War and Peace
Turkey’s Rise and the Decline of Pan-Arabism
Shlomo Ben-Ami
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TEL AVIV – The deadly fiasco of the Turkish-led “peace flotilla” to Gaza highlighted the deepening strain in the Israeli-Turkish alliance. But it mainly helped expose the deeper, underlying reasons for Turkey’s shift from its Western orientation toward becoming a major player in the Middle East – in alliance with the region’s rogue regimes and radical non-state actors.
Foreign policy cannot be separated from its domestic foundations. The identity of nations, their ethos, has always been a defining motive in their strategic priorities. Israel’s blunders did, of course, play a role in the erosion of its alliance with Turkey. But the collapse of its old “alliance of the periphery,” including Turkey, the Shah’s Iran, and Ethiopia, had more to do with revolutionary changes in those countries – the Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power, the end of Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime, and now Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic shift – than with Israeli policies.
The current crisis reveals the depth of Turkey’s identity complex, its oscillation between its Western-oriented Kemalist heritage and its Eastern Ottoman legacy. Snubbed by the European Union, Erdogan is tilting the balance towards the latter.
Kemalism always saw the Ottoman legacy as a burden, an obstacle to modernization. In Erdogan’s vision, modernization does not preclude a return to Turkey’s Islamic roots, nor does it require it to abandon its destiny as a Middle East power, even if this means flouting United States-led policies in the region.
Indeed, Erdogan responded positively to Europe’s conditions for Turkey’s EU membership. His reforms – economic liberalization, cooperation with the European Court of Human Rights, improving the Kurdish minority’s rights, and undercutting the army’s Praetorian ambitions – are major advances in the history of the Turkish Republic.
Yet Erdogan has also been eager to use Europe’s requirements as a pretext to curb the army’s capacity to check his Islamic revolution. The election of his political ally, Abdullah Gul, as president, against the army’s will – indeed, against the entire Kemalist tradition – is a case in point.
To block a move aimed at outlawing his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdogan also domesticated Turkey’s constitutional court – together with the army a watchdog of Kemalism – by arbitrarily changing its composition. Now a constitutional reform supposedly aimed at “promoting Turkey’s EU membership” would further curb the army’s role as the guardian of the secular state and strengthen government control of the judiciary.
Erdogan’s Islamic revolution has also expanded into the educational system with the introduction of a markedly religious curriculum. To back Turkey’s strategic shift, a new law has recently made the teaching of Arabic obligatory in schools. It is difficult to imagine a more symbolic blow to Ataturk’s vision.
Erdogan believes that, by exercising Turkey’s capacity for mediation, he will recover the burden of his Ottoman forbears as the guarantors of peace and security in the Mashreq. Turkey’s drive to serve as a peace broker between Israel and its Arab enemies, Erdogan’s vociferous championship of the Palestinian cause, and his pretension to be the mediator in the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West reflect Turkey’s changing perceptions of itself as a regional leader.
To both Israel and the West, the regional context of Turkey’s rise is especially disturbing. Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism is not a return to an idyllic Ottoman Commonwealth; it is more a clash between a rising radical axis, led by two major non-Arab powers (Turkey and Iran), and the declining Arab conservative regimes.
Turkey put Israel in the dock of world opinion over the “peace flotilla” in a way that might still force Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to opt for credible peace negotiations, while providing a boost to Hamas and bringing about the imminent end of Iarael’s Gaza blockade. Such a spectacular success only serves to highlight the impotence of the West’s Arab allies.
Indeed, Turkey’s growing regional relevance is the measure of the Arabs’ failure. They failed to advance their peace initiative with Israel, and are complicit in the blockade of Gaza in the hope that Hamas will collapse, thereby humbling their own Islamist oppositions.
As Islamist democracies whose governments emerge from popular elections, Iran and Turkey – and their Hamas and Hezbollah allies – can claim an advantage over the incumbent Arab regimes, all of which suffer from a desperately yawning legitimacy deficit. They are all secular autocracies kept in power by intrusive, all-powerful intelligence services.
Erdogan’s strategy makes him complicit with the agenda of the West’s most vicious enemies. He even flirted with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir’s perverted Islamist rule, welcoming Bashir to Turkey after he was indicted by the International Criminal Court for massacres in Darfur on the grounds that “Muslims do not commit genocide.”
Iran and Turkey are bound to assert their Islamic credentials more and more as they reach out to the Arab masses. That a pan-Islamic discourse has now replaced the cause of pan-Arabism is a major setback for moderate Arab regimes.
Yet, despite Erdogan’s creeping Islamic revolution, Turkey is not a second Iran. The AKP remains a progressive, heterogeneous party that sees no contradiction between Islam and democracy. Nor has it entirely given up on Turkey’s European dream.
Moreover, an increasingly robust secular opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) under the vigorous leadership of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is bound to help stem the Islamist tide. With Israel’s return to a sober peace strategy, and with an honest dialogue between Turkey and its NATO allies, the Turkish bridge between East and West can still be salvaged.
Shlomo Ben Ami is a former Israeli foreign minister who now serves as the vice-president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace. He is the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link:
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Dogan 10:54 23 Jun 10
To clarify the point: Turkish students must choose a foreign language among English, German or French. So one of these languages is obligatory. Some other languages can be offered as electives. Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Spanish en yes Arabic.
nadirkemal 11:35 24 Jun 10
Mr. Shlomo Ben-Ami:
Thank you for sharing your article. You mention about Arabic curriculum in 8th paragraph. I think it is an exaggeration to consider it as a symbolic blow. We are in 21st century and with nearly 200 million Arabic speakers. Also, please think of "google translate" for example and future technological developments.
Considering the Latin alphabet revolution, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's vision included bringing peoples of Turkey, Israel, Armenia and Greece closer. I think that Turkey succeeded, Greece was a bit privileged but succeeded. On the other hand, Israel and Armenia may have failed. Please remember Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's dream becoming reality: "A modern nation speaking an ancient tongue..."
Regards.
plancksabiti 06:06 27 Jun 10
It is such a biased article and full of misleading information. Shlomo Ben-Ami is one of a "Sephardi Jew" who were exiled from Spain on 1492 and they were welcomed by the Ottoman Empire and they were given lands and rights on almost everything. I still can not believe why a former minister is "lying" about the obligatory Arabic language in Turkish schools!!!! This is SIMPLY NOT TRUE...The lands what we call "Israel and Palastine"" now, was under Turkish Rule from 1517 to 1917, exactly 400 years, and during this 4 centuries there were no significant killings or massacres between the Jewish, Muslim and Christians.( If you dont believe check history books). After artifical Israel state founded on 1948 that region became a bloodshed! Because Israel is acting like spoilt kid and thinks that he can do whatever he wants. In gaza 1.5 million people is living in the biggest open air prison blocked by Israel. Unemployment rate is %80, no food no water and no electricity. On 2006 when Israel attacked Gaza they destroyed almost every school so there is no educaton. Think about those kids point of view, dont you think they will be future guerillas and attack to Israel? Of course they will! Their mothers, sisters, fathers killed by Israel army and there is a growing hate and you can not stop with these measures by putting an embargo onto 1.5 million people. Israel says they attacked Gaza because Palestinians launching rockets( Kassam) and does anyone knows how many people killed by those homemade- kassam rockets in the last 10 years: Let me tell you : 150!!!! in ten years!!! On the other hand Israel attacked Gaza and killed 1568 civilians 844 of them are women and children. They were burned by phosphorus missiles... As Turkish people we have ties with those people, we were always friends with Jewish people. Turkey was the first muslim country in the world which recognized Israel when it was founded. I personally have more than a dozen Jewish friends in Turkey and they live as free as they live in USA.. We are against the zionist idea appearently shared by the members of Israel's current government. Turkey is a country standing on East while its face looking towards West. This argument about Turkey's shift from West to East is utterly non-credible argument.
Daisy 05:23 25 Jul 10
http://arabism-islamism.webs.com/index.htm
The twin fascisms that causes most massacres, wars, "conflicts" today:
Arabism is racism (Arab racism)
Millions upon Millions are/became victims of [pan-] Arabism which is the worst current form of racism in its gigantic proportions, like: Kurds, Jews (not just in Israel), Berbers (the real natives of North Africa), Africans (not just in the genocide in the Sudan or the slavery in Mauritania or persecution in Egypt on native Nubians by Arab invaders – till today), Persians, Copts, Phoenicians
, Assyrians, etc.
Islamism is bigotry (Islamofascism)!
The Islamic supremacy that “works” towards its vision of “final Islamic domination on the entire planet”, from Middle east to Africa from Asia to Eurabia, from forced conversions, terrorism, & massacres in multiple countries (like: Thailand, Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon India, USA, France, Israel, Russia, UK, etc.) to propaganda, the war includes on Muslims who are not radical enough...,
Let’s face it! that entire war on Israel & the Jews since the 1920’s by infamous facsist Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini who started the “genocide campaign” [and continues by the children, grand children of Arab immigrants into Israel - Palestine - now convenienently called "palestinians"] in a clear outlined declaration to 'kill all Jews', is nothing but out of pure Arab Muslim bigotry.
---
Why does biased media blame Israel defenders from vicious Arab Muslims who use civilians when they attack Israeli civilians... so that their civilians (they prefer kids to) die, then parade with their INTENDED/ORCHESTRATED casualties as "innocent victims"??? then parade with the casualties as "innocent victims"???
BTW
While the Islamo Arab dictatorship (& real Apartheid upon the non-Arabs, non-Muslims) goes on...
Israeli [ungrateful] Arabs won't mention FAVORITISM by democratic pluralistic multi-racial Israel in: land, courts & universities, by the same token, the totalitarian & mullahcracy dictators of Iran with its Hezbollah thugs & militant "Palestine" anti-freedom forces cast their genocide plan under "freedom fighting."
litonline 09:15 15 Dec 10
Is Turkey a western country or a mid-eastern country.. We shall never be able to answer this question as long as Istanbul remains Turkish land. But we can easily foresee that Erdogan's international policy is mainly depend on his dream to change the system at all. Its obvious that Erdogan is trying to found a new governmental system (similar to USA), and a chair for himself similar to Hussain B. Obama as the first president of the new system. Whereas it seems highly risky before solving kurdish minority problem including kurdish terror.
Nevertheless its also obvious that he is the most effective leader in Turkey in the last 60 years.
Kiers 07:37 28 Dec 10
too much is made of Turkey being a hybrid between europe and middle asia. it is 95% middle asia, and 5% europe (with a small manhattan sized area of istanbul feeling like europe).
IN kemal's time there was money in aligning with europe. well THAT powder has since run dry. Now it is the lower wage asian majority of turkey where the future industry will come from. that part feels strongly like middle asia/middle east.
the west needs to stop going ON and ON about Istanbul alone.
Dogan 10:45 23 Jun 10
To talk about an "Islamic revolution" in Turkey does not make any sense. The writer is misinformed. Can the writer tell us in which public Turkish school Arabic is now obligatory? He says: "To back Turkey’s strategic shift, a new law has recently made the teaching of Arabic obligatory in schools. It is difficult to imagine a more symbolic blow to Ataturk’s vision." Which new law? A rare case of misinformation.
Erdogan was attacked by the so called Kemalists and social democrats as being a pro-European "traitor". "The secular opposition" in Turkey is highly nationalistic burdened with an undemocratic politics.