TURKEY’S “CENTRE OF ATTRACTION” FOR EURASIA

 

As expected, General Kilinc’s suggestion of a new “search” for cooperation with Russia and Iran as against the EU’s ongoing lack of understanding towards Turkey evoked extensive interest throughout the country. External quarters are silent, but they are certainly watching over the developments with a hawk’s eye, as it is more than a milestone for Turkey, a crossroads. For the background and future implications of the whole story please see the article below.

Two top commanders of Turkey, General Huseyin Kivrikoglu, Chief, TGS and General Tuncer Kilinc, Secretary-General of the NSC, hit the headlines on Friday, evoking immediate reactions from various political quarters. General Kivrikoglu was strongly critical of the European Union’s persistent support to terrorists in Turkey and General Kilinc was more outspoken about not to expect much from Turkey’s efforts to become a full member of the EU. The latter also came up with an alternative to this membership. With an emphatic clarification that it is his personal opinion, General Kilinc suggested that Turkey should have special relations with Russia and also with Iran, if possible, without antagonising Washington.

Yilmaz’s nightmare is in fact Pres Sezer’s “centre of attraction”

PM Ecevit’s first reaction was to underline that it was not easy to bring the United States and Iran together. The following day he issued a carefully written statement confirming Turkey’s loyalty to EU accession stressing that Ankara would continue with and “deepen” its relations and arrangements with the countries of the region.

The strongest reaction to General Kilinc promptly came from Deputy PM Mesut Yilmaz. As the champion of Turkey’s accession to the EU, he said that General Kilinc’s suggestion was not an alternative, but a nightmare, because both the Russian Federation and Iran were trying to get rid of their isolation in the world and that any partnership with them would be tantamount to sharing their loneliness.

Mesut Yilmaz’s unreceptive reaction to General Kilinc’s suggestion was by and large shared in the media, but close scrutiny proves that the suggestion of improved relations with the Russian Federation and Iran within certain arrangements is neither new, nor an impulsive reaction, nor still is it General Kilinc’s personal opinion.

As a matter of fact Pulse has long been writing on this subject and pointing to Turkey’s top rulers’ official statements as evidence of it. On the occasion of the 78^th anniversary of the Turkish Republic, President Sezer wrote in Izvestia last October, “With the collapse of the ideological walls, our existing mutual relations, which date back long centuries ago, have now reached a level that could not even be imagined before.”  He said about the “constantly expanding” Turkish-Russian cooperation “The realities of the new era provide a good opportunity for raising our mutual relations to the level of enhanced partnership. Thanks to this partnership our two countries can become an exemplary centre of attraction for the countries in this enormous region…I expect that the joint efforts of Turkey and Russia will, with the toil of these two hardworking nations, bring about a region of peace and welfare that will set an example for the whole world.”  

President Sezer’s address in Kars that was brought to the attention of the Pulse reader only two articles before (Issue no: 63) is enough to indicate what this “centre of attraction” involves “in this enormous region”.

In addition to President Sezer’s unequivocal statement in Kars, Foreign Minister Ismail Cem has recently been putting Turkey’s top priority in foreign policy as EU membership and “the Eurasia process”. What is diplomatically called the “Eurasia process” is exactly what General Kilinc is talking about: “a search” for special arrangements with Russia and Iran as the centre of Turkey’s new foreign policy adjustments, but certainly not Turkey’s new place in the world. In fact, President Sezer has also described it so and said in answer to a question in Prague on March 8^th during his State visit to the Czech Republic that General Kilinc’s words were not a “sortie” but a “complementary definition”. He said “We can both enter the EU and expand our relations with our neighbours, Russia and Iran. This is not a policy change, but the definition of the existing situation. We fulfil the political criteria during the accession process to the EU. It opens the negotiation stage. When full membership becomes possible we shall sit down and take the final decision about our national interests, whether they justify this membership or not.”

Turkey’s Eurasia process calls for introducing European standards to Turkey’s partners in this region and definitely not adapting Turkey to Iran’s and other Islamic countries’ archaic systems.

In other words, Turkey has already worked out several international arrangements for special relations with its two big neighbours mentioned by General Kilinc and they range from BSEC (The Black Sea Economic Cooperation) to ECO (Economic Cooperation Organisation) and several other security and economic cooperation arrangements for the Caucasus, the Turkic Republics and Eurasia. These arrangements have begun to take root, some of them, namely ECO, disappointingly slowly and inadequately, but they will continue and deepen, as the PM has expressly pledged. In taking these steps Ankara manifests the utmost care about not alarming or provoking the West. That is why most people at home and abroad fail to duly understand or appreciate this new leg of Turkish foreign policy in the aftermath of the downfall of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet systems.

As the man in the know, General Kilinc’s few, but most significant words exploded like a bomb in the world, but they were a very appropriate and timely warning about the West’s efforts to corner Turkey in its foreign policy designs by using the EU accessions. A glance at current world affairs, of vital importance to Turkey is proof.

Some of the events which led General Kilinc to a timely warning

The Speaker of Parliament, Omer Izgi (MHP-Konya), complained on Monday (11^th) that the EU was constantly aggravating its conditions for Turkey’s accession. A case in point is the capital punishment and Kurdish teaching controversies in Turkey.

After long negotiations with the EU, Turkey has finally made certain arrangements and carried out 35 constitutional amendments for these issues, in accordance with the National Program it presented to the EU. But while the capital punishment issue, Kurdish teaching and broadcasts in that language were among the medium-term measures to be completed by the end of 2004, the EU has moved them forward and insisted that these issues have to be solved before the end of the year, thus causing the recent clash between the two deputy PMs, Mesut Yilmaz and Devlet Bahceli.

While Yilmaz and his party ANAP press for complying with the EU’s demands, maintaining that it is an opportunity for Turkey’s accession to the EU by 2007, Bahceli and his party MHP object to it for political reasons and stress that they are loyal to the original arrangements within the National Program in handling these issues as medium-term problems. In return, Mesut Yilmaz argues that the EU moved forward the membership of the first ten candidates, including the Greek Cypriots, by two years, from the end of 2004 to the end of this year. That is why Turkey should also alter its program for short-term and medium-term measures if it wants to start the negotiation for accession along with the other two candidates of the second group, Bulgaria and Romania. According to this outlook, the EU will make the Greek Cypriots a full member at its summit in Denmark at the end of this year. To ease Turkey’s reaction to this development they will also agree to starting official negotiations with Turkey for its full membership only if Ankara “does its homework” and makes the necessary adjustments about the Kurdish language and the capital punishment issue by the time of the EU Summit in Seville, Spain on June 21^st and 22^nd, before Spain hands the EU presidency to Denmark for the second half of the year. As Greece will take over that duty from Denmark in the first half of next year Mesut Yilmaz is keen on “doing the homework now” without waiting for 2004.

In addition to these issues of domestic policy for Turkey, the EU and the West are also pressing for a quick solution to the Cyprus problem. State Minister Sukru Sina Gurel was one of the few ministers who supported General Kilinc’s controversial statement. He returned from Cyprus last week with pessimistic impressions about the Denktas-Clerides talks. Gurel said to Fikret Bila of Milliyet (8) about the Cyprus talks, “As Mr Denktas has revealed, there has been no progress at the talks acceptable to the Turkish side. There is no constructive response from the other side to the steps taken by Mr Denktas. The Greek side wants to have Guzelyurt (Morphou), the region in between, and Karpass. Furthermore, it wants to settle migrants in the North. Mr Denktas’s assessment is that the Turkish side will, under these conditions, be treated as a community and it is tantamount to going even further back than the pre-1960 period. If this situation continues, Cyprus will be a stumbling- block in regard to accession to the EU.

“If Europe still decides to admit Cyprus to the Union, despite this situation, serious problems will crop up. The EU will totally have Turkey up against it if it claims to be admitting the whole of Cyprus to the Union. Where will they place the TRNC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) in that event? In such an eventuality the Greek Cypriot side may be encouraged to persecute the Turkish Cypriots. They are already getting armed to the teeth. If Europe does not want to cause such problems it should either put pressure to bear upon the Greek side for accepting the model moved by the Turkish side or it should persuade Greece to postpone the Greek Cypriots’ accession. In fact it is against the agreements to admit Cyprus into an international organisation of which Turkey is not a member. It should at least consider an accession (of the Greek Cypriots) along with Turkey’s. Otherwise, Cyprus will be a bottleneck.”

In addition to these unfavourable developments in Turkey’s relations with the EU, the European Parliament recently adopted a resolution about South Caucasus. Taha Akyol of Milliyet (2) writes under the headline, “Crusader Europe” on this topic:

“The EU has passed the South Caucasus report which denounces Turkey. The Hodjali massacre perpetrated by the Armenians 10 years ago is not in the report. Neither does it include the fact that a quarter of the Azeri lands are under Armenian occupation. It does not mention 2 million displaced Azeri people either.

“Alright what does it contain?

“It has a sentence – ‘Turkey is threatening Armenia by supporting Azerbaijan.’ It criticises the United States for supporting Turkey in the Caucuses. It orders Turkey to recognise the Armenian genocide allegedly perpetrated 87 years ago. It claims that this genocide is such a fact that some Turks were tried in Istanbul after World War I and were sentenced to prison for it. It further claims that Ataturk said in the TGNA (Turkish Grand National Assembly) at its session on April 10^th, 1921 that the Jeunes Turks regime was responsible for the Armenian genocide.

“The fact that the report ignores 2 million displaced Azeris and turns a blind eye to the ongoing Armenian occupation of Azerbaijan is sufficient to prove the Crusader sub-conscience.

“True that some Turks were tried at the Nemrut Mustafa Court Martial and sentenced to prison for Armenian genocide. But these were political resolutions of the occupation forces of that period. As for Mustafa Kemal Pasha, he did not speak in Parliament on April 10^th, 1921. He did not even come to the TGNA that day. On those days he was preoccupied with the military operation after the second Inonu victory of April 1^st, 1921 and the Kocgiri rebellion. It was the Defence Minister Fevzi Pasha who came to Parliament on April 13^th, 1921 and spoke about the second Inonu victory…”

European support to Turkish terrorists is the last straw

In addition to all these unfair, even hostile stances against Turkey by the EU, the most important issue that preoccupies the Turkish security forces today is its outright support to Turkish terrorists. After the September 11^th terrorism in New York, it has now become an international commitment under UN Security Council Resolution 1373 for every country not to harbour or finance terrorists.

In December 2001 Turkey presented a report on “The Measures Taken by Turkey against Terrorism,” to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1373. The part pertaining to the EU reads:

“Turkey has recently provided the names of terrorist organisations of a separatist, extreme leftist and fundamentalist nature that pose a major threat to Turkey, to be included in a list that the EU will prepare, as a contribution to the efforts in progress in the Union. Turkey is of the opinion that the response of its partners in the EU will constitute a test of their solidarity in our struggle against terrorism.”

The EU’s response was a shock for Ankara. The Union did not simply include Turkish terrorist organisations, namely the PKK and DHKP-C, in its list of terrorist organisations. Turkish security forces have long lists of cases of European support to Turkish activists and terrorists and they all go against UN Security Council Resolution 1373. Foreign Minister Ismail Cem says that it is possible to take legal action against the EU under Resolution 1373, but the EU is not an enemy, but a friend and partner of Turkey.

Gen. Kivrikoglu`s and Gen. Kilinc’s public statements were made under these conditions. But contrary to the interpretations and comments made to the effect that they may mean Turkey’s breaking away from the Union for another arrangement with Russia and Iran, the Ecevit Government or any responsible person in the country has no intention of doing so. The Government views the EU accession as Turkey’s right and Mesut Yilmaz says, “We will get our rights extracting them by force.”

Meanwhile, these controversies caused by certain EU quarters, which are reluctant to see Turkey within the Union, may induce Ankara to have closer relations with neighbouring countries like Russia and Iran. It simply means that the perfect transport and communication systems of Europe may come to this region sooner than expected. The Blue Stream will be the pioneer in these moves when it will go into test operations in the course of weeks, if not days. Who knows all these activities and Turkey’s security plans better than Generals Kivrikoglu and Kilinc, who seem to be losing their patience especially about the West’s recent efforts to extract the maximum from Turkey on foreign policy issues like Cyprus and the Eurasia region by using the EU accession as a tool. uras@ada.net.tr - March 13^th, 2002