Sezgin read at the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting in Brussels last year was a document jointly prepared by Turkey and Bulgaria. It was received with keen interest at the NATO session and Sezgin’s report is now a binding NATO document against the “scourge of terrorism and racialism”. On that basis, Sezgin is now preparing to corner Greece at the next NATO sessions with evidence concerning Greek involvements in PKK terrorism.
This cooperation of Turkey against terrorism continues with all the countries of the region other than Greece and the Greek Cypriot Administration and it is especially institutionalized with Bulgaria and Romania. The Heads of State of Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania are attending periodical tripartite summits and it has recently been decided to hold meetings twice a year between Turkey and Romania with Ministers of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, Defence and Chiefs of the General Staff. Similar bilateral meetings already exist between Turkey and Bulgaria.
On 18-19 June PM Mesut Yýlmaz was in Bucharest. It was the first official visit by a Turkish Prime Minister to Romania for the last 12 years. Yýlmaz and his host, PM Radu Vaslla, have decided to have closer relations at prime minister level. PM Vaslla’s first visit abroad as prime minister was to Istanbul between 24 and 26 May. Mesut Yýlmaz noted in Bucharest that there were 4665 Turkish companies currently active in Romania and mutual economic cooperation was flourishing. “We are also discussing the roles our two countries are assuming for the defence of peace and stability,” he said.
The main theme in Foreign Ministry Under Secretary Haktanýr’s visit to Bratislava on June 15th was again PKK terrorism. Slovakia cancelled its licence to the PKK’s mouthpiece, Med-TV. Haktanýr and his Slovakian counterparts signed a protocol to establish a certain mechanism for regular consultations between the two foreign services.
Multinational Peacekeeping and security force for the Balkans
Even though it is not an official policy for Turkey, many people in Ankara suspect an Orthodox allegiance, if not alliance, in the Balkans among the Greeks, the Greek Cypriots, the Serbs and the Russians and the threat it constitutes for the Muslim populations of the region.
It took a few years for Turkey to activate the West to put an end to the tragedies of Bosnia, but once Washington finally came round to accepting the principle that the free world could not tolerate this “racial cleansing” 50 years after Hitler, the Bosnian peace arrangements were worked out and now NATO is taking action in Kosovo.
Furthermore, Washington came to believe that Turkey should play a key role in the region covering not only the Balkans and the Middle East, but also the Caucasus and Central Asia. Explaining the American policy for the Caspian oil, Jan Kalicki, the U.S. Commerce Department Counselor, told a Senate subcommittee in Washinton last February, “We also wish to see Turkey become an anchor of stability in the region, and to see the non-energy producing states participate in region-wide economic development fueled by energy exports.”
This American wish to see Turkey as “an anchor of stability” is not only restricted to the Caucasus, but also concerns the Balkans, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Gulf. There are, however, differences of understanding and strategy between Ankara and Washington on especially the Gulf, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, as is seen in their Cyprus policies, the Kurdish issues and other questions. Turkey’s friendly approaches towards Israel in recent years, the eradication of PKK terrorism and approaching normalisation of relations between Washington and Tehran may help to bridge some of these differences in time, but it still needs much water to run under the bridge.
Turkey’s role in the Balkans, however, is closer to the United States than the other issues, especially after Washington’s coming to grips with the Bosnian tragedies. For instance, Washington is supporting Ankara’s initiative to set up a multinational peacekeeping force in the Balkans. The State Department spokesman said at the end of April, “We’ve discussed the possibility of joint military exercises involving Greece and Turkey and other countries, particularly formed around a multinational Balkans peacekeeping force, which is one of the initiatives that’s come out of the Southeast European Defence Ministerial meetings that have been held over the last couple of years.”
At mostly Turkey’s initiative, and with Washington’s blessing, seven Balkan countries held their first Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Sofia on October 3rd, 1997 , setting up a good framework for CSBM (confidence and security building measures). These meetings held within the Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia include Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The follow-up of the Sofia meeting of military experts was held in Athens last week on the same day that Sezgin signed the military cooperation agreement in Warsaw. It was not possible to work out a consensus about the headquarters of the Balkan Peacekeeping Force. Turkey suggested Edirne, Bulgaria Plovdiv and Greece Larissa. If the incurable Turkish-Greek strife continues Bulgaria may eventually carry the day.
In 1998 Turkey will host the Summit of the Heads of State or Government of Southeast Europe following the Foreign Ministers’ meeting held in Istanbul on June 8th-9th. It is expected that this initiative will gain momentum at these meetings.uras@ada.net.tr.