Preoccupied with the joy and jubilation over Galatasaray’s championship in Europe, the Turkish public and media paid no attention to a very important security observation made by President Demirel at his last press conference in Cankaya on May 15^th.

He noted that 10 years after the downfall of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1989 he had sat at the conference table with four other statesmen in Yalta to discuss the defence and security of the Black Sea and Caucasus regions. The other four statesmen were top rulers of the Warsaw Pact period in charge of the Soviet ballistic missiles and they, along with the president of a prominent NATO country, Turkey, were deliberating the defence arrangements of Europe in general with particular attention to their own region. The Yalta that divided Europe into two with an “iron curtain” in 1945 was now hosting the top rulers of the region from both blocs for arrangements to reunite Europe and perpetuate peace, emphasized President Demirel.

What the outgoing president did not mention, however, was how unwelcome these security and cooperation arrangements of Turkey were to its allies, particularly the NATO boss, Washington, and why.

The answer to this question rests with the developments that led to the Gulf war in August 1990 and the nature and significance of that war.

The United States was in no hurry about the preparations that led to the Gulf War with Saddam’s adventure of occupying Kuwait. Washington first wanted to know exactly what Turkey’s Gulf policy was. Because the American Embassy of Ankara was in a long hibernating period under President Reagan’s over 90-year old Ambassador Strauss-Hupe, this policy was a mystery to Washington for three-and-a-half solid years and loath to displease the Americans, Turkish diplomats were keeping it top secret. Finally in May 1984, at a joint Turkish-American seminar at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara on the occasion of the Truman centenary, a first secretary of the American Embassy remarked that she did not know what Turkey’s Gulf policy was. The charming lady diplomat, the American Embassy and Washington learned there and then from a Turkish journalist (who happens to be the editor of Pulse) that this policy was shaped at the Taif Summit of the Islamic Conference in January 1981 and that it was simply – “The defence of the Gulf belongs to the Gulf countries.” The American participants of the seminar were told that this doctrine was first launched by Brezhnev during his official visit to New Delhi and adopted in Taif by Turkey, Pakistan and all the countries of the region after the necessary preparations made by Ankara at top level, despite the American efforts to form a pro-western front in the Middle East and Gulf by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, if possible. The weakness of the doctrine was also pointed out – how could the small emirates of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia possibly resist the aggression of a big power like the USSR no matter how united they may be?

The answer to this question came six years later with Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, much less a more serious aggression by a superpower. Thus Turkey’s Gulf policy as well as the Taif arrangements fell through.

The ensuing world events in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and in the Caucuses are common knowledge. Leaving aside the possibility of a superpower aggression by the USSR, USA or China which is a totally different topic, it all boils down to how to harness the potential aggression of a fairly strong regional power such as Iraq in the Gulf, Serbia in the Balkans or Armenia in the Caucuses, with or without a superpower prodding or support. It is obvious that some teeth to bite have to be added to these security arrangements so that the Gulf war and Yugoslav ethnical cleansing will not recur in future?

To address this need, local collective security and cooperation arrangements, a kind of policing duty at international level, are shaping with Turkey’s participation in several parts of its region.

In the Balkans, Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria are cooperating with other Balkan countries to set up a standing force for this purpose. Far from objecting to it the United States has supported the idea, at least at the beginning. Mostly due to Turkish-Greek disputes and other discrepancies of this troubled region, the work is advancing at snail speed, but it is setting an example for a new type of collective security arrangements outside the conventional CENTO-type alliances that are now clearly obsolescing.

A much more important security arrangement of this sort is shaping in the Black Sea and the Caucuses, but Washington’s tolerance, if not blessing, for the Balkan arrangements is nowhere around in this regard. It is mostly because the second biggest military force of NATO, Turkey, is making security arrangements for local disputes of its neighbouring regions with the former enemy - the defunct Warsaw Pact countries and Moscow and NATO’s non-regional countries do not figure in these arrangements.

How far these local security arrangements will go remains to be seen. But already there is talk of a joint naval force for the Black Sea by Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and NATO’s Turkey. President Demirel’s proposal for a similar security and cooperation arrangement for the Caucuses has been accepted by Moscow provided that Russia has not been excluded from it, but Washington seems to be deadly against the whole idea. The Americans do not even want to hear about it, let alone approve of it or join it in any way.

Last March the Turkish Atlantic Council held the 10^th International Antalya Conference on Security and Cooperation under the auspices of President Demirel to discuss these security questions with particular emphasis on NATO, the OSCE and these budding local security and cooperation organizations. At this conference inaugurated by President Demirel and attended by the top rulers and diplomats from Turkey and the OSCE (such as President Rexhep Meidani of Albania), as well as NATO Secretary-General Robertson, briefly and perhaps cursorily, the United States was literally non-existent. Canada only had a professor of political science who was querying away, “Where are the Americans?” and the UK was a bit more generous in sending, after an apparent hesitation, its permanent representative to NATO, Ambassador John Goulden who made a short statement in his usual excellent eloquence.

Now that President Demirel has come down from Cankaya with a pledge that he would not grow flowers or breed chickens in retirement, the question is: will he go in for domestic politics to give a huge stir to the center right in Parliament and Turkey’s political life in general or will he take over a top position in an international organization such as the OSCE or NATO. Given the American stance over these security and cooperation activities, he stands no chance for NATO and little for the other. He says the position he would take over in future should not be prejudicial to his honourable position as the 9^th President of Turkey.

No matter what President Demirel eventually decides to do with the rest of his life, one thing is certain that with the blessing of Moscow and the former Warsaw Pact countries, particularly the Turkic ones, he will play a key role and active part in the future activities for security and cooperation in the world. This, for its part, promises to hold new problems and upheavals in Turkey’s relations with the United States.