TURKEY’S PLACE AND ROLE IN THE GLOBALIZING WORLD

 

The outcome of the 18 September general elections in Germany was only the latest and most prominent sign of the key role Turkey has been playing in its region in particular, but in much wider areas in general of the changing world. For a bird’s eye view of these developments in this new era, the “globalization age”, which officially started at the beginning of this year, and Turkey’s place and role in it, please read the article below.

 

The Bulgarian general elections on 25 June 2005 resulted in the downfall of the right-wing coalition headed by the former King of Bulgaria, who had been brought to this former communist country as prime minister by Washington. The ruling National Movement for Simeon II (NMS2) could get only one-fifth of the total vote or 53 seats in the 240-seat national parliament at the June 2005 elections. The party was thus replaced by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which was a new version of the former communist rulers, and its Chairman, Sergei Stanishev, has been prime minister since 16 August 2005. Instrumental in this replacement of the pro-American ruling power by the Warsaw Pact time socialists was the cooperation with the socialists of the Turkish minority whose party, the MRF (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) headed by Ahmet Dogan, received 33 seats in Parliament.

Turkey plays healthy roles in establishing democracy in the world

Last week a similar situation appeared more prominently in Europe’s strongest and richest country, Germany, when nearly 3 million Turks with their 600,000 voters put their weight en block behind the leftist parties and frustrated the Washington backed right-wing parties. The leader of the pro-American Christian Democratic Party (CDU/CSU), Angela Merker, made the worst mistake of her political career by persistently bringing Turkey in as one of the main themes of her election canvassing despite Ankara’s going out of its way and warning her against it by inviting her to Turkey to extend a prime minister status and reception to her. Alas, she would not budge an inch from her fallacy that Turkey’s EU accession was impossible and that the Turks should be satisfied with a “special privileged partnership status,” obviously meaning that Ankara will have no voting right in tying itself rigidly to the EU structure and policies. The answer to this impossible wish of certain foreign quarters comes from a top Turkish commander.  Milliyet of 16 August 2005 quotes Ground Forces Commander General Yasar Buyukanit as saying, “They talk of the Broader Middle East project. What is important is how Turkey will contribute to this process and how to manage it. The future should not be drawn up by others only. We should also see it through and shape it.”

The same paper reports on 23 September that intensely annoyed by the Greek intrigues over Cyprus on the eve of the commencement on 3 October the negotiation process for Turkey’s EU accession, Ankara began to give strong signals to the West about the future. On 20 September FM Abdullah Gul did not attend his American counterpart Condoleezza Rice’s reception in New York for the NATO and EU ministers, and the following day Turkey made an unexpected move at the IAEA conference in Geneva to oppose the initiatives for referring Iran to the Security Council for sanctions because Tehran has not accepted the EU leaders’ attempts to stop the nuclear enrichment project. All these were significant signals to demonstrate Turkey’s utter irritation over the EU’s becoming a tool in the hand of the Greek Cypriot leader Papadopulos, rather than a basic policy change on the part of Ankara, at least so long as the EU accession process goes on, no matter how slowly and the present German Government is very much aware of it.

Thus aided by Chancellor Schroeder’s oratory and FM Fischer’s statesmanship as well as the commonsense of the German nation, the Turkish minority and Ankara gave Merker and the forces behind her a perfect lesson to the effect that it doesn’t pay to play about with Turkey’s vital national interests. The foregone conclusion of chancellorship for Angelo Merker, as shown in reliable opinion polls with a 20-25 point advantage at the outset of the election campaign, eroded to a mere two-seat margin with 225 seats to the SPD’s 223 and even that negligible advantage may disappear soon when the cancelled Dresden voting is repeated.

Even though the right-wing Liberals (FDP), the CDU/CSU’s natural ally, and the surprise victor of the 18 September elections, Oscar Lafontaine’s Leftist Party, loosely called “the communists,” also favoured with Merker’s “privileged partnership” status for Turkey, Ankara paid no attention to it with the underhanded knowledge that they were cursorily paying lip service to the idea as an election tactic.

Five Turks entered Bundestag (The German Federal Parliament), all from the left of centre parties – one from the SPD, one from the Greens and three from the newly founded Leftist Party. This in itself is proof of the fruits of the underhanded cooperation of the pro-Moscow (or rather pro-SCO) forces and the Turks throughout the world, with or without any statuary arrangement.

Bulgaria and Germany are not the only places where the leftist and Turkish elements held a tacit cooperation to the advantage of both in the national elections or political orientations of several countries.

PM Tayyip Erdogan continued to annoy Washington by repeating in New York during his 15 September address to the UN General Assembly and other contacts at the world summit that Turkey had played a vital role in inducing Syria to evacuating Lebanon and it was true, even though the Disinformation Mechanism in the Turkish media disagrees, indeed mocks the idea.

A similar mocking from the same quarters was seen during PM Erdogan’s official visits to the tsunami disaster area earlier in the year. They made fun of his statements in Aceh and other disaster areas of Indonesia, Thailand etc. by pointing out that Turkey’s aid to the tsunami victims was less than the car racer Schumacher’s donation all alone. Last week the 30-year armed separatist movement in Aceh, the northern tip of the Indonesian island Sumatra, ended with autonomy to this Muslim community which has a flag identical to the Turkish red flag with a white star and crescent except for two black lines on the top and bottom to separate the two flags. Did Turkey not play a healthy role in this constructive development of the world with its enormous moral prestige in the Muslim world, far exceeding the material influence most of the time?

Likewise, certain constructive developments took place in the world recently with Turkey’s catalytic, if not vital, roles. To count a few, while the Afghan parliamentary elections held on the same day with those of Germany’s proved to be a huge farce for the “American democracy schemes” for such countries like the Egyptian election with 88% majority for the incumbent President Mubarek, the Afghan elections with votes carried on the backs of donkeys for days subject to changes on the way for a few dollars (no fear there was negligible turnout and votes anyway), the Iraqi ones with untold disorders and corruption cases in favour of the US supported communities like the Barzani and Talabani tribes and the non-Iran Shiites (The Badr brigades instead of Mukteda el-Sadr’s Mehdi forces), Turkey’s influence on newcomers to the western democracy and free market economy systems made a healthy impact in regional developments.

Soviet bases should be liquidated but not replaced by American ones

Moscow finally withdrew its forces from Georgia two weeks ago probably with the assurance it derived from Turkey’s strong stand in keeping the Black Sea free from non-riparian countries’ infiltrations, much to Washington’s objection. Turkey’s policy today is the evacuation of the Russian forces and bases from the former Soviet Union lands, as NATO’s basic policy calls for, but different from Washington, it is not replacing the vacuum with American or NATO forces, even though Ankara prefers a low profile about this policy for understandable reasons. That is what brings Turkey’s foreign policy closer to that of the SCO and what establishes a statuary or non-statuary cooperation between Turkey and especially Moscow in the economic, political and even military fields.

Most probably with Ankara`s influence and experience in democracy, Moscow or the pro-Moscow political forces of the relevant countries did not use force in the Ukraine and Kyrgyz elections by manifesting exemplary patience and tolerance to the occupations of government offices and parliaments by certain agitators on the opposition side backed up by the so-called “Soros Funds.”  The bloodshed thus avoided in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan is now proving the strength of democracy in these countries, with bitter disappointments for Washington.

In Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev replaced President Askar Akayev as a result of the 10 August 2005 elections held after the latter’s fleeing to Moscow and resigning from office on 11 April 2005 following massive popular agitations in March. This silent and bloodless change of power with Moscow’s tolerance, however, seems to have made no swing in favour of the American base in the north of Kyrgyzstan. Under President Bakiyev, the country is still a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which has ruled for the liquidation of American bases from central Asia, starting with Uzbekistan.

In Ukraine too, the pro-western Viktor Yushchenko’s coming to power in February did not entail the domination of pro-EU or pro-USA policies in the country, despite the President’s and his Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko’s strong feelings and public statements in that direction. Instead, the two blindly pro-American politicians fell at odds, the President dismissed his beautiful PM Tymoshenko within seven months with corruption charges sweeping the entire country, but he failed to replace her with a new prime minister, Yurie Yekhanurov, falling three votes short of the required 226 votes needed for the vote of confidence held on Tuesday (20^th).

Cooperation with Russia yields surprising results for Turkish economy

While the Turks’ six decades of experience with the western parliamentary and free market economic systems help the Russian Federation to adapt to the non-socialist system since 1990, the economic opportunities Russia provides to Turkey are indeed a godsend in these critical periods of the Turkish economy.

It is not only the enormous tourism revenue from Russia and the former Soviet countries, but also Turkish contracting services in these regions, as well as Turkish investments and workers there have all been most useful in the Turkish economic miracle that has been going on for especially the last three years, thanks to the political stability that Turkey attained with the November 2002 general elections.

This year Turkey is expecting an unbelievable income of about $15-20 billion from privatization while this field had been the most disappointing failure of the Turkish economy in the last few decades. It is impossible to give a sound breakdown of these privatization schemes because there are several hurdles in the way about the details of the financing of the projects and the delays caused by the Judiciary over corruption charges of the internal and external opposition quarters, but here are the highlights of the projects in question:

Turk Telecom: $6,550 million (to the Oger company of the Hariri family of Lebanon and SaudiArabia), Galataport: $4,300 million (to the Ofer Group of Israel), TUPRAS (oil refineries): $4,140 million (90% to Turkish tycoon Koc and 10% to Shell), GSM (Is-TIM): $2,980 million, Petrol Office: $1,260 million.

Before the end of the year, Turkey’s biggest industrial venture, the Eregli Steel Plant will be privatized for a few billion dollars and all these privatization schemes will be a tremendous boost to the Turkish economic miracle in the pipeline.

As to the reasons for this sudden boom in privatization in Turkey, while it was a miserable failure story for the last couple of decades, it is clearly the outcome of the Turkish-Russian cooperation within much wider contacts of the SCO stretching from its six members to Iran, India, the Far East and even basically pro-American Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Gulf emirates which are looking around for opportunities to save themselves from the clutches of capitalist exploitation.

Disinformation material is rife in the Turkish media and internet with detailed information that the entire Hariri family is only a British stooge, the Ofer family is a Zionist agent and Turkey is being robbed by foreigners in all these privatization schemes.

The truth is that if there is any force behind the Hariri and the Ofer families, it is not the western capitalism and intelligence, but the revolution that has started in the world by the SCO against the capitalist hegemony headed by Washington.

Are the Conspiracy Theory mongers asking how I can be so sure about it? It is because this year’s capital raisers and investors in Turkey are accepting certain instruments in privatization that the capitalist world would never have agree to in the past. One of them is the golden share, that is to say a single share given to the government with the veto right over a majority decision. Another instrument is seen in the privatization of the Eregli steel plant. Far from buying the majority shares and undermining the plant’s expansion or even its survival, the winner of the tenders will pledge to continue with the ongoing $2 billion investment and more in order to increase its capacity from 3.5 million tons to 10 million tons in 2010 and to15 million tons in 2015.

Mohammed Hariri told the Turkish press in Beirut that the Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic oriented Government was instrumental in their decision to invest here and that the Saudi and Gulf capitals would flow into Turkey once their investment with unbelievably high figures settles in. They would market Turkish shares in Dubai, he said.

Le Figaro reported last week that Turkish companies are dominating the entire Arab and Islamic world from Central Asia to Magreb (Morocco) including the Caucuses. In October PM Erdogan will visit Algeria with over 100 Turkish businessmen, “a powerful delegation befitting the Turkish companies’ ambitions,” remarks the French daily.

PM Erdogan flew directly to Jeddah at the end of his contacts in New York last week and held talks with the Saudi Prince Velid Bin Tallal described by the Turkish press as the biggest international investor of the world. He will soon visit Turkey to seek investment opportunities here. The Prime Minister also had an audience with the new King Abdullah.

To criticisms of the opposition that PM Erdogan and his Finance Minister Unakitan held several “secret” talks with the Hariri and Ofer families before these giant privatization and investments were engineered under allegedly shady conditions, the Prime Minister said that they were doing active marketing and would continue with these contacts. They had no reason to fear far fetched corruption charges.

Having already far exceeded my principle of not bothering the reader with prolonged articles, I leave the arena to the disinformation mongers and political bickering about these corruption charges in the current privatization spree of Turkey and only stress a point that the whole thing has been much to Turkey’s gain with unbelievably high prices obtained from these sales. As for the main theme of this article- the reasons for these godsend profits and their nature, let me point out that it all boils down to the world energy strategies and Turkey’s ever-increasing role in them. Due to the lack of space, I leave the intriguing details of this topic to the next article, with a promise; it won’t take as long as other articles have taken in recent months. Within a fortnight it will be on Pulse webpage, promise. uras@ada.net.tr – September 28^th, 2005