WILL TURKEY WELCOME THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST IDEA?

 

By all indications the answer is definitely “No” if some suspicions of Turkish security people are not allayed first. These suspicions arise from PM Tayyip Erdogan’s certain contacts in Washington during his official visit to the United States last January, as well as the American role played in the last few decades to bring him to power. For what these suspicions are and their importance for the Turkish nation please see the article below.

 American sources define this relatively new term in international relations, “the Greater Middle East,” as follows:

“The Greater Middle East –defined as the Arab world, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus—is the site of the world’s largest supply of fossil fuels and a place where several ambitious powers actively seek religious hegemony. It is the only region of the world where more or less permanent U.S. forward-based military deployments have expanded since the end of the Cold War.”

Cheney’s Globalist solution to terrorism – the democratic Greater Middle East

Turkish sources define this area as the Islamic world stretching from Morocco to the China Wall, regarding Israel as a small non-Muslim minority which is hardly a majority even within its own national frontiers when its Muslim population plus Palestine is taken into account. It is a key trouble spot that should be settled with first priority in this Greater Middle East project rather than a significant non-Islamic area therein, in the eyes of most Muslims.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney explains this American project as follows:

“We are told that the culture and beliefs of the Islamic people are somewhat incompatible with the values and aspirations of freedom and democracy. These claims are condescending – and they are false. Many people of the world’s Muslims today live in democratic societies. Turkey is perhaps the premier example. That is why it has recently been the target of terrorist violence. Turkey deserves our support, including for its European aspirations. Millions of other Muslims live and flourish as democratic citizens in Europe, Asia and the United States… We have seen movement toward reform in the Greater Middle East.”

Cheney gives examples of this movement toward reform ranging from Morocco to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, “the great Iranian people,” Afghanistan –“a nation that will never again be a safe haven for terror,” Iraq “where democracy is beginning to take hold,”  Palestine and Israel that should stop “undermining the long-term viability of a two-State solution.”   

The Greater Middle East project was first launched by President Clinton in 1995 to bring “peace, welfare and security” to the region starting from the Palestine question that was brought nearly to the point of solution with his energetic personal mediation based on persuasion and “carrot” between Israel and Palestine. The “Neo-Cons” (new conservatives) around President Bush added “democracy”  to these three principles, but not in accord with that word, also a thick stick used with a heavy hand in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of Clinton’s carrot in Palestine. Their tactical target was Iraq and Afghanistan, but strategic targets were Iran and Saudi Arabia.

These hard line policies began to crystallize with the “Project for a New American Century” published on June 3, 1997 by 25 Neo-Cons including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad and the President’s brother, Jeb Bush. They were dedicated to a few fundamental principles: “that American leadership is good both for America and for the world”; that such leadership requires “a Reaganite policy of military strength; diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle;” that it will “challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;” that it will “build on the successes of this century and ensure our security and our greatness in the next.”

The Greater Middle East policy starts with frustrations due to Turkish rebuttal

It is apparent that the Bush team’s Great Middle East policy started with a great disadvantage and disappointment due to the Turkish Parliament’s 1 May 2003 rebuff to the military operation in Iraq as it also entailed the departure from Turkey of the forerunners of some 60-70 thousand American soldiers to be deployed in Turkey which was meant to be a spring board for their attacks on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and what not.

It took Washington a solid one year to forget about the great disappointment felt over this rebuttal. Finally, after tête-à-tête consultations with PM Tayyip Erdogan in Washington, the Bush Administration decided to forget about the past and again took action on this Greater Middle East project with Turkey as its hub. To this end, Deputy Secretary of State Marc Grossman was sent to the Middle East and Europe on the first days of March to explain this unclear project to the coalition partners-to-be for the future stages of the project after Afghanistan and Iraq, but once again there were fresh frustrations in store for the top American diplomat who had also served as ambassador to Turkey. On his way to Ankara from Amman, Ambassador Grossman preferred at the last minute, on 3 March to land in the Greek sector of Cyprus and then proceed to Brussels, skipping Turkey. What had happened at the last minute that ”this technical breakdown” took place in the aircraft?

The day Ambassador Grossman was supposed to arrive in Ankara, the Turkish Top Brass was at a panel discussion organised by the Ataturkist Association to celebrate the 80^th anniversary of the abolition of Caliphate in Turkey and the world. Much to the great surprise of the audience, three Force Commanders, General Aytac Yalman of the Ground Forces, Admiral Ozden Ornek of the Navy and General Sener Eruygur of the Gendermarie along with their wives took the front row of the conference hall. The Air Force commander General Ibrahim Firtina was absent only because of the crash of two fighters in a training flight, but other top commanders such as the Deputy Chief TGS, General Ilker Basbug, Secretary General of the NSC General Sukru Sarisik, Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces General Fethi Remzi Tuncel and the Chief of Operations , TGS, Lt. Gen. Metin Yavuz Yalcin were in attendance.

The commanders gave standing ovation to the “National Consensus Declaration” that was read out at the end of the panel which was defined as “the outcome of an urgent necessity.” Noteworthy about this declaration was the statement condemning the “axes of power that strive to render ineffective Ataturk’s principles and reforms, to alter the world outlook defined in the Constitution, to divide and perish the Republic of Turkey, to eliminate the nation and nation-State notions, to obstruct the people from attaining their national aspirations and interests.”

What is the relationship between this significant occurrence on the 80^th anniversary of the annulment of Caliphate as a religious institution in Islam and Ambassador Grossman’s cancellation of his trip to Turkey the same day? It seems the answer to that question is still a diplomatic secret, but certain facts do not escape an experienced political scientist’s notice.

During his official visit to Washington last January PM Erdogan had a secret meeting with Osman Efendi, the grandson of the last Turkish Sultan and Caliph. If Ataturk had not abolished the Caliphate 80 years ago he would have been the Caliph today. The CIA controlled Turkish media, at least the Disinformation Mechanism within it, suddenly started an argument into if the Caliphate was abolished 80 years ago or if it had been deported from Turkey. There is reason to believe that there are certain external fingers in all these developments and that that was the reason why the top Turkish commanders felt the necessity of making such an unprecedented show of force on 3 March, the anniversary of abolishing the Caliphate. That may also be the reason for Ambassador Grossman’s skipping Turkey at the last minute from his tour to explain the Greater Middle East idea in the region and Europe, covering Morocco, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and the EU. It should not be a surprise if time proves that this new American globalist plan includes reviving the Caliphate through Osman Efendi which intention the Turkish military has nipped in the bud with its demonstrative gesture on the Caliphate anniversary on the grounds that “They are drawing the picture of a moderate Islamic State. We see that the contemporary (Turkish)  Republic is being jeopardised by this model,” as the relevant declaration has put it. At the moment this is only the  guesswork of Pulse, rather than a sound piece of information that the American Greater M.E. project includes the revival of Caliphate in the world through Turkey.

May the Greater Middle East project help Turkey’s EU accession?

According to Yasemin Congar’s  Washington datelined dispatch in Milliyet (7^th), the Greater M.E. dialogue was held on 8 March in the American capital between Grossman and Turkish Ambassador Faruk Lo-oglu. Turkish diplomatic circles told her that the Turkish Foreign Ministry is carrying out intensive work on the political, economic and security aspects of this project. Turkey is ready to make considerable contribution to this idea, but it has no intention of imposing on other Islamic countries the Turkish model. Neither is it ready to be a “target country,” nor will it permit to be used as “tongues by the USA or the EU”  in this regard. (Milliyet 7^th)

The details of the Greater M.E. idea is still a mystery for world public opinion, but Dick Cheney’s statement and other American documents give an idea about what it involves. It aims at adding the 14 million Muslims of Europe to Turkey’s 70-75 million democratic population and working out a joint American-European action in the Islamic world with a claim to bring democracy to these countries. President Bush has already worked hard to win over Chancellor Schroeder’s support to the plan with doubtful success especially on getting NATO involved in the Iraq question. Ambassador Grossman elaborated on it with the EU on his way back from his tour of the region a couple of weeks ago.

The project seems to involve an organisation similar to Europe’s OCSE for cooperation and security of the Greater M.E. It may include a Marshall Plan for the economic development of the region. These preparations are expected to become more tangible at NATO’s Istanbul summit in June. Roland Asmus of Foreign Affairs magazine writes in its September/October 2003 issue in his capacity as a leading American scholar working on this American project, “Despite the myriad setbacks of recent months, the U.S.-European alliance is not doomed. But repairing it will require a strategic overhaul no less bold than that which followed the end of the Cold War. To revive and revamp the alliance, the United States and the European Union must forge a new grand strategy capable of meeting the great challenges of the era: the Euro-Atlantic community and stabilizing the greater Middle East.”

Along with a former Turkish ambassador to London, Ozdem Sanberk, Roland Asmus asks in a joint article in the Wall Street Journal (24-26 October, 2003), “A geopolitical test question: which country in Europe today is as important as West Germany was in the Cold War? Answer: Turkey...”  

Meanwhile the United States and the EU expect to solve the Cyprus problem as well as the Palestinian and Iraqi questions, if possible. The whole project is facilitating Turkey’s vital problem of accession to the EU because the European integration is now appreciating that it needs Turkey if it will be a global strategic power in the new century to be quite a match for the United States.

Turkey is not ready for the role Washington designs for it within this project

Despite the advantages Washington’s Greater M.E. project provides for itself in many ways, Turkey is clearly not ready to assume the responsibilities therein, as evidenced by the commanders’ 3 March demonstration. Instrumental in this Turkish reluctance is the grossly mistaken policies of the United States in this region in the past as well as in Iraq today. Washington, at least the hopefully outgoing Bush Administration, is still toying with the idea of attacking Syria and Iran after the Iraq adventure by using Turkey as tongues.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt have already joined hands against the Greater Middle East project and similar to President Demirel’s prognosis that “Saddam may emerge from the ballot box if free elections are held in Iraq,” President Mubarek of Egypt has publicly warned Washington, “Don’t force democracy on the Middle East. You may otherwise be shocked by the forces against which you are standing today jumping out of the polls one day.”

With the Baghdad Pact experience of the fifties and the subsequent CENTO farce of the following two decades, Turkey is resolutely against being “the subcontractor of the USA in the Middle East” or anywhere else. It also rejects imposing solutions to this region from outside and prefers helping an evolution in the Islamic world from within. Furthermore, the Afghanistan and Iraq adventures of the Bush Administration have proved to Turkey how wrong its “domino theory” is. In other words, the adjacent Islamic countries of these two targets of the United States were supposed to  collapse like dominoes according to the American Neo Cons’ claims, but they are still holding on and standing strong. That is why instead of being influenced by the American wishful thinking about domino theories, Turkey is going on with its conferences of Iraq’s neighbouring countries, especially cooperating with Syria and Iran, much to Washington’s chagrin.

Furthermore, the Bush Administration has made a mess of the American image in the Greater Middle East and the Islamic world, going much further than the traditional “Yankee-go-home” stance of the post WW II period. That is why Turkey’s preference for this region is clearly cooperating with the EU rather than the U.S.-guided coalition which has not been able to institutionalise, but, on the contrary, is on the path of disintegration. Last week’s train disaster which claimed 200 innocent lives and wounded 1500 others in Spain is certainly not helping Washington in retaining this “coalition” in Iraq or elsewhere. The new socialist government in Spain has already decided to withdraw its 1500 soldiers from Iraq by the end of June, because “You cannot sustain a war based on a lie” that Saddam had WMD, as the incoming Spanish leader has put it.  

Also the Interim Constitution that was put into force in Iraq on 8 March has annoyed Ankara intensely by providing another evidence about how the United States is going on with its policy of tearing the Kurds away from Iraq as an independent country at the first opportunity. In return, Turkey is cooperating with the Sunnis and Shiats of Iraq especially for the prevention of having a Kurdish majority in Kirkuk through devious ways under American domination, in addition to coordinated work for Iraq with especially Tehran and Damascus.          

What chance of success is there in Washington’s efforts to create a Greater Middle East with Turkey its hub under these conditions? Making PM Tayyip Erdogan the strong man of Turkey and reinforcing him, if that is really the case,  with a Caliph president when President Sezer’s term ends in Cankaya in mid-2007are American style fantasies rather than serious diplomatic work. Not even a superpower can bring to life such pipe dreams. uras@ada.net.tr – March 15^th, 2004