TURKPULSE No:140..........JUNE 1st 2005
TURKEY VIEWS “DEMOCRACY SORTIES” FROM FERGANA WITH SUSPICION
The recent disturbances in Uzbekistan are viewed in Turkey with suspicion and utter caution in that they were a new step in Washington’s Fergana-Valley-centred attempts to bring “democracy” to Central Asia in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet system there. As these activities have so far brought nothing else but bloodshed and confusion for these Turkic nations, Ankara is following the events very closely, but silently, as low profile policy is the wisest on the eve of President Bush’s audience to PM Erdogan on 8 June. For the reasons of this silent diplomacy on the part of Ankara and an analysis of its prospective consequences please read the article below which unfortunately could not possibly be squeezed into our four-page limit for the convenience of the reader.
The name of the State Minister in charge of the Turkic republics in the Mesut Yilmaz-Bulent Ecevit coalitions, between June 1997 and November 2003 when the AKP came to power, is Ahad Andican (Turkish way of spelling Andijon) of ANAP led by Yilmaz. As an Uzbekistan born Turk he was named after his birth place Andijon in the Fergana Valley which was the scene of violent disturbances on 12-13 May that claimed 169 lives according to Tashkent, and hundreds, even thousands more, according to less reliable insurgent sources.
Fergana Valley exports revolutions for “democracy”
The Fergana Valley strategically located among Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and mostly Uzbekistan was filled with the ultra religious Wahaby infiltrators from Saudi Arabia during the last years of the USSR when the United States was still flirting with theTaliban in Afghanistan. This valley was apparently chosen by Washington as the potential headquarters of “democratic revolutions” in its BME (Broader Middle East) plans for the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and indeed that is exactly how it has been turning out. Is everything unrolling according to Washington’s wishes, plans and executions; that is another story all together. One thing is certain, however, that all these developments are taking place in accordance with the targets shown for Central Asia in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, “The Grand Chessboard – American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”, say Turkey’s Eurasia experts.
Tajikistan was the first to get its share from these plans. It has completed its transition from the civil war that plagued the country from 1992 to 1997 and is now continuing as an underdeveloped independent State ruled by President Imamali Rahmonov who was left from the Soviet time, while Washington’s plans apparently were based on new rulers in these new republics. That is why insurgents massively arriving from Taliban in Afghanistan and the Wahaby fanatics of the Fergana Valley were the main preoccupation of this new central Asian republic right after its proclamation of independence in 1991, but these fanatical uprisings were not enough to topple the Rahmonov regime which is still continuing as a member of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperative Organization). Far from achieving its ambition of installing military bases in Tajikistan, along with the other Turkic republics, the Americans have not even been able to establish a proper embassy in Dushanbe, the capital, in the last 15 years or so. The Embassy in Dushanbe is not yet fully operational. Most business is still handled in Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan, reports the CIA’s World Factbook.
Kyrgyzstan was the most democratic and free market oriented of these new central Asian republics with President Askar Atayev not being a relic of the Soviet time, unlike all the others. Still he could not complete his second 5-year term of presidency and fled the country on 24 March 2005 seven months before his term was completed, because he chose not to resist widespread protests again arising from the Fergana part of his country. Like the Moscow supported President Yanukovuch of Ukraine, he too chose the path of leaving power peacefully “rather than shedding the blood of a single citizen.” Under the Acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev since 24 March Kyrgyzstan is now heading for election on 10 July 2005. In his first term of office Akayev allowed the Americans to have a small airbase in his country, but disappointed them considerably in his second term when he let Russia have even a bigger airbase right next to it. He also became a member of the SCO and began to be in Washington’s bad books. He is now in Moscow wishing to settle in Turkey, but Ankara is reluctant to have yet more friction with the United States by hosting him and thus moving openly towards the Shanghai Five system which has now become the SCO.
US plans to topple Soviet time rulers make Uzbekistan centre of struggle
The biggest and most important of these central Asian republics, Uzbekistan with a population of 26.8 million, was the third leg of the Fergana-Valley-centered disturbances of this year, but unlike Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, President Islam Kerimov did not yield to the demonstrators and suppressed the uprisings with bloodshed and fleeing of the extremist religious factions to the Kyrgyz side of Fergana. President Kerimov’s first visit abroad after these public disturbances was significantly to Beijing last week. It was a big stride to consolidate his shift towards the SCO at the expense of the American engineered GUUAM which is undergoing structural changes to survive after Uzbekistan’s departure at its meeting in Moldova on 22 April 2005.
While Tashkent says that most of the casualties in Andijon were inflicted by Islamic fanatics, Anglo-American sources denied that the people of Andijon were Islamic fundamentalists. The former British Ambassador to Tashkent until 2004, Craig Murray, told the British press that he knew the people of Andijon; they are not fanatical activists, but “moderate Muslims like Turkey.” He then unknowingly rebutted himself by saying that it was true that they wanted a democratic Islamist Government like in Turkey, not like the Taliban (Milliyet, 16th). Who knows it better than the Turkish nation that there is no such thing in the world as a “Moderate Islamic Democracy?” If Turkey is both a democracy and an Islamic nation today (not “Islamic country,” the country has no religion under the Constitution) it is only because it is a secular country that has categorically separated religion from the State Administration. Otherwise you cannot possibly be both a theocratic country ruled by Sheriat and a democracy at the same time. Neither can you enforce the Koran partially and moderately, because it is the word of Allah and an untouchable entity, universal and eternal. How can such a document possibly be the basis of a democratic country; yet the activists of Andijon were saying to the TV cameras that they wanted the rule of the Koran as their Administration. Just because the Bush supporters do not know these realities, Turkey is certainly not going to support their “Moderate Islamic Democracy” fallacy, at home or abroad. Instead, it will bring round to Ataturk’s secular democracy system even those who were once campaigning after that nonsense, like PM Tayyip Erdogan. That is the only way of preserving both Islam as a sacred religion in the consciences and private life of the people and secular democracy as the indispensable political system of the country.
The background to Fergana agitations from Turkey’s angle
Prof Ahad Andican was very much in the media with panel discussions about these Central Asian events after his birthplace became the centre of violence and bloodshed a couple of weeks ago. He gave some useful information about Turkey’s relations with these Turkic countries right after their independences in 1991, but his appraisals for today and future forecasts were rather superficial and not realistic. He seems to believe, as do most people under the guidance of the Disinformation Mechanism, that all these are achievements of Washington in further disintegrating and isolating the Russian Federation. He says Ukraine under the pro-American President Yushchenko, after the “Orange Revolution,” will flourish very quickly and gain EU accession much before Turkey. Yet the truth is that Ukraine is split right down the middle with the pro-Russian “Blues” being much more prosperous than the “Oranges”. Neither will the USA nor the EU, both facing enormous economic problems themselves, effectively come to their help with billions of dollars of aid, even though Paul Wolfowitz and Kemal Dervis may try to channel the World Bank and UNDP funds towards the political calculations of Washington for the BME. The pro-American Yushchenko team may not even be able to survive that long if they anger Moscow enough to cut off its subsidized energy supply to this previous Soviet Republic, report analysts.
The same is the case with President Saakashvilli’s Georgia and Akayev’s Kyrgyzstan. The reason for disturbances in both these countries was economic hardships, rather than a search for democracy. By avoiding bloodshed Moscow has wisely put on the new government the burden of bringing prosperity to the people without much help from Russia unless these new rulers with pro-American election slogans make a vault face in their policies, as Shevardnadze had begun to make in Georgia and faced the American educated Saakashvilli’s “velvet revolution,” with George Soros financing.
Washington’s reasons for its BME policy which cause all this turbulence in the Turkish world are explained in “The Grand Chessboard” and most of President Bush’s statements on this topic carefully underlined by Turkey and some other nations are replicates of Brzezinski’s forecasts. According to Turkish analysts, they boil down to capturing Central Asia’s very rich and untapped energy and mineral resources by replacing the Soviet time rulers with pro-American “democratic” ones. There are three major forces of this region that can forestall its enforcement – Russia, Turkey and Iran. They have to be won over or eliminated for the success of these long term BME plans, say Turkish experts and indeed, the recent history of the BME countries is confirmation of this analysis. Here is a short account of these events from Turkey’s angle.
With the blessing of Washington (and frowns of Moscow), Turkey in 1991 was the first country to recognize the UDIs (Universal –and not unilateral- Declaration of Independence) of the former USSR republics, especially Central Asia’s Turkish speaking ones, within a matter of days, if not hours. And an energetic economic and cultural cooperation program with them was put into force by Ankara without delay.
In a short time, Ankara realized that these new countries’ economic ties with Moscow were too strong for anyone to do much there without Russia’s consent. President Ozal’s initiatives to found a joint international Turkish bank with especially the five Turkish States (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, not counting the Persian speaking Tajikistan) got nowhere because of lack of support from Russia. In the energy sector, the 15 years of efforts with the support and financing of the USA and the EU came to fruition only last week when the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline was inaugurated with an over $3 billion investment. Even though there was much publicity about this “historic event” in the Turkish and western media everyone in the know knew that it was not even peanuts in the world energy trade with depleting Azeri oil resources, unless Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil or the new Azeri natural gas supplies were added to it; and there is no sign of such developments in any foreseeable future.
Cultural and social relations with the new republics seemed to make rapid progress with Moscow’s long standing understanding and even support, but this time Washington delivered deadly blows to them with their all out objection to Turkey’s having close relations with the new republics, unless Ankara is a “figurant” (extra) in the overall American BME plans.
The Turkish language research and teaching centre of Ankara University, TOMER, was reinforced greatly. In May 2004 this 21 year old institution received the European language passport from the Council of Europe. The first joint university of the Turkish world, The Ahmet Yesevi University was founded in Ankara by Turkey and Kazakhstan and it currently has 25,000 students from Central Asia and Turkey. An international university founded jointly by Turkey and Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek in 1995, the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University, is functioning very well. But the most effective leg of these cultural activities for the Turkish world failed considerably over Washington’s BME plans.
In 1992 PM Demirel put into force an ambitious educational program to train in Turkish universities 10,000 students (2000 from each of the five new countries) with generous Turkish scholarships. They would be the rulers of their countries in future and consolidate the Turkish cultural and economic unity and solidarity. After a good start and a successful performance in the first two years the program flopped with the new States, particularly Uzbekistan, withdrawing their students from Turkey because they were being subjected to “unacceptable” American propaganda to be their subversion agents.
Muhammed Salih becomes the Americans’ bomb to undermine cooperation
Even before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there were overtly pro-American politicians working in the Soviet dictatorship and their political struggle with the Soviet time rulers has become the most important factor in shaping the futures of these new States as well as their relations with Turkey.
In Azerbaijan, one of these non-communist politicians, Abulfaz Elchibey became the first president with the Turkish PM Suleyman Demirel’s support over the Azeri TV. However Elchibey’s performance in office was a total disaster for his country and Turkey’s brotherhood with the Turkish world. He adopted an extremist policy devoid of any wisdom in attempting to immediately replace the Soviet bases and troops by the American ones. While ignoring any suggestions of rationale from Ankara he began to talk of reunifying the two Azerbaijan communities and thus alarming both Moscow and Tehran. He called Uzbeks “koyun millet” (sheep nation) and caused Kerimov’s cancelling Baku-Tashkent flights. The result was very painful for the Azerbaijan nation which lost one-third of its lands to Armenia with overt Russian military support. PM Demirel and FM Mesut Yilmaz underhandedly joined hands with the Russians, much to Washington’s protests, and toppled Elchibey. A former KGB Chief Haydar Aliyev replaced him in June 1993 and his son Ilham Aliyev has been in power since his death two years ago.
Leaving aside these Azeri stories which already exist in previous Pulse issues, it should be noted that similar things were taking place in other Turkic republics with Uzbekistan and the Uzbek opposition leader Muhammed Salih at their centre.
Salih was one of the Soviet time politicians who, along with Elchibey joined the “Movement of Democracy and Independence” aimed at disintegrating the USSR during the Perestroika and Glasnost democratization periods. Muhammed Salih’s activities backed up by George Soros or other CIA funds during the last years of the Soviet Union and the first decades of the new Turkic States were the determining factor in Turkey’s relations with these countries, because the pro-American wing of the extreme nationalist MNP and its youth organizations and sometimes the Turkish Executive force (I don’t say “the Turkish Government” because in the American English it is equal to what we call in Turkey “The Turkish State” – V.U) were involved in this subversion. A typical example of this intolerable fact is PM Tansu Ciller’s attempt to get President Haydar Aliyev killed in March 1994 and President Demirel’s fouling it by informing Aliyev at an international conference in Copenhagen, as soon as the Turkish State learnt of this unauthorized coup from the relevant MIT agent’s informing of it to MIT from Azerbaijan at the last minute.
Thus the Turkish State learnt that Russia and the new Turkic States, especially President Kerimov’s Uzbekistan, were quite right about their complaints of Turkish involvements in terrorist agitations in Chechnya, Uzbekistan and others. In return, Moscow, Tashkent and other capitals concerned also learnt that it was not the Turkish State that was doing it, but some American agents infiltrated in the Turkish Government were, as Tansu Ciller’s abortive plot to Aliyev through the MHP’s blindly pro-American flank constituted a typical example.
Muhammed Salih, a worldwide poet and scholar of the Turkish world, was being used as the pivot of all this American plans for disintegrating the present Russian Federation after the collapse of the USSR. Salih competed with Islam Kerimov for Uzbekistan’s leadership even before independence and lost all elections with allegations of rigging by pro-Russian forces. The last one of this competition was at the first presidential election of Uzbekistan in December 1991. According to pro-American sources, the Uzbek State Radio first announced that Salih had received 31% of the total votes, but it was later reduced to 15% and then to 12.7%, proving the manipulation of the election results by the pro-Kremlin forces. Still Muhammed Salih entered Parliament as the chairman of the opposition “ERK Democratic Party” whose slogan was the Turkic poet Cholpan’s famous words, “Zincir giyme, Boyun eyme ki sen de hur dogdun” (Don’t put on chains, don’t succumb; you too were born free). On 2 July 1992 Muhammed Salih resigned from Parliament and in April 1993 left the country via Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan with the help of Turkish MHP militants along with others. He entered Turkey with false documents as a refugee from Turkmenistan. President Turgut Ozal, who had long become a blindly pro-American politician, having fallen into his family members’ corruption quagmire, was to receive him in Ankara at 1700 hrs on 17 April 1993. When Muhammed Salih landed at Ankara airport from Istanbul with his MHP or other ultra nationalist escorts, he learnt that President Ozal had “died of a heart attack” a few hours before. Mrs Ozal would years later claim that Ozal had not died naturally; he had been killed like President Kennedy.
Back in Tashkent, President Islam Kerimov closely escaped death on February 16th, 1999 when bomb outrages killed 13 people and wounded 124. Two suspects of this assassination attempt and bomb outrages, Rustem Mamatkulov and Zayiniddin Askarov, captured in Turkey on 3 and 5 March 1999 were extradited to Uzbekistan. The investigation In Tashkent, brought to daylight that the defunct “Hadji-Badji” ( Erbakan-Ciller) Government was involved in the plot. Rustem Mamatkulov testified in court in Tashkent that PM Erbakan had paid him $100,000 on 2 July 1997, a few days before President Demirel and the Turkish military buried that awful government in the dusty pages of history. As usual the American Disinformation Mechanism misrepresented the whole story and accused Turkey of delivering innocent Muhammed Salih followers to Uzbekistan. Salih was eventually deported from Turkey by President Demirel and is now living in Norway in exile.
In short, the disturbances in Uzbekistan only 2-3 weeks ago are all a continuation of these events which greatly harmed Turkey’s relations with the Turkish world. To this background, will PM Erdogan’s visit to Washington in a week result in any changes in Turkey’s Eurasia policy based on mutual trust and cooperation with Moscow? The answer rests in another question, would anyone of any conscience and patriotism do it under these conditions? uras@ada.net.tr – June 1st, 2005